Iron ore price, page-23114

Go ahead @Goldtrick- just remember what you wrote about Valea year ago , almost to the day:

"vale need a lot of capex for switching their production to dry process and eliminate tailings dams".@Goldtrick

The situation hasn't changed. Vale is still the only large miner in the world that operates the dangerous upstream mine type. Here is a great article:

https://graphics.reuters.com/VALE-DISASTER/0100B29R1CC/index.html

The the beginning of the article::

Faced with public outrage after its second mining dam collapse in four years killed at least 240 people in Brazil, Vale SA misrepresented what it had done to shut down its riskiest dams, a review of the company’s statements shows.MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL

Vale misled public on dangerous dams, prompting Brazil probe

Fabio Schvartsman, Vale’s then-chief executive, said at a nationally broadcast news conference days after the dam burst in late January that the company had already decommissioned nine “upstream dams” in the wake of a 2015 disaster involving the same type of structure, and planned to dismantle 10 more over the next few years. The company repeated the claim in a statement on its website.

Reuters asked Vale for details on these moves on February 5, seven days after Schvartsman’s news conference.

In March, some five weeks later, Vale gave Reuters a list of nine dams that it said it had closed since 2014, a year before the Mariana disaster. Five were smaller structures, called dikes, which Vale said should be considered “upstream dams,” while four others were listed as single-step dams, which experts consider less dangerous.

But Eduardo Leão, a director of the Brazilian mining regulator ANM, and another expert who reviewed the list for Reuters, said that they were all in fact smaller structures and not the dangerous upstream type.


Mouth of the Doce River , after the Mariana dam disaster 2015 cf Vale and upstream dams

"Considered the cheapest method, upstream dams are also the most troublesome. They are extremely vulnerable to liquefaction when the tailings behind the dam are saturated with water. The liquid mixture erodes the structure of the dam and increases the potential for a rupture. This issue was behind the disasters at Brumadinho and Mariana."