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1. Tailings
Waste
Even the highest grade deposits contain less than 1% uranium.
So huge amounts of ore have to be processed to get useful quantities
of the uranium. The leftover 'waste' rock is called tailings.
In the course of processing it is crushed to a fine powder, which
is almost as radioactive as the uranium itself. It is hazardous
for more than 250,000 years, which might as well be forever. These
tailings need to be isolated from the environment to prevent a
cancer epidemic, and there are already more than 50 million tonnes
of uranium tailings on Australian soil.
2. Radon Gas
As uranium emits radiation, it transforms itself into a new element,
which in turn emits radiation and decays, and so on through 14
steps until it eventually - after hundreds of thousands of years
- becomes a stable form of non-radioactive lead. One of the elements
along the way is radon, a radioactive gas which can travel for
hundreds of kilometres before decaying. Mine workers and others
who breathe in this gas risk developing lung cancer and other
forms of lung disease.
3. Environmental
Contamination
Uranium mining contaminates the air, water and earth with radioactive
chemicals and heavy metals which can never be properly cleaned
up. In addition to the radiation hazard, mining is also associated
with poisonous process chemicals, heavy metals and the use of
huge quantities of water. In the short term, uranium mine sites
wreck the ecology of the local region; in the long term, they
pose a risk to a much broader area.
4. Health
risks
The health risks of uranium mining are by now quite well known,
although still aggressively disputed by the mining industry. Collectively,
uranium miners suffer the highest radiation doses of all workers
in the nuclear fuel chain (apart from accident cleanup crews).
The main problems are inhalation of dust and radon gas, which
leave alpha radiation emitters lodged in the body where they can
do most harm. As the contamination from the mines spread away
from the minesite, local people are also exposed to contamination.
While uranium mining is most commonly associated with cancer,
low level radiation is also implicated in birth defects, high
infant mortality and chronic lung, eye, skin and reproductive
illnesses.
5. Nuclear
Waste
There is a massive amount of high level nuclear waste still being
spewed out by reactors around the world and there is nowhere safe
to put it. Pangea Resources actually has a plan to bring a lot
of this waste into Australia. Nuclear power stations create this
waste as part of normal operations; but there are also risks of
reactor accidents; the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 killed many
people, spread nuclear pollution right around the planet and forced
the permanent evacuation of the surrounding area.
6. Nuclear
Weapons
While the mining companies do not like to admit it, nuclear power
is a military technology designed to produce plutonium for nuclear
weapons. Thousands of these weapons are still on hairtrigger alert
ten more than ten years after the Cold War, and they are spreading
slowly to new countries. What do we need to do to stop this toxic
trade? Read on…
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