Knowledge of the probable origin and behaviour of arsenic certainly gives valuable insights into the potential for transfer in the environment and of the risks involved in mining sites. Sequential extraction analyses are common experiments often used to study the origin and behaviour of potentially toxic elements. The method, however, presents some deficiencies, including labor-intensive proced...

Measuring or predicting the distribution of oxygen concentration in waste rock underneath a soil cover is an important aspect of cover performance evaluation. The oxygen decay coefficient is a key parameter in the prediction. In the present study, a method calculating oxygen decay coefficient from oxygen consumption rate is developed. The decrease in oxygen concentration over time measured abov...

This study investigates the feasibility of using coal fly ash and fly ash-bentonite mixtures as a barrier material for mine waste. The hydraulic conductivity of the coal fly ash was measured to be in the order of 2 x 10 -9 m/s when it was permeated with deionized water, and this value decreased significantly when the permeant was switched to acid mine drainage (AMD). Addition of bentonite to co...

Fuzzy logic was applied to model acid mine drainage (AMD) and to obtain a classification index of the environmental impact in a contaminated riverine system. The data set used to develop this fuzzy model (a fuzzy classifier) concerns to an abandoned mine in Northern Portugal – Valdarcas mining site. Here, distinctive drainage environments (spatial patterns) can be observed based on the acid min...

In this work a measurement of the muon intensity at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, NM, USA is presented. WIPP is a salt mine with a depth of 655 m. The vertical muon flux was measured with a two panels scintillator coincidence setup to Φvert = (3.10 +0.05 −0.07) 10 −7 s−1cm−2sr−1.

A case study of cerussite-dominated mine tailings (5-7 wt% Pb) from the former lead-zinc Grogwynion Mine, Mid Wales (UK), is presented with the objective of providing an improved understanding of the chemical speciation that controls element release from the waste in the short and long term. An experimental and modelling approach was used to examine the effects of pH changes in fresh waters int...

To evaluate the environmental impacts from large scale mercury mining (LSMM) and artisanal mercury mining (AMM), total mercury (THg) and methyl mercury (MeHg) were determined in mine waste, ambient air, stream water and soil samples collected from Wuchuan mercury (Hg) mining area, Guizhou, Southwestern China. Mine wastes from both LSMM and AMM contained high THg concentrations, which are import...

The main points of interest of this paper are several uranium mines in Western Saxony which have been flooded or are in a flooded state. Particularly significant are the large Schlema-Alberoda uranium mine in the vicinity of the city of Aue, and the small Pöhla mine on the border with the Czech Republic. Both mines are in the final stage of remediation by WISMUT GmbH. Uranium is the only main p...

The geologic characteristics (ore mineralogy, geochemistry, host rock lithology, etc.) that economic geologists use to classify mineral deposits are key to understanding their environmental signatures. Mineralogic characterization and chemical analysis are among the many scientific tools that can be applied to mining-environmental prediction, mitigation, and remediation (Plumlee and Logsdon, 19...

Access to a granitic rock mass in an iron ore mine in Sweden provided a unique opportunity for underground experiments related to the geologic disposal of radioactive waste. These field tests demonstrated the importance of hydrogeology and the difficulties in predicting the thermomechanical behavior of fractured granitic rocks. To characterize a site fully, measurements made from the surface mu...