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> I, too, often randomly stumble on nuclear waste depots 400m deep under the surface. Such a way to waste my Sunday. When those dumps leak into your groundwate

> I, too, often randomly stumble on nuclear waste depots 400m deep under the surface. Such a way to waste my Sunday. When those dumps leak into your groundwater it does indeed ruin your day.

Manuel_D 5y ago
Not really. We test for uranium contamination of water. There's actually a lot of areas where naturally occurring uranium puts it above safe concentrations and it has to be filtered out. This is the case in much of California, the Rockies that feed into this area's water supply naturally had high uranium concentration [1]. Given that we already test and treat water she to naturally occurring uranium I'm not too concerned over waste sites. 1. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminates-water-california-central-valley https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat...
- iforgotpassword 5y ago
  So the testing will then also magically clean the water if it gets contaminated? Sure, if Flint MI is our baseline for acceptable living standards this is fine.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Yes, removing uranium from water supplies is not much different than removing other heavy metals like lead. This isn't particular hard, debacles like Flint are newsworthy because it's something most water services do successfully.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    You misunderstand what’s happening in Flint. The water coming from the water treatment plant is perfectly safe, the issue is that it is then delivered to customers in lead pipes. This means cleaning up the water doesn’t involve removing lead at the treatment plant, which is normal, but rather replacing all of the water pipes in the city, which is very very hard. In fact removing various heavy metals from water is a regular thing that water treatment plants do, including metals like uranium and chromium. The takeaway from Flint is not “we can’t remove uranium from ground water”, but rather “don’t build your water distribution network out of toxic heavy metals like lead”.

> I, too, often randomly stumble on nuclear waste depots 400m deep under the surface. Such a way to waste my Sunday. When those dumps leak into your groundwater it does indeed ruin your day.

Manuel_D 5y ago

Not really. We test for uranium contamination of water. There's actually a lot of areas where naturally occurring uranium puts it above safe concentrations and it has to be filtered out. This is the case in much of California, the Rockies that feed into this area's water supply naturally had high uranium concentration [1]. Given that we already test and treat water she to naturally occurring uranium I'm not too concerned over waste sites. 1. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminates-water-california-central-valley https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat...

iforgotpassword 5y ago
So the testing will then also magically clean the water if it gets contaminated? Sure, if Flint MI is our baseline for acceptable living standards this is fine.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Yes, removing uranium from water supplies is not much different than removing other heavy metals like lead. This isn't particular hard, debacles like Flint are newsworthy because it's something most water services do successfully.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  You misunderstand what’s happening in Flint. The water coming from the water treatment plant is perfectly safe, the issue is that it is then delivered to customers in lead pipes. This means cleaning up the water doesn’t involve removing lead at the treatment plant, which is normal, but rather replacing all of the water pipes in the city, which is very very hard. In fact removing various heavy metals from water is a regular thing that water treatment plants do, including metals like uranium and chromium. The takeaway from Flint is not “we can’t remove uranium from ground water”, but rather “don’t build your water distribution network out of toxic heavy metals like lead”.