Uranium environmental impact

US-Environmental Protection Agency, Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Remedial Action Standards for Inactive Uranium Processing Sites (40 CFR 192), US-EPA Rep. No. EPA 520/4-80-011 (1980). 

Reducing the long-term environmental impact of wastes arising from uranium mining... 

DOE 1996. Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Ground Water Project, DOE/ EIS-0198, DOE, Washington, USA. 

Rippon, G.D. and Riley, S.J. (19960 Environmental impact assessment of tailings dispersal from a uranium mine using toxicity testing protocols, Water Resources Bulletin 32 (6), 1167-1175. 

If all of these elements are incorporated into a basic hydrologic flow model, then detailed modelling of the behavior of the leaching system will be possible. The development of such comprehensive models will not only aid in the optimization of solution compositions for the most effective uranium recovery, but will also allow a more realistic environmental impact assessment and corrective measures if required. 

Preliminary studies on potential methods for the extraction of uranium from sea water took into consideration not only the extraction by solid sorbents, but also by solvent extraction, ion flotation, coprecipitation, and electrolysis. However, for a large-scale uranium recovery only the sorptive accumulation by use of a suitable solid sorbent seems to be feasible with regard to economic reasons and environmental impacts n9). 

A recovery program was begun in England in the early 1960 s [78]. Extensive research on the recovery of uranium in seawater has been conducted to replace uranium locally deposited as terrestrial ore with uranium uniformly dissolved in seawater. Many methods of recovery have been suggested coprecipitation, adsorption, ion floatation, and solvent extraction. Adsorption using solid adsorbents is promising with regard to economic and environmental impacts. 

In parallel with the work done in collaboration with the European partners BNFL has conducted studies of the potential role of fast reactors in the UK and elsewhere. It is important to consider the fuel cycle as a whole and to make use of fast reactors in the optimum way to maximise safety and economic advantage while minimising environmental impact and proliferation risks. To this end accelerator-based systems as alternatives to critical reactors, and the thorium cycle as an alternative to the uranium-plutonium cycle, have been examined with particular reference to the implications for fuel fabrication, reprocessing and waste disposal. This work continues but the initial conclusion is that the critical Pu-fuelled fast reactor, properly integrated with reactors of other types, and with optimised arrangements for Pu recycling, has many attractive advantages. 

Metal resources are nonrenewable and their long-term availabihty depends on the known reserves and the cost of extraction. With some metals such as uranium, the fraction of the oxide present in earth is approximately 0.1-0.2%. This means that a large area of earth has to be processed to extract the metal. This would result in relatively larger environmental impact compared to producing a metal such as aluminum... 

DOE (1999) Final progrtunmatic environmental impact statement for alternative strategies for the long-term memagement and use of depleted uranium hexafluoride. DOE/EIS-0269... 

Another relevant general review summarizes the knowledge on the behavior of series radionuclides in soils and plants and is intended to provide a comprehensive source of information for environmental impact studies (Mitchell et al. 2013). The summary of the data on plant to soil concentration ratios that depends on the specific soil and type of plant and the distribution of uranium within the parts of the plant is especially important. The dependence of the sorption of dissolved uranium compounds on the type of soil (like the clay content) and the parameters mentioned earlier (pH, complex forming agents, anions, presence of iron, organic matter, etc.), based mainly on studies of the (distribution factor) of spiked soil samples, is discussed. It is noted that in general the uranium concentration in plants is several orders of magnitude lower than in soil, but some plants may efficiently absorb uranium and translocation within the plant is quite common (Mitchell et al. 2013). These features, and especially the soil-to-plant transfer factors, will be discussed in Section 3.4 that deals with the uranium content in plants and soil and the relation between them. 

The inherent safety features and passive operation capability of the SPINNOR and VSPESINOR are targeted to eliminate core meltdown and, therefore, to avoid adverse environmental impacts in accidents. Because their conversion ratio is about one, the fuel self-sustainable regime may be established, in which only fertile fuel material, e.g. depleted uranium, will be consumed to produce energy. If higher breeding ratios become necessary, they could be achieved just by placing an external blanket in the reflector position. 

Lottermoser, B. G. 2007. Mine Wastes Characterization, Treatment, Environmental Impacts, 2nd ed. Berlin Springer. A comprehensive reference on mine wastes with chapters on sultidic mine wastes, mine water, tailings, cyanidation wastes of gold-silver ores, radioactive wastes of uranium ores, and wastes of phosphate and potash ores. This book was named an Outstanding Title in the January 2008 CHOICE review. 

Recently, each years published projections of nuclear power growth have indicated a lower expectation of installed generating capacity (Laue, 1982). A 1982 projection for the United States (U.S. Department of Energy, 1982) reports that spent fuel discharged from U.S. power reactors as of December 1981 totalled 8100 metric tons of uranium equivalent (MTU), only 230 MTU of which had been reprocessed. The installed nuclear power capacity was predicted to increase gradually from 61 GWe in 1982 to 170 GWe by the year 2000. Because of uncertainties in these estimates, it is considered unwise to project the world-wide inventories of beyond 2000. There is sufficient tittie before the year 2000 to develop reasonable estimates of environmental impacts of plants now built or to be constructed by the end of the century. 

McConnell, M.A., V.M.S. Ramanujam, N.W. Alcock, G.J. Gabehart, and W.W. Au. 1998. Distribution of uranium-238 in environmental samples from a residential area impacted by mining and milling activities. Environ. Toxicol. Client. 17 841-850. 

Uranium production does have a notable impact on ozone depletion. The Environmental Protection Agency s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory showed that in 1999, the nation s two commercial nuclear fuel-manufacturing plants released 88% of the ozone-depleting chemical CFC-11 by industrial sources in the U.S. and 14% of the discharges in the whole world. 

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