Film on in situ mining of uranium

Hot Water: The Uranium Industry’s Dirty Little Story The only thing green about nuclear power are the people who think it’s safe. Lizabeth Rogers Activist Post 2 Oct 13, 

HOT WATER Documentary Trailer 

When you were growing up, how many people did you know who had cancer?
How many do you know today?
I began this odyssey, innocently enough in July 2009 when I led a filmmaking crew to South Dakota to investigate what we had heard was an abandoned uranium mine which had contaminated local groundwater and made local ranchers, their children and even their livestock sick. It was my own naïveté which kept me in the dark, and even though I had done a bit of research prior to leaving the driveway I still had no reasonable clue or expectation of the length and breadth of the problem, nor how many of us are affected by it every day.

I had no idea that there are more than 1,000 abandoned uranium mines in the southern Black Hills alone. There are countless abandoned mines elsewhere. I had no idea that there were over 4,000 abandoned test wells in the southern Black Hills…countless more elsewhere.

I had no idea, nor did any of the people I have interviewed, that the water that 38 million of us in the American southwest get from the Colorado River is filtered through 16 million tons of radioactive waste sitting less than 750 feet from the edge of the river in Moab, Utah.

None of these people, all of whom I would consider very “aware” individuals, knew anything about it, or that we taxpayers are paying for the cleanup because Atlas Mining Company filed for bankruptcy rather than try to address the problems they had created.

I, nor any of the people I interviewed knew that this waste is more toxic than the ore itself, with half lives of millions of years. Most of these people don’t know what a half life is…I didn’t when I started this project.

None of these people know that this is just one of thousands of these sites all over the U.S leaching radioactive waste into our groundwater and aquifers. Nor do they know that if the sites are being cleaned up at all, that the taxpayer is picking up the tab.

Tragically, our naïveté continues to cost us the lives and health of the innocent. We allow the environmental carnage to continue as we approve new uranium mining operations with no guarantee that the sites will be reclaimed to pre-mining condition. In-situ leach mines leak into our aquifers while mining companies claim that they are innocent of the cause, and none of the mining company executives would consider allowing their own children to drink the groundwater from one of these areas.

The mining companies know that if the leaching solution breaks into an aquifer, the water is contaminated and cannot be corrected. They cannot and will not guarantee it but will only promise to use the best available technology and make the best possible effort to correct the problem. Then as always, they will walk away with the ore and the profits and leave local residents and federal taxpayers to deal with the aftermath. As Powertech fights local residents of South Dakota over rights to drill new in-situ mines, facts are ignored as fantasy and false promises take center stage in Rapid City courtrooms…….http://www.activistpost.com/2013/10/hot-water-uranium-industrys-dirty.html

In situ leaching of uranium threatens Kazakhstan’s precious water supply

Scientists studying the effects of ISL doubt how quickly mine sites can self-cleanse. This uncertainty appears to be little known to both Kazakhstan’s nuclear industry and fledgling environmentalists.

no site in the US has been entirely returned to pre-mining conditions

The cost of being the world’s No.1 uranium producer Kazakhstan’s industry has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. But what could that mean for the environment? Christian Science Monitor, By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer / August 28, 2013 ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN

If you make a toxic mess under one of the most isolated parts of the planet, does it matter if you don’t clean it up? Does it make a difference if that mess will be there for thousands of years? Scientists are asking those questions as Kazakhstan has steadily risen to become the world’s No. 1 uranium producer, surpassing such nations as the United States, Canada, and Australia, which require more cleanup.

Rather than employing miners to haul rock up to the surface, mine operators in Kazakhstan have embraced a newer – and generally cleaner – process by which a chemical solution is injected down a pipe to dissolve the underground uranium deposits and then is sucked back up to the surface.

This in situ leach (ISL) method avoids making a mess above ground, but leaves toxic levels of heavy metals in the ground water. In the US, companies using the method have tried for years and failed to return ground water to its pre-mining state.

In Kazakhstan, a country that has seen the disastrous effects of the Soviet Union’s use of nuclear testing and waste disposal, officials with the state-owned uranium company, Kazatomprom, express no concern about the legacy of its rapidly expanding use of ISL mining. They argue that natural processes will clean the mine site.

Scientists studying the effects of ISL doubt how quickly mine sites can self-cleanse. This uncertainty appears to be little known to both Kazakhstan’s nuclear industry and fledgling environmentalists.

In the near term, the stakes do not appear high: Kazakhstan’s uranium mines are mostly located in deserted areas of an already sparsely populated country. But as the US learned in its own uranium-rich Southwest, population patterns and land use can change, potentially deferring an expensive cleanup or rendering some water resources unusable.

“Kazakhstan is a growing country and the pollution could persist for up to thousands of years, and you just don’t know in the future if people might live in the area,” says Brian Reinsch, an environmental scientist researching ISL remediation methods in Kazakhstan…….

