Syncrude Tailings Dam

The Syncrude Tailings Dam in Canada, with 540 million cubic meters of the largest dam on the planet, measured at the dam volume (but not measured at the storage volume of the accumulated water ). It is the set washed tailings of a mine, the material to settle, so not a true dam. The dam grows continuously on further, as the mine is still in operation. Nevertheless, the dam is fed into relevant lists of the largest dams at No. 1.

The dam is located in Alberta in western Canada and is the settling tank of a huge oil sands open pit, which is part of the company Syncrude Canada Ltd.. Syncrude is a word-formation from "synthetic crude oil from bitumen ." For bituminous oil sands, which occurs in the Athabasca oil sands, synthetic crude oil is produced here. For each barrel of oil produced gained about one ton of sand, and up to half a ton of additional overburden, a mixture of water, sand, silt, and bitumen, which is deposited as tailing. Every day, 250,000 tons of overburden to it; meantime, however, the oil sands will soon be exhausted.

The lake behind the dam holds " only" about 1 billion cubic meters, so it is a relatively small reservoir. His name is Syncrude 's Mildred Lake and is located north of Fort McMurray.