> Again. The harm comes primarily from groundwater contamination, which is very hard to prevent because you are basically pumping some leaching agent into the g

> Again. The harm comes primarily from groundwater contamination, which is very hard to prevent because you are basically pumping some leaching agent into the ground, which is alreay invariably gonna affect groundwater quality. Even if that did not, you then need to dump slurry/brine byproducts from extraction somewhere (and the next river is gonna be the cheapest place). I could say that humans breath out CO2 and therefore are significant contributors to global pollution. It is not a real answer unless an order of magnitude estimate is attached. You're just noting that generic heavy metals mining pollutes; which is true but with Uranium mining it turns out pretty quickly that the harms are the most minor of any energy production method because the volumes of material are so small. I don't think the anti-nuclear crowd wants to do that because as soon as they do they're probably going to end up looking foolish. There are situations like our Kazakhstani friend in this thread bought up where the uranium production turns out to be a relatively small component of a much more significant industrial pollution picture. They don't paint a compelling picture for avoiding nuclear power though, and misleading statements like pointing out that mines leave most local material behind are what they have to fall back on. What materials cause less damage than uranium in the extraction process? IN absolute terms there aren't many. Most materials we require orders of magnitude more of the stuff than we need tonnes of uranium.