Re: AW: AW: [Fwd: [Know_Nukes] (NYT) Navajo Miners Battle a Deadly Legacy of Yell...

[Brian Rees <brees@LANL.GOV>]

I really hate to point out mistakes by people I respect, BUT: yellowcake

(U3O8) was produced in a number of facilities near Grants NM, and near

Navajo lands in NM and the four-corners area (UT, AZ, NN, CO).  Most

of the ore is left after extracting the U3O8 (hence: tailings). 



At least one company continued "operations" rather than undergo

the expense of reclamation. (In my opinion) So there was recently still

an operating mill in NM.  


Tailings sands blew like crazy from tailings piles, the wind in NM in the

spring is incredible.  Some owners took better care than others, I

have seen visible sands blow miles up and downwind from some

facilities.  That said, the radiological hazard from this is minimal

at most.  Thousands of tons of H2SO4 were used PER DAY in mill

circuits, it stinks downwind.  Tailings sands are white, not

yellow.  H2SO4 residues from evaporation ponds are yellow, green,

and a variety of other colors, and are very fine.  


The Moab tailings pile is visible from the road into canyonlands NP,

after entering the park, although I believe it's outside the park

boundaries. It's on the north end of town, very close to the river (100's

of meters). 


Brian Rees



At 10:48 PM 5/20/2003 +0200, Franz Schoenhofer wrote:

 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: RuthWeiner@aol.com [mailto:RuthWeiner@aol.com]

Gesendet: Dienstag, 20. Mai 2003 04:56

An: franz.schoenhofer@chello.at; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Betreff: Re: AW: [Fwd: [Know_Nukes] (NYT) Navajo Miners Battle a Deadly Legacy of Yell...

Very  good information about everything concerning uranium can be found at http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium. It is part of an obviously antinuclear site, but they have an excellent collection of legislation, news, facts and bring a lot of topics which seem to me very reasonable. Anyway it is of a refreshing clearness of language and anybody will enjoy it, when checking before the sites of Greenpeace and similar groups. It is very late in Austria, so I have not checked the topics raised on Radsafe concerning uranium mining.

Several points:

Solution mining is now done instead of "hard rock" mining, but mining is still done.

You are quite right about yellowcake.  It is produced from uranium ore at Portsmouth, OH (and maybe at Oak ridge) but not anywhere near the Navajo reservation.

Moab actually sits very near Indian lands.

It is the Ute tribe, so it is not Navajo land.

 

  It is sort of in the middle of Canyonlands Nationalo Park.

I respectfully disagree. Canyonlands National Park is close to Moab, as is Arches National Park. The southeastern part of Utah, between the borders to Arizona and Colorado, Lake Powell, the Green river and road # 70 (it might be an interstate) is called Utah's Canyonlands. 

Best regards

Franz

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