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Selection of Climate Change-Informed Design Storm Events for a Tailings Storage Facility at Red Dog Operations, Alaska, USA

Tailings and Mine Waste Conference (2023 : Vancouver, B.C.); University of British Columbia. Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering

The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM; Global Tailings Review, 2020) requires that climate change knowledge be incorporated to increase the climate resiliency of tailings facilities. At this time, guidance for incorporating climate change knowledge into the design and operation of tailings facilities and their appurtenant structures is limited. Due to the high degree of uncertainty in climate change modelling, additional guidance is needed to effectively and consistently incorporate climate changeinformed design criteria for tailings facilities. Red Dog Operations (RDO), located in the Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska, USA, has observed an increasing trend in the magnitude of precipitation in the region, as well as an increase in the frequency of extreme storm events, hypothesized to be a result of climate change. To achieve GISTM conformance, RDO has undertaken steps to evaluate the design, operation, and closure criteria of its tailings storage facility (TSF) and assess how operations may be impacted by climate change through the mining lifecycle. RDO initiated assessments of climate change-informed storm event return periods and probable maximum precipitation (PMP) in the region through the year 2100. Climate change modelling is subject to a high degree of uncertainty driven by variability in possible climate and socioeconomic outcomes. In the assessment of future storm events, climate modelling produces a wide range of plausible values for precipitation magnitudes. Selecting reasonable estimates to inform TSF design, operation, and closure requires a series of decisions based on existing internal and external guidance and organizational risk tolerance. This case study implements a framework for selection of climate changeinformed storm event values for evaluation of TSF design, operation, and closure criteria. The goal of the demonstrated framework is to reduce the risk of a precipitation-induced failure to as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) while also considering the likelihood of the storm event. The decision factors discussed in this case study include climate scenario representation, timeframe, statistical quantification metric, storm event type and duration, and estimation method.

Text

2023-12-08

Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86846

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/