Lessons learned |
Shedding new light on Brumadinho
Five years after the catastrophic failure of the Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil, a team of
researchers from science and technology university ETH Zurich have uncovered the physical mechanism that may have triggered the incident
and increased incidents of such tailings dam incidents, it’s important to understand the dominant triggering factors behind failed structures so as to effectively avoid recurrence in the same region. Of particular concern, the team notes, is the fact that the failure at Brumadinho occurred without any notification, the dam hadn’t receiving any tailings since 2016, was equipped with state-of-the-art monitoring instrumentation, while geotechnical reports prior to the failure indicated the dam was safe.
Above: A research team from the engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university, ETH Zurich, has shed new light on the catastrophic failure of the Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil
ON 25 JANUARY 2019, a tailings dam at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Brumadinho, Brazil, failed suddenly without warning. Two hundred and seventy people were killed as 9.7Mm3
of stored tailings
were released, with mudflow running through the Paraopeba River, demolishing infrastructure, and seriously affecting the regional ecosystem. This disaster occurred just three years after the failure of the Fundão dam in the same state, and both dams were owned by mining company Vale. As the team from ETH Zurich explains in their
research published in Communications Earth and Environment, with the rapid growth of mining activities
Built in 1976, the tailings pond at Brumadinho was impounded by Feijão dam and, as is customary in ore mining, was raised by a few metres at a time over the years to create additional space for the storage of processing residues. When the structure failed in January 2019, three years after it had last been in use, the dam was 86m high. An expert panel appointed by Vale after the disaster suggested the failure was associated with internal creep and the loss of suction induced by heavy rainfall at the end of 2018, but in contrast, the report of the Federal Police of Brazil concluded the disaster was triggered by vertical perforations in a weak point of the dam structure. Despite considerable investigations, the cause of the failure remains debated, mainly due to its delayed nature. And such uncertainty is worrying, warns Professor Alexander Puzrin who led the study team from ETH Zurich, as it could impede avoiding similar tragedies in the future. In their research, Puzrin and his colleagues
Right: Tailings dam disasters devastate lives and properties. A distraught resident from the Bento Rodrigues district in Brazil stands outside his destroyed home after the Fundão tailings dam failure in 2016. This mining facility was also owned by Vale © Gustavo Basso / Shutterstock. com
16 | April 2024 |
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