No quick fix to reduce tailings, ICMM roadmap shows

The London-based International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) says mining companies should be able to use emerging technologies within 15 years to drastically reduce the tailings that continue to kill and cause destruction when tailings storage structures fail.

The ICMM estimates developing new technologies such as no-waste mine architecture, in-situ-leaching and non-chemical extraction, all aiming to reduce tailings by more than two-thirds, might cost US$10 million to $100 million until they’re first used commercially. It might take four to six years to develop these methods for use at a mine site, according to a report published on Thursday.

“If we continue to use traditional production processes, we run the risk of multiplying tailings waste many times over,” ICMM chief executive officer Rohitesh Dhawan said in a press release. “Catastrophic tailings failures in recent years including at South Africa’s Jagersfontein mine just last week have brought into sharp focus the need for urgent action to produce less tailings.”

The collapse of a dam wall on Sept. 11 at a dormant diamond mine near Lesotho once run by De Beers killed one person and injured 40 others as it swept away houses and cars.

The pace of tailings management failures has actually increased, according to a report this month by World Mine Tailings Failures, a non-governmental watchdog organization based in Stonington, Maine. It is forecasting that failures will soar this decade to their worst ever level as a percentage of ore mined.  

Rising demand for electric vehicles, cell phones and renewable energy such as solar is driving the need for minerals such as lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earth metals that are producing 40% more tailings than in 2010, the ICMM report shows. Declining ore grades in some mines while others drill deeper are increasing tailings production.

At the same time, activist investors, mining community groups, environmental leaders and regular consumers are increasingly pushing for stronger environmental, social and governance reforms across industries. The explosion of social media has intensified scrutiny on non-performers, and tailings failures are highly visible, deadly and destructive.

The ICMM group, with representatives from about a third of the global mining and metals industry, outlined how miners should work with technology developers to adopt new methods in its Tailings Reduction Roadmap.

It also identified shorter-term and lower-cost opportunities for extractors to incrementally reduce tailings. These included bulk and particle sorting of ore by sensors, sorting by coarse flotation (which needs new technology to become more feasible), devising ways to monetize tailings and sharing information on tailings across industries.

Of the more expensive methods mentioned, non-chemical extraction would use “electrolysis, synthetic, biology or thermal treatments to leave behind more benign tailings, dry tailings, or no tailings,” the ICMM said. No-waste mine architecture would slash tailings by using open pit design or overcutting, and improvements in mechanical cutting would upgrade ore and remove waste at the source.

But all the methods need to be developed through partnerships among industries and technology developers, it said. The barriers include getting industry-leading chief executive officers to buy into the process and work out economic reasons to cut tailings.

“Shaping strong business cases will enable companies to identify quick wins and build value estimation, which will support the realization of the vision, and motivate partnering and funding to accelerate the implementation of more initiatives,” the ICMM said.