According to Aboriginal mythology, the Rainbow Serpent, asleep in the earth, guards over those elemental powers which lie outside of humankind’s control. Any attempt to seize these underworld elements will disturb the sleep of the serpent, provoking its vengeance: a terrible deluge of destruction and death.

‘The Rainbow Serpent has been wakened. Men turned into shadows, cancer, women giving birth to jellyfish babies, leukaemia - since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, since the Bravo test in the Bikini Islands, and since the Chernobyl catastrophe in April of 1986, we know that the Rainbow Serpent doesn’t differentiate between uranium’s military and peaceful uses. Death everywhere it touches. But what we perhaps don’t realise is that the destructive properties of uranium are unleashed the moment it’s mined from the ground’.   Extracted from the World Uranium Hearing.

T h e   N u c l e a r  N i g h t m a r e  B e g i n s

Uranium is the principal fuel most used in nuclear power plants. Before uranium can be made suitable for use in a nuclear reactor, it must be mined from the earth and go through milling, conversion and enrichment processes.

M I N I N G

There are two main types of uranium mine.

1. Open-Pit: This is used to mine ‘near-surface’ deposits

2. Underground: This is used to mine deposits too deep for open pit mining

The uranium is extracted either by leaching: when the uranium is dissolved in acid solution which is injected into the rock, and is then pumped to the surface. However, not all the acid can be collected and consequently leaks to the environment. Or by traditional rock blasting methods.

Uranium can occur in association with other minerals such as gold and copper and is often mined as a by-product of these other materials.

Uranium is a radioactive element. It decays into a series of other radioactive elements, known as “daughter products” until it ends up as a stable form of lead. As a consequence of the various radioactive forms uranium goes through, the uranium ore in deposits contains many radioactive elements, some of which are particularly hazardous.

One of the major dangers of uranium is that it produces radium and radon gas (a daughter product of radium). When radon gas is inhaled it can cause lung cancer, while the radium can find its way into people, via food and water pathways, to cause other types of cancer. Uranium is also dangerous as a toxic heavy metal.

The release of radon gas creates additional dangers, particularly in underground mining operations. Good ventilation will protect the workers in underground mines, but increases environmental contamination and the danger to surface workers. However, if there is no ventilation the health risks to the underground workers are greatly increased. While open pit mining leads to direct releases of radon to the surrounding environment.

Both underground and open pit mining involve the removal of massive quantities of the raw material from the earth. In most uranium mines the percentage of uranium metal in the rock that is mined is very low in comparison to other mining industries - it is only between 1-0.1 %.

Many of the mining areas are on land that was previously occupied by indigenous peoples, for example the Aborogines in Australia. By mining in “remote” regions on land occupied by indigenous communities the nuclear industry attempts to avoid the true health and environmental costs of uranium mining.

M I L L I N G

Generally this process increases the concentration of uranium from 1% to 75%. The ore is ground down and then dissolved in concentrated sulphuric acid. The liquid is then allowed to settle in large open air ponds or lakes known as tailings dams. The concentrated ore produced from this liquid is known as 'yellow-cake'.

Approximately 80% of the original radioactivity from the ore remains behind in the tailings dams where the once stable, and much safer, hard rock is now in a looser form and open to the wind and weather conditions, from which radon gas and radioactive dust can escape almost unhindered. This means that uranium mining and milling are dangerous, not only for the workers, but also for people living in the surrounding area.

In addition to the radioactive hazards, "tailings" may contain chemically hazardous substances, including cyanide, arsenic. lead and mercury, which were previously held harmlessly in the rock, are now able to get into the environment by seepage, leaching and blown dust.

There have been massive accidental releases into the environment from tailings dams.

One of the worst accidents was in the US, where a dam broke, releasing 100 million gallons of liquid mill waste and an estimated 1,100 tons of solid waste into the Rio Puerco river. In Australia, a similar dam failure resulted in severe contamination of the East Finniss river, virtually wiping out plant and fish life in the river and on its banks.

Nearly half the radon gas in the original uranium ore is liberated during mining and the other half during milling. The concentrations of the gas and radioactive dust mean that the mill workers get radiation doses second only to the miners.

After mining and milling the uranium goes through a number of other processes where further contamination takes place and more waste is created. Uranium has to be “enriched” before it can be used as a fuel for reactors. This process can be use to increase the percentage of uranium-235 in the ore from 0.7% to between 2%-80%, depending on what type of reactor the uranium will be used in. The enrichment process leads to further wastes, leaving behind large amounts of depleted uranium-235.

In terms of bulk, uranium mining leaves behind the largest amount of waste of the whole nuclear fuel cycle.