Tailings closure has lacked a single authoritative reference. The SME Tailings Closure Handbook answers that gap: fourteen chapters by leading practitioners and researchers spanning landform design, surface water, hydrogeology, geotechnics, geochemistry, covers, ecology, economics, social, and governance. Synthesis across the disciplines produced more than the chapters alone: an integrating closure framework in which closure is a condition sustained across the facility life-cycle rather than a terminal event. Within the framework, an unbroken chain runs from closure vision through principles and objectives to verifiable success criteria; multiple accounts analysis governs transparent option selection; and the Closure Design Basis Report carries commitments across decades, generations, and phase transitions to relinquishment. The framework converts a familiar aspiration into a working method, allowing designers of new facilities to truly begin with the end in mind.

Underground construction and tunneling crews work in some of the most isolated, physically demanding conditions in the industry, and they carry a hazard that never makes it onto a job hazard analysis: the things crews will not say out loud. Substance use, mental health struggles, and suicide risk stay hidden because the culture says mind your own business, and hidden hazards get people hurt. This session makes the case for Workplace Peer Programs as safety infrastructure, not an HR add-on, and shows how a peer support model built and tested inside a heavy construction union, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 478, can translate to underground construction and tunneling crews. Co-presented by a 25-year union peer support veteran and a Recovery Friendly Workplace consultant who is a person in long-term recovery, the session is plain-language and grounded in real crew experience, not clinical theory. Attendees will learn how to recognize the warning signs, how to open a hard conversation without making it worse, and how to start a peer program small and build the case for it over time. No pitch, no product, just real tools crews and leadership can use starting the next shift.

To evaluate the seismic response of high-profile tailings storage facilities (TSFs), advanced nonlinear deformation analyses (NDAs) are often performed using effective stress constitutive models capable of simulating cyclic pore pressure generation and deformation. In this study, fully coupled 2D NDAs were conducted in FLAC using the PM4Sand and PM4Silt critical state compatible, bounding surface plasticity models to simulate the seismic response of a well-documented 160-ft-high TSF subjected to a Mw 5.7 earthquake, with recorded peak ground accelerations (PGA) up to approximately 0.25 g on the facility. The analyses evaluated the coupled dynamic response of the embankment and tailings, including time histories estimated at depth, deformation patterns, and excess pore water pressure generation.