Brumadinho incident

Published on by in Technology

Dear fiends and colleagues,

Can anyone give some technical information about this recent incident? How it happened? how to avoid such disasters in the future?

(ADDED by WATER RESEARCH: WIKIPEDIA LINK TO BACKGROUND ABOUT THE INCIDENT AND LINKS TO ARTICLES ABOUT IT AND OTHER DAM DISASTERS ON THE WATER NETWORK:

 

 

Taxonomy

3 Answers

  1. Not a single event but a series of events lead to disaster. there may be serious issues but since it was constructed in 1976 and still exist even serious flooding occurs before and not collapse in that. in my opinion Maintenance is too much mandatory for such mega Structures.  and may be that the major cause

  2. Mining dam disasters seemingly continue to happen even after decades of worldwide incidents. Here is one that my company helped remediate. Obed Mine, Alberta Canada. In my experience the use of previously mined pits as containment areas for tailings has serious flaws. With many jurisdictions now outlawing the practice. Having to engineer a proper storage facility reduces the risk greatly but is an expensive undertaking and even then failure is possible. The tailings problem can be eliminated but requires costly treatment to separate water from solids. If you remove water from the tailings the problem of dam failure is removed. No water = No dam. The use of polymers in conjunction with a mechanical means of separation is currently the industry best practice. In my opinion miners around the globe need to start including the separation and treatment of tailings water before storage as a part of the mines capital and operational costs. This does not solve the tailings problem as you are left with soilds that have highly concentrated heavy metals and other toxic contaminants but it does remove catastrophic failure from the equation. 

  3. 1. when rebuilding the dam make it stronger. It should be strong enough when a flood does happen it will spill over the top.

    2.Upstream of dam build multiple flood control ponds. keep adding until floods are under control.

    3.For a long term solution plant hard wood trees on banks  Specifically those that grow 400 to 1,000 years. 100 ft. to 300 ft. tall. An average tree will drink up to 300 gl. per day.