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Resource Security

The Bingham Canyon copper mine

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 2

Overview

Recall questions on the Bingham Canyon mine as a major mineral extraction scheme, its landscape impacts, the event of 10 April 2013, its effects on groundwater, how processing waste is stored, how its ore reaches markets and why part of it is treated as a contaminated site.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

What happened at the Bingham Canyon mine on 10 April 2013?

Process

How has the Bingham Canyon mine affected groundwater?

Process

How is waste from ore processing at Bingham Canyon stored?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Name a major mineral resource extraction scheme that can be studied for its environmental impacts.

    Model answer

    Examples include the Bingham Canyon copper mine (USA), the Carajás iron ore mine (Brazil), the Pilbara iron ore operations (Australia), or the Grasberg gold and copper mine (Indonesia).

  2. 2

    What is the Bingham Canyon mine?

    Model answer

    An open-pit copper mine south-west of Salt Lake City, Utah, operated by Rio Tinto Kennecott, which is more than 4 km wide and around 1 km deep.

  3. 3

    What landscape impacts has the Bingham Canyon mine had?

    Model answer

    It has created one of the largest human-made excavations on Earth, with huge waste rock dumps across the Oquirrh Mountains.

  4. 4

    What happened at the Bingham Canyon mine on 10 April 2013?

    Model answer

    The Manefay landslide sent roughly 145 to 165 million tonnes of rock into the pit, the largest non-volcanic landslide in North American history, but monitoring allowed workers to be evacuated beforehand.

  5. 5

    How has the Bingham Canyon mine affected groundwater?

    Model answer

    Leaching of waste rock created an acidic, sulphate-rich groundwater plume that threatened drinking water for suburbs such as West Jordan, and it is now pumped out and treated.

  6. 6

    How is waste from ore processing at Bingham Canyon stored?

    Model answer

    Tailings are piped north to a large impoundment near the shore of the Great Salt Lake, where dust and seepage must be controlled.

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