Penstock failures on gold tailings dams in South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-100
Author(s):  
Evon M. Wagener ◽  
S.W. Jacobsz
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Tailings Dams ◽  
Gold Tailings

scholarly journals Assessment of Radon Concentration and Impact on Human Health in a Region Dominated by Abandoned Gold Mine Tailings Dams: A Case from the West Rand Region, South Africa

Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshupya ◽  
Abiye ◽  
Mouri ◽  
Levin ◽  
Strauss ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Mine Tailings ◽  
Radon Concentration ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Indoor Environments ◽  
The West ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
Radon Gas ◽  
Tailings Dams

Radon gas has long been identified as a human carcinogen. The purpose of this study was to understand the occurrence of radon gas in the West Rand region, located west of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, and to investigate its potential health effects. In this study, the sampling of rocks, tailings, and construction materials was carried out for geochemical analyses. For characterisation of radon, 60 radon monitors (RGMs) were installed in indoor and outdoor environments. The results showed that mine tailings contain high uranium levels, with a maximum of 149.76 ppm and a mean value of 48.87 ppm. The radon levels in the area ranged between 32 Bq/m3 and 1069 Bq/m3 and thus, exceed the typical outdoor radon levels of about 10 Bq/m3. Significantly high values were obtained from gold tailings dams. In indoor environments, radon concentration ranged up to a maximum of 174 Bq/m3, which is above the recommended value of 100 Bq/m3. The effective doses calculated from the obtained radon levels showed a maximum of 16 mSv/y, which is above the recommended value of 1 mSv/y proposed for public exposure. The estimated doses have an enormous potential to pose high lung cancer risks to the populations residing nearby tailings.

Defining an appropriate steady state line for Merriespruit gold tailings

2001 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
A B Fourie ◽  
G Papageorgiou
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Steady State ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Tailings Dam ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Failure Investigation ◽  
Static Liquefaction ◽  
Flow Failure ◽  
Undrained Loading ◽  
Gold Tailings

Failure of the Merriespruit gold tailings dam in 1994 in South Africa was unusual in that never before had a gold tailings dam in South Africa failed in such a catastrophic fashion. Conventional thinking was that gold tailings would always exhibit dilative characteristics upon loading, primarily because of the method of deposition which allows significant consolidation to occur due to sun-drying. This paper demonstrates that the concept of a steady state line, which separates dilative from contractive behaviour upon undrained loading, is applicable to Merriespruit tailings. Four particle-size distributions of Merriespruit tailings were tested to determine the influence of the percent finer than 75 µm on the position of the steady state line. The tailings with the greater percentage of fines gave a steady state line that plotted above all the others, which translated to the requirement that a greater relative density was necessary to produce noncontractive behaviour than for the low-fines tailings samples. The difficulty of defining a unique steady state line for a particular tailings, due to errors in measurement of initial sizes, is illustrated and it is recommended that error bands be assigned to any steady state line. In a companion paper, evidence from the post-failure investigation is combined with the test results in this paper to explore the likelihood of static liquefaction as the cause of the Merriespruit flow failure.Key words: static liquefaction, tailings, steady state, flow failure.

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