“As for the tailings, the control at the uranium mines in Aus means that less toxic waste gets into the environment that (sic) at any other mine.”

[Deleted for abuse]

BHP Billiton is planning the reopening of the Yeelirrie (‘place of death’) U mine in WA. BHP’s predecessor (WMC) in keeping with the culture which prevails in the mining industry, had scant regard for human or environmental protection when it abandoned Yeelirrie.

Radioactive material had been sitting in open-air stockpiles at the Yeelirrie deposit for more than a decade leading to an embarrassing public admission from WMC in 1997.

Eventually a cleanup of the contaminated site was undertaken (and not completed until 2002 from memory) which involved fencing the areas of the worst radiation and posting danger signs on the fences.

The 'cleanup' consisted of pushing the ore into piles for later recovery. For six years, the radioactive rock was blowing in the breeze, washing into the water supply and gradually cycling into the local environment. Beta and Gamma radiation emissions from these piles were as high as 56 times the normal background rate.

Aboriginal tribes people living near Leonora were quoted as saying:

"We been fighting for Yeelirrie. The sacred ground is each side of Yeelirie. 'Yeelirrie' is white man's way of saying. Right way is 'Youlirrie'. Youlirrie means 'death', Wongi (Aboriginal) way. Anything been shifted from there means death. People been finished from there, early days, all dead, but white fella can't see it.”

Then there’s the documented evidence on the shoddy operations at the Olympic Dam Project raised by the Environment, Resources and Development Committee of the South Australian Parliament in its Nineteenth report of 10 April 1996. Need I continue Shadow Minister………?

QandA and GrahamY

Radioactives are hottest when concentrated and the neutrons produce a chain reaction.

Earth's core is molten and moving. We cannot assume radioactives are concentrated enough to contribute more heat than they do in granite.

Earth's core is *insulated* by a layer of less dense oxides which are solid and therefore not convecting. This further blanketed and bufferred by an atmosphere which *is* convecting and conducting, but at a rate that is closer to vacuum.

Geothermal is arguably fossil heat from the formation of the earth. At thin spots it leaks anyway, so we may as well use it.

The strongest argument within the next twenty years for renewables is energy security. Don't be caught lagging.

Rusty

[Deleted and poster suspended for a day.]

Meanwhile, I would point out that if the nuclear industry believes they can continue bludging off the environment, they’re delusional.

Never has this industry paid the full costs to meet radiological and environmental standards, the full costs for cleaning up their diabolical mess; fully insured waste disposal charges; fully insured decommissioning costs or the deliberate and wilful or accidental dumping of radioactive substances into soil, groundwater, air, rivers and oceans.

Over the course of nuclear history, several Soviet and Russian nuclear submarines have sunk, including during 1970, 1986, 1989, and 2000. These accidents carried seven nuclear reactors and some 38 nuclear warheads to the ocean floor. In 1968, reactor coolant on a Soviet submarine froze, causing significant damage to the nuclear reactor. Many crewmen were severely irradiated. It is believed that all or parts of the reactor were dumped directly into the Arctic Ocean in the early 1970s. The extent of the environmental damage is unknown.

In 1985, during refuelling, the reactor on a Soviet submarine exploded and burned in Chazma Bay, some 35 miles from Vladivostok in the Pacific Ocean. Ten men in the reactor room were killed. Soviet news accounts claim that radiation meters in the area went off the scale at fatally high levels. The Soviet Navy estimates that it will take 50 years for the area to return to normal (and the rest!)

The sinking of the nuclear-powered submarine off Norway in April 1989 provoked widespread concern about radiation poisoning the seas in the area. In 1995, concern over a meltdown of a portion of Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet came ominously close to reality after the local electric company turned off power to a naval base, due to delinquent bills. Oleg Yerofiev, commander in chief of the Northern Fleet, said cutting power to a reactor makes it uncontrollable, which leads to accidents.

