The second letter contains particularly fanciful rhetoric - a clear case of radiophobia ? ....the author is apparently entirely clueless about her own natural radioactivity.
Jaro
Hidden dangers of uranium mining.
20 August 2002
Adelaide Advertiser
THE Canadian company Southern Cross Resources gives the impression that only water is being used to extract uranium at the Honeymoon uranium mine and that spills at the mine have no environmental or radiation impact (The Advertiser, yesterday).
The uranium occurs in a porous underground water-bearing layer (aquifer). If only water was being pumped through the aquifer, there would be no problem. However, Southern Cross Resources is pumping a corrosive acid solution into the aquifer, with the aim of leaching out the solid uranium.
This solution also leaches out a host of toxic and radioactive minerals, which are then brought to the surface.
To describe this solution as water is highly misleading.
Any spills of this solution are hazardous to health and the environment.
The radioactive materials contained within the solution emit ionising radiation and hence increase the exposure to ionising radiation of anyone in the area.
This exposure will continue long after Southern Cross Resources has left the site.
(Dr) DENNIS MATTHEWS, Blackwood.
AS reports of safety problems at Honeymoon uranium mine appear and the nuclear waste proposal rears its ugly head again, I wonder how many citizens realise the potential danger of the nuclear industry.
We pollute our planet daily with sulphides, carbons and toxins too numerous to name.
But the difference with releasing radioactive ions into our atmosphere is the fact they are virtually permanent.
There is no clean-up within any person's lifetime.
The ions will continue to circulate within the environment, causing damage to all organic matter they encounter. I plead with the broader community to reject the rhetoric designed to persuade us into believing nuclear energy can reduce the carbon cycle. Carbon is the lesser of two evils.
In fact, by comparison it is a cockroach versus a dinosaur.
RUTH O'NEILL, Elizabeth.
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