101 historically been designed using prescriptive approaches focused on static factors of safety and on the performance of embankments progressively constructed from materials with highly variable strength properties. While these approaches have enabled large-scale mining development, they have also resulted in systems that are highly dependent on active controls, permanent maintenance, and flawless operational performance over decades or even centuries (Vick, 1990). Recent tailings facility failures have shown that risk is not solely associated with operational errors or isolated extreme events, but is fundamentally linked to the intrinsic configuration of the system: large volumes of saturated tailings and water retained at elevation behind engineered structures whose failure releases substantial amounts of stored potential energy (Fourie & Blight, 2015). In response, the mining industry has strengthened regulatory frameworks and adopted global standards such as the GISTM. However, there is growing consensus that meaningful improvements in tailings safety require moving beyond incremental enhancements to traditional designs and toward solutions that reduce risk at its source, through design decisions that minimize both the probability and, critically, the consequences of failure (World Bank, 2020). 2. INDUSTRY CHALLENGE AND SYSTEM-LEVEL OPPORTUNITY The central challenge of modern tailings management is not merely to design stronger containment structures, but to rethink the storage paradigm from a system-level perspective. From this viewpoint, the primary limitation of conventional surface TSFs lies in the concentration of risk: large stored volumes, high potential energy, and catastrophic consequences in the event of failure. The use of exhausted open pits as tailings storage facilities offers a unique opportunity to address this challenge in a structural manner. Open pits represent deep excavations bounded by rock masses whose geometry, structure, and mechanical behavior have been extensively exposed, mapped, and characterized throughout mining operations. Leveraging this existing infrastructure for tailings storage allows for: • Elimination of elevated embankment dams • Significant reduction in stored potential energy • Shifting system control toward hydraulic and geomechanical management From a system-level perspective, In-Pit TSFs should not be viewed as an isolated alternative, but as an integrated tailings management strategy capable of transforming a mining liability (the exhausted pit) into a functional asset within the mine closure framework (ICOLD, 2019). 3. OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE 3.1 General Objective To evaluate, from an engineering and risk management perspective, the use of exhausted open pits as In-Pit Tailings Storage Facilities, demonstrating their capacity to structurally reduce risk and improve tailings management performance in open-pit
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