With fights about new uranium mines sprouting up all over the country, we note with interest a fight about to erupt over the uranium mill tailings disposal site south of Grand Junction, Colorado.
We chose the site after much work to find an isolated, geomorphically stable place to which to relocate the uranium mill tailings then sitting in the middle of Grand Junction. Now I notice the U.S. Department of Energy is considering the site as a place to disposal of (they say “store,”) mercury—amazing amounts of it and probably radioactive.
I suspect the addition of the Grand Junction site to the list of sites being considered is mere subterfuge: there are many better sites including Hanford, Washington which is surely the most contaminated part of the USA and totally uncleanable. If ever there is a radioactive sacrifice zone, this is it.
Utah also has its UMTRA uranium mill tailings disposal site. It too is deep in the desert underlain by thick deposits of Mancos Shale. And besides the pile we designed and built, is one run by a private company. I still recall the day we handed them all our designs as part of a freedom of information request—-they simply took the designs and replicated them besides our pile.
The point is that both the UMTRA sites in Utah and Colorado (Grand Junction) are specifically selected as places where it was deemed feasible to meet the “stable for 1,000 years” criterion. But that does not necessarily mean they should then be considered suitable for every other type of waste–particularly hazardous waste. The sites should, however, be considered as examples of the minimum requirements for a new site for a new uranium mine in the Untied States.
Which ultimately takes me back to a mantra I have often repeated. In spite of being a supporter of the free market and of mining and nuclear power, I just cannot understand why the US needs to go mining small uranium deposits when Nambia and Canada have vast deposits in places where it is practical to safely dispose of the uranium mill tailings.
I suggest that the urge by every junior mining company to find and open another tiny uranium mine in a nice place in the east or west is simply another example of the abuse of the commons. And maybe in this instance both the lions and doves of the industry should call halt to what is objectively individualism run amock.
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