The nuclear industry has had > 60 years to prove they can protect human and environmental health but remain, duplicitous, abject failures.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:PfpEM217nQAJ:www.jsi.com/Managed/Docs/Publications/EnviroHealth/Leukemia_FactSheet.pdf+worldwide+increase+leukemia&hl=en&gl=au&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESju3Avf1bXjCKNfzim8Eeis2B-593K8mWQkYHc4RiUiOc5KWUnuf1TaXiLCOVbXzH5cxQbXfHAbh4ARfQBzg1taqlFYF6qMgvtvig0hndoDxRfTT8qEKhgl9t1_Qmxp0VFZAyhb&sig=AHIEtbQjL3Yzckg_nuFQEO3gdg3aZyF_tA

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/weapons/q0268.shtml

Protagoras and others may be interested in these links concerning the French company Areva and its Nigerian uranium mine, as well as related issues.

"Tuareg Activist Takes on French Nuclear Company

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686774,00.html#ref=nlint


Part 1: Tuareg Activist Takes on French Nuclear Company
For the past 40 years, the French state-owned company Areva has been mining uranium for Europe's nuclear power needs in Niger, one of the poorest countries on Earth. One local activist is taking on the company, claiming that water and dust have been contaminated and workers are dying as a result of its activities."

See link for entire article

Map: Location of uranium exploration area in Niger
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/bild-686774-74477.html

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS
Photo Gallery: The True Cost of Uranium
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-53464.html

Reversing Germany's Atomic Phase-Out: Negotiations Begin for Extending Nuclear Plant Lifespans (01/21/2010)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,673223,00.html

The Curse of Gorleben: Germany's Endless Search for a Nuclear Waste Dump (01/15/2010)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,672147,00.html

Another current item on reactor nuclear waste disposal, by acknowledged expert Robert Alvarez, is currently available at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website. The hazards are acknowledged in passing, without drama or denial.

Advice for the Blue Ribbon Commission
By Robert Alvarez | 24 March 2010

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/advice-the-blue-ribbon-commission

Here is an excerpt. See the link for its context.

"What should U.S. policy be for civilian spent fuel storage? For nearly 30 years, NRC waste-storage requirements have been contingent on the timely opening of a permanent waste repository. This has allowed plant operators to legally store spent fuel in onsite cooling ponds much longer, and at higher densities (on average four times higher), than was originally intended. In 2004, a National Academy of Sciences panel warned that such densely packed reactor ponds were vulnerable to terrorist attack and catastrophic radiological fire. On March 9, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told industry officials at an NRC-sponsored conference that spent fuel should be primarily stored in dry, hardened, and air-cooled casks that met safety and security standards for several centuries. Yet today only 14 percent of the 65,000 metric tons of domestic spent fuel is stored in such casks.

Obviously, we need a new policy that takes into account the likelihood of indefinite reactor spent fuel storage in the age of terrorism. In this regard, in 2003 several of my colleagues and I recommended PDF that all U.S. spent fuel older than five years should be placed in dry, hardened storage containers, greatly reducing the fire risk if water was drained from reactor cooling ponds. Casks should be placed in either thick-walled structures or in earthen berms capable of withstanding plane and missile impacts. We estimated this could be accomplished with existing cask technology in 10 years at a cost of $3 billion-$7 billion. Moreover, future reactors should be designed so that temporary cooling ponds are encased in heavy concrete containment. Such steps were taken by Germany 25 years ago in response to the threats posed by accidental fighter jet crashes and terrorist attacks."

The discussion of nuclear waste and mining dangers are off the mark. With nuclear power, the relevance is with the fourth generation reactors, which will extract 140 times more energy than current reactors, will be capable of using existing nuclear waste as a fuel, and will leave a smaller amount of waste with a short period of radioactivity. Talking about the dangers of the past is a bit like ranting about the safety of motor cars, but using data prior to the introduction of seatbelts, airbags, crumplle zones, crash testing etc.

What is relevant is the question of when viable fourth gen reactors will be available, whether they will live up to expectations, how much other technologies will develop over the period, and whether the Earth is continuing to warm as predicted. Surely a discussion of the future prospects of energy supply is of more interest than puerile exchanges of abuse?