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- Title
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF TECHNOGENIC DEPOSITS.
- Authors
Tasev, Goran; Serafimovski, Dalibor
- Abstract
The paper presents the results of research on several characteristic mine tailings in the World and in our country (Republic North Macedonia), in terms of their negative impact on the human environment, but also in terms of their eventual positive impact due to their industrial use and extraction of Rare Earth Elements, rare metals etc. Three characteristic mine tailings were treated in this paper that have clearly defined negative environmental impacts, some of which have catastrophic consequences. The first of them was the tailing dam in Baia Mare, Romania where tailings material from the gold mine had been deposited. During the tailing dam failure in 2000, up to 100 000 cubic meters of liquid and suspended waste containing about 50 to 100 tons of cyanide, as well as copper and other heavy metals went into the nearby stream and later into the Tisza and Dunav rivers. Much of the wildlife in the rivers in Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia was extinct, and in particular 1240 tonnes of dead fish were found in Hungary. The second accident we studied was the Sasa tailing dam failure in 2003. During the accident from the Sasa tailing dam into the near Kamenicka river outflow 100 000 m3 of material. Human casualties were not recorded during this accident, but all the wildlife in the Kamenica River was extinct and large material damages were reported, too. The big catastrophic dam failure occurred in 2019 at the Vale's Brumadinho mine in Brasil when over 12 million cubic meters of tailings material overflow after the tailing dam collapsed and 270 people died. The positive impacts are seen in the examples of the studied lead-zinc deposit Toranica with approximately 3 Mt material and interesting contents of lead, zinc and especially indium, germanium, gallium, and in the As-Sb Lojane deposit containing over 1 Mt with 2% As and Sb withi 3Mt of tailing dam.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTAL impact analysis; DAM failures; GERMANIUM; ZINC; MINERAL industries
- Publication
Knowledge: International Journal, 2020, Vol 38, Issue 3, p567
- ISSN
2545-4439
- Publication type
Article