Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob_D  Total uranium mining is only about 50,000 tonnes per year which is pretty small scale compared to other mineral extraction. World copper extraction is 15,000,000 tonne. Iron is over a Billion tonnes. The environmental impact of uranium mining isn't significant compared to other mining activities. |
That's a non squitur argument at best. Both nuclear and wind power require iron for construction but only nuclear involves use of a fuel that is derived from inherently toxic extraction and processing operations. To compare iron and uranium mining and to conclude uranium mining isn't an issue because it's small, is akin to comparing citiric and nitric acids and concluding that the latter is no a problem if your get in on your lips so long as it is a small quantity compared to the amount of fruit juice you have drunk some time previously.
Uranium mining produces wastes that require very careful managment to ensure security from environmental leakage for 10s, even 100s of thousands of years. The hazards involved derive not only from uranium but from radon, thorium and polonium. It maybe that in developed countries (currently Australia and Canada) that the 'errors' made prior to 1980 will be avoided, but the evidence in other parts of the world is that political instability, poverty and unnaccountable private corporations, mean that the necessary level of sophisticated environmental controls will not be put in place. We know from the US experience just how difficult cleaning up after inadequate environmental control is - and that was in an environment that was amenable to restoration work. Translate those problems to tropical environments with little infrastructure away from the mine sites and the result will be millenial catastrophies.
IEER Factsheet | Uranium Ignorance and Uranium Don't Mix Ecology Today: Ecology News, Information and Commentary
CM