{"id":33462,"date":"2020-03-31T06:42:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T06:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=33462"},"modified":"2020-03-31T06:42:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T06:42:14","slug":"luming-mine-tailings-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2020\/03\/31\/luming-mine-tailings-accident\/","title":{"rendered":"The Luming Mine tailings accident in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Luming Mine tailings accident in China<\/h4>\n

Unfortunately another significant tailings accident<\/a> occurred on 28 March 2020, this time at the Luming Mine<\/a> in Heilongjiang Province in NE China (location: 47.361, 128.559)<\/span>.\u00a0 The release was reported on Xinhua News<\/a> – which is in itself interesting because there is a perception that previous tailings accidents might have been covered up.\u00a0 The report indicates that it was an unintended tailings release rather than a complete tailings dam failure.<\/p>\n

Planet Labs<\/a> have captured decent imagery of the event.\u00a0 Below is an image collected on 25 March 2020, prior to the accident.\u00a0 The image shows the two tailings dams and the tailings store behind:-<\/p>\n

\"Before

A satellite image of the site of the Luming mine tailings release. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission. Image collected 25 March 2020.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The second image below shows the aftermath of the tailings release. This image, collected by Planet Labs<\/a> on 29 March 2020, shows the result of the release of tailings at Luming Mine. The release appears to have originated from the northern abutment of the southern tailings dam.\u00a0 There is a significant volume of waste located in the channel below the facilities.<\/p>\n

\"After

A satellite image of the aftermath of the Luming mine tailings release. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission. Image collected 29 March 2020.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The tailings dam itself appears to be intact, but there is a marked change in the texture of the tailings that are retained (which is not the case behind the other dam), presumably resulting from the rapid dewatering that has occurred as a result of the leakage.\u00a0 I have no information as to whether the integrity of the structure is compromised or whether the leak continues.<\/p>\n

Luming Mine is operated by the China Railway Group.\u00a0 It started trial production in 2014, and has the potential to extract up to 45,000 tonnes of molybdenum ore per day.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2019). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A significant tailings accident occurred on 28 March 2020, this time at the Luming Mine in Heilongjiang Province in NE China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":33467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27393,6298],"tags":[16,881,469,299,205,1205,25,230],"class_list":["post-33462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mining","category-tailings","tag-china","tag-east-asia","tag-featured","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-planet-labs","tag-satellite","tag-tailings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}