Quantified comparisons of disposal of thickened and unthickened tailings

Tailings disposal methods come and go, and thickened tailings disposal is currently fashionable again after a 20 year lapse of interest. It has always concerned the writer that claims made of “new and better” technologies are often unsubstantiated except anecdotally and qualitatively. Regrettably, the current promoters of thickened tailings disposal are also guilty of this, and some of the claims for the advantages of thickened tailings disposal verge on the ludicrous. The paper examines some of the more rational claims by quantitatively comparing the behaviour of unthickened and thickened tailings, once placed in a tailings deposit. The writer has no stake in one method of deposition or the other, but attempts to compare the results of the two methods of deposition even-handedly and quantitatively.