Drinking water

ISL mining in many parts of the world involves some treatment of the solution that is left behind in the ore-bearing aquifers. If untreated, the solution could contain arsenic and cadmium at levels thousands of times higher than drinking water standards, says Gavin Mudd, an environmental engineer at Monash University in Australia. Arsenic can also be absorbed by plants, leaving the water unusable for irrigating crops.

Over time, the contaminated water will gradually spread laterally – often at paces as slow as a meter per year – beyond the mining site. ISL mine sites are chosen in areas where there are barriers like clay above and below the ore deposit to prevent water from seeping vertically into new aquifers with higher quality water.

But the clay layer is not entirely continuous, nor is it certain the mining acid wouldn’t dissolve the clay, according to Reinsch. Furthermore, the mining process treats the ore-bearing aquifer like a pincushion, drilling holes all over the area. These are plugged up. But there is uncertainty about the spread of contamination over the long haul.

“Even if we were monitoring for five or 10 years, that’s nowhere near enough. We need literally hundreds of years of data of watching these sites to show yes, they are stable,” says Dr. Mudd…….

no site in the US has been entirely returned to pre-mining conditions, says Dr. Hall. The difficulty has led to some soul-searching among regulators, she adds, who will ask: “Would natural processes just take care of it? Is it a wasted effort?… We don’t have the data to know.”…. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0828/The-cost-of-being-the-world-s-No.1-uranium-producer

In situ leaching for uranium – worse danger to groundwater than fracking

A spokesperson for Uranium Energy disputes the similarities to fracking that is made in the article.

“By contrast, ‘in-situ recovery’ is the process of injected-solution mining that reverses the natural process of deposited uranium in sandstones. On-site groundwater fortified with oxygen is introduced into the ground through a pattern of injection wells.  The solution dissolves uranium from the sandstone host rock, and the uranium-bearing solution is brought back to surface through vacuum-suction production wells, where the uranium is concentrated on resin beads for trucking to a nearby processing plant where it is concentrated further and dried into yellowcake.”

Opponents of in situ uranium extraction start throwing around the F word MINING.com Editor | January 25, 2013 A US company is extracting underground uranium reserves in Texas using in situ methods, but opponents are comparing it to another process that is drawing high-profile protests.

Forbes reports that Texas-based Uranium Energy Corp (UEC) uses the in situ method for extracting underground uranium by pumping oxygenated water into porous rock layers via deep-drilled wells.

Forbes notes the process is raising concerns among some in Texas who compare the process to hydraulic fracturing, which has some celebrity opponents.”By design it’s much worse than fracking,” says Houston attorney Jim Blackburn, who is interviewed by Forbes.

“This is intentional contamination of a water aquifer liberating not only uranium but other elements that were bound up with the sand. We know this process will contaminate groundwater; that’s the whole point of it.”

America’s EPA allows fracking for uranium, despite groundwater risk

Goliad skeptics have been fighting UEC’s plans for five years. At Goliad the uranium ore is located just 400 feet deep within the same rock as a groundwater reservoir that ranchers tap for drinking water, both for themselves and their livestock. Water, not oil, is the region’s long-term liquid gold. “We are running out of water; I don’t want mine ruined,” said one rancher who asked not to be named. “When you’re out of water, you’re out of everything.”….

A 2009 study of Texas in situ mines by the U.S. Geological Survey … found no instance in which there wasn’t more selenium and uranium in the water than before mining.

Energy’s Latest Battleground: Fracking For Uranium This story appears in the February 11, 2013 issue of Forbes. No tour of Uranium Energy Corp.’s processing plant in Hobson, Tex. is complete until CEO Amir Adnani pries the top off a big black steel drum and invites you to peer inside. There, filled nearly to the brim, is an orange-yellow powder that UEC mined out of the South Texas countryside. It’s uranium oxide, U3O8, otherwise known as yellowcake. This is the stuff that atomic bombs and nuclear reactor fuel are made from. The 55-gallon drum weighs about 1,000 pounds and fetches about $50,000 at market. But when Adnani looks in, he says, he sees more than just money. He sees America’s future.

“The U.S. is more reliant upon foreign sources of uranium than on foreign sources of oil,” says Adnani,……

Adnani insists that he can close the yellowcake gap through a technology that is similar to the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has created the South Texas energy boom. Fracking for uranium isn’t vastly different from fracking for natural gas. UEC bores under ranchland into layers of highly porous rock that not only contain uranium ore but also hold precious groundwater. Then it injects oxygenated water down into the sand to dissolve out the uranium. The resulting solution is slurped out with pumps, then processed and dried at the company’s Hobson plant.

“In Situ” uranium mining endangers South Dakota’s fresh water supplies

as for water quality, we know from the history of in situ leach
uranium mining that the groundwater will be contaminated. Leaks and
spills are common. Every in situ uranium mine has them. And at the end
of the process — when things have supposedly been “cleaned up” — the
groundwater has always been left polluted with radioactivity and with
things like arsenic, selenium and lead.

FORUM: In situ uranium mining will pollute water
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/opinion/forum-in-situ-uranium-mining-will-pollute-water/article_ecc53035-6f34-5293-8d5f-08b0e619bee0.html
  January 12, 2013 Plans to mine uranium north of Edgemont remain
controversial — and with good reason. The company involved, Powertech
Uranium, is a foreign corporation that has never mined anything. They
want to use 9,000 gallons per minute of our water. And they will leave
the water contaminated with radiation and other things — like every
other “in situ” leach uranium mine in U.S. history.

In situ leach mining involves pumping a solution underground, where it
loosens the uranium from the rock, and then pumping the uranium-filled
solution back to the surface.

Should America’s EPA allow deep injection of radioactive wastes into aquifers

The situation at Christensen Ranch underscores the overlaying problem of the sheer number of underground waste and injection wells. According to the UIC Well Inventory of 2011, there are 659,345 injection wells across the nation. Even in water-strapped states like California there exist a staggering 67,302 underground waste wells

 former EPA officials are concerned of well leaks and that completely removing pollutants from water is not possible.

EPA Approved Underground Waste Dumping for Uranium Mine Giant IVN, By Christopher Davis-Garland | 01/04/2013| ProPublica recently published journalist Abraham Lustgarten’s special project series covering injection wells. The latest story in the series converges on Christensen Ranch in Wyoming where industry giant Uranium One mines for uranium and disposes of its waste in an aquifer with EPA permission.

However, the Safe Drinking Water Act outlawed injecting toxic and nontoxic industrial waste into or above water aquifers. Any company wishing to dispose of waste underground must first apply for a deep injection well permit and register with the Underground Injection Control Program (UIC). These permits come in several classes to distinguish between waste and industry.For example, radioactive material in class I wells that must be deposited below the lowermost underground source of drinking water versus oil and gas waste in class II wells, which can be deposited closer to the surface. Though these different categories are supposed to help protect water sources, the Environmental Protection Agency has allowed for hundreds of exemptions nationwide in the last few decades, Christensen Ranch being one of them…..

Heap leaching for uranium mining would require a new Environmental Impact Statement

“No approval is sought to implement these initiatives at this stage” [original EIS] ”

“He has given environmental approval for one type of mining process, and has now said he will allow that approval to stand for a completely different processing technique using a novel technology that has yet to be invented, without any further assessment”. “It is simply outrageous that BHP Billiton is not being asked to seek further approvals for this completely different mining method. “

The Greens will move today to disallow the extension of the Olympic Dam Indenture approval until October 2016. 

New Roxby method needs a new Roxby EIS     Greens Parliamentary Leader Mark Parnell has questioned whether Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis has the capacity to do his job, and has demanded a new Environmental Impact  Statement (EIS) assessment of the proposed brand new processing option of ‘acid heap leaching’ at Olympic Dam be conducted before the project is allowed to commence.

Heap leach mining? a possible option for BHP’s Olympic Dam

 AUDIO  No guarantee for Olympic Dam mine expansion  ABC Radio P.M.http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3581996.htm   Nicola Gage reported this story  Sept 3 2012,  

MARK COLVIN: The head of BHP Billiton, Marius Kloppers, says he cannot guarantee that the company will redevelop the Olympic Dam mine in the future.

“……NICOLA GAGE: Mr Weatherill says he was informed on the different technologies BHP are looking into. That included new forms of conveyor belts, and the potential use of heap leach technology.

 

JAY WEATHERILL: Which has been investigated in laboratories and is, over a period of six years, has been scaled up to a certain size in terms of tests, but needs to be tested further to see whether it can be brought to scale and be used for full production.

NICOLA GAGE: Heap leach technology was flagged as an alternative extraction option in BHP’s original environmental impact statement in May 2009. The company already uses it in South America.

Professor Bill Skinner specialises in environmental surface science at the University of South Australia.

BILL SKINNER: There is a precedent for heap leaching technology in Australia, so it’s not exactly a unique process in Australia.

NICOLA GAGE: While it might be considered a new technology in the public arena, the process has been around for years. But Professor Skinner says difficulties with constancy made it expensive.

BILL SKINNER: In the last few years, quite a lot more has been learned about the process that goes on inside a heap leach, and how one treats the ore in order to make sure that one heap behaves very similar to another, and sort of keep reproducibility up, because after all, that reproducibility of the process governs the constant, if you like, valuable recovery from those heaps.

NICOLA GAGE: Questions have been raised about whether another environmental impact statement would be needed with any future expansion. Premier Jay Weatherill.

JAY WEATHERILL: Because we don’t know what the technology is, it’s, it becomes difficult for us to make an assessment about whether there is any additional environment risk. We know that there are some leaching technologies that are used in different parts of the state, but on the face of it, yes, they do raise environmental issues. So, of course, there’s the feasibility of the technology, but then there’s the environmental approvals that may go with that.

NICOLA GAGE: The company’s 15,000-page environmental impact statement expires in 2016. …

Dangers of in situ leach uranium mining for Wyoming

Uranium Mining Environmental Consequences to Be Reviewed in Court, Switchboard, by Geoffrey