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What's the uranium concentration of the waste though? If it's higher than the .1% natural concentration they're mining wouldn't they mine their waste piles? I
by potato3732842 2y ago
What's the uranium concentration of the waste though? If it's higher than the .1% natural concentration they're mining wouldn't they mine their waste piles? I'm failing to see how the waste has more uranium in it than the land did to begin with unless it was a case of the surface land people deal with being free of it.
- myrmidon 2y ago> If it's higher than the .1% natural concentration they're mining wouldn't they mine their waste piles? Your mental picture of the process is a bit off: Uranium mining happens mostly by pumping a leaching agent (typically some acid) into the ground, and extracting it elsewhere via wells. This is very obviously not helpful for groundwater quality. And you are not extracting just Uranium (or even other "desirable" heavy metals)-- most of the radioactivity (>80%) is in economically uninteresting decay products, and you just want/need to get rid of those.