"Failing forward" to secure oil sands tailings impoundments against catastrophic failures

尾矿是采矿产生的岩石研磨或土壤处理的副产品，物理上类似于湿泥，并且产量巨大-例如，阿尔伯塔北部的一些尾矿沉积物可以很容易地用肉眼从国际空间站中区分出来，而含有尾矿的水坝是世界上最大的土质结构之一。不幸的是，尾矿库有溃坝的记录，而且，由于尾矿库的湿性和弱性，这些溃坝导致了大的水流滑坡，通常长达10公里，具有毁灭性的影响。最近一次臭名昭著的失败发生在巴西的布鲁马迪诺，2019年造成300人死亡。加拿大最近最著名的失败是2014年不列颠哥伦比亚省的波利山大坝决口，幸运的是没有造成人员死亡，但尾矿确实流入了一个对鲑鱼渔业很重要的大型淡水湖。该项目的目标是制定工程师可以用来判断尾矿“流动性”的标准。换句话说，一旦出现漏洞，造成长时间灾难性影响的可能性有多大？该项目将通过各种规模的物理实验诱导尾矿库的破坏来实现这一目标，最大的是使用一个6米长4米高4米高的现有试验设施。实验将主要在卡尔顿大学和阿尔伯塔大学进行，并由滑铁卢大学和英属哥伦比亚大学提供关键专业知识的合作者协助。这项研究将由一个工业咨询委员会指导，该委员会由积极致力于回收油砂尾矿矿床的工程师组成。

Tailings are the byproduct of grinding of rock or processing of soil generated by mining, physically resembling a wet mud, and produced in enormous quantities - for example, some of the tailings deposits in northern Alberta can be easily distinguished by the naked eye from the International Space Station, and the dams containing the tailings are among the largest earth structures in the world. Tailings deposits, unfortunately, have a record of dam failure, and, due to the wet and weak nature of the tailings, these dam failures has resulted in large flow slides, often travelling for 10's of kilometres, with devastating effect. One of the most recent notorious failures was in Brumadhino, Brazil, which killed 300 people in 2019. Canada's most well know recent Failure in the Mount Polley dam breach in 2014 in British Columbia, which fortunately did not incur human fatalities, but the tailings did flow into a large freshwater lake, important to the salmon fishery. The goal of this project is to develop criteria that engineers can use to judge the "flowability" of tailings. In other words, in the event of a breach, what is the likelihood of a long runout with catastrophic impacts? The project will reach this goal through physical experiments inducing failure of tailings deposits, at a variety of scales, the largest using a 6 m long 4m high 4 m tall existing test facility. Experiments will be conducted primarily at Carleton University and the University of Alberta, assisted by collaborators with key expertise from the University of Waterloo and the University of British Colombia. The research will be guided by an industry advisory committee, comprised of engineers who are actively working on reclaiming the oil sands tailings deposits.