Part Three of Four Parts (Please read Parts One and Two first)
8) A lot of nuclear waste has been casually dumped with no thought to safety around the world. At the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste from nuclear weapons manufacture was just poured into trenches dug in the dirt. Temporary underground storage tanks full of toxic chemicals and liquid nuclear waste are leaking into the ground. Drums of nuclear waste were just tossed into the English Channel. The Russians sank submarines with nuclear fuel and nuclear reactors from vessels into the sea near Murmansk off the northern coast of Russia. The Russians recently informed the Norwegians that Norwegian fishing grounds might be at risk.
9) There has been a lot of illegal dumping of nuclear waste around the world. In addition to the casual dumping on nuclear waste during the nuclear age, there has also been outright illegal dumping of nuclear waste. A Mafia informant told Italian authorities that a central Italian Mafia took a ship loaded with spent fuel from European reactors and deliberately sank it off the coast of Italy. They have also been dumping off the coast of Somalia. Nuclear waste from France and Germany was illegally smuggled to northern European ports for transport and illegal dumping in Russia. Illegal dumping of nuclear waste continues today.
10) Uranium mining devastates the environment. The process of mining uranium is terribly polluting. Acid is poured over piles of uranium ore to dissolve out the uranium and the acid often leaks out of the containment system. In the area of Spokane, Washington, decades of uranium mining have left toxic chemicals and radioactive isotopes in the groundwater, surface water and soil, threatening the health of the people who live there. In Canada, Australia and other locations around the globe, uranium mines have also ruined the environment. In Niger in Africa, dust from the local uranium mine blows through local villages and piles up in drifts. New uranium mines are being opened around the world which will severely impact the local environments.
11) The fund for a geological repository for spent nuclear fuel is threatened in the U.S. The U.S. government started collecting funds for a permanent disposal site for U.S. spent nuclear fuel from the nuclear industry decades ago. The site was suppose to open in 1999 but that did not happen. The U.S. was working on a site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada but that project was cancelled in 2009. There was around thirty billion dollars in the fund when the project was stopped. The best estimate now is that the earliest that the U.S. could possibly open such a facility would in 2050. Owners of nuclear power plants that have been paying into the fund have begun to take some of the money back from the fund through court proceedings. If the fund is depleted and the U.S. is unable to replenish it, there may be a lack of funds for the creation of a permanent spent fuel disposal facility in the U.S. by 2050. This will leave spent nuclear fuel in deteriorating temporary dry casks at U.S. nuclear power plants.
(See Part Four)
Ranger open pit uranium mine in Australia:
