The following just in from Venmyn Deloitte on reworking of old South African slimes dams or tailings facilities to use the more modern term. All the old slimes dams around the area I grew up are gone. The biggest loss is that big pile of yellow sand down which we would slide on corrugated cardboard boxes. The pile was so full of uranium and gold that it was one of the first to go. I hate to think what our radioactive exposure was as kids. I can report no ill after-effects either from the radioactivity or from the mercury my father brought home for us to play with on the bedroom floor. And we knew not what a seatbelt was in those heady days of vast exposure to danger. (more…)
