Abstract
Tailing dams are used to store mining tailings as uneconomic fraction of an ore after separating the valuable fraction. Tailing dams are mostly hazardous. Therefore, release of a large amount of tailings could lead to serious and long term ecological effects with very high cleanup costs. A literature survey shows that the main causes of tailing dam failure are poor design, improper site, irresponsibility and lack of control. To avoid of tailing dam failure awareness about the root causes and the severity of impacts on environment and human health is very important. This study is focused on a case to identify the causes as a base for proposing some important safety factors to prevent failure of tailing dams. The past experiences show that efforts should be put on prevention rather than reacting after the event.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Tailing dam, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailings_dam
Azam, S., Li, Q.: Tailings dam failures: a review of the last one hundred years (2010). http://www.infomine.com/library/publications/docs/Azam2010.pdf
Rico, M., Benito, G., Salgueiro, A.R., Diezherrero, A., Pereira, H.G.: Reported Tailings Dam Failures: A Review of the European Incidents in the Worldwide Context. Elsevier, Amsterdam (2007)
ICOLD: Tailings dams - risk of dangerous occurrences, lessons learnt from practical experiences. Bulletin 121 (2001)
Chronology of major tailings dam failures. http://www.wise-uranium.org/mdaf.html
Reason, J.: Human error: models and management. BMJ 320, 768–770 (2000). doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7237.768
The Los Frailes tailings dam failure (Aznalcóllar, Spain), 27 February 2015. http://www.wise-uranium.org/mdaflf.html
Perneger, T.V.: The Swiss Cheese Model of safety incidents: are there holes in the metaphor? BMC Health Serv. Res. 5(71) (2005). Published online. doi:10.1186/1472-6963-5-71. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16280077
Swuste, P.: Qualitative methods for occupational risk prevention strategies in safety or control banding—safety. Saf. Sci. Monit. 11, 1–7 (2007)
Department of Community and Family Medicine: Swiss Cheese Model, Duke University Medical Center (2005). Retrieved from http://patientsafetyed.duhs.duke.edu/module_e/swiss_cheese.html
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Shahriari, M., Aydin, M.E. (2018). Lessons Learned from Analysis of Los Frailes Tailing Dam Failure. In: Arezes, P. (eds) Advances in Safety Management and Human Factors. AHFE 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 604. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60525-8_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60525-8_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60524-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60525-8
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)