Integrated model to simulate the transport and fate of mine tailings in deep waters

Environmental regulatory agencies allow disposal of mine tailings into deep marine environments as one way of managing mine effluents. Mining companies are required to demonstrate that these Submarine Tailings Discharge (STD) systems will affect neither the quality of receiving water nor the ocean bed biota during the life-of-mine operations. A Generalized Integrated Transport and Fate model (GITF) has been developed to estimate the distribution of tailings in the near- and far-fields based on design parameters for the submarine pipeline. GITF was applied to a proposed STD serving an Alaskan gold mine. Plume dimensions were obtained from the near-field module of GITF and tailings thickness distributions were obtained from the far-field module of GITF. Sensitivity studies showed which parameters most affected the distribution of tailings; further simulations with these parameters were used to bound the results. The 3-D data visualization tool Qual View was used to display water column suspended sediment concentrations as well as sediment footprint location and thickness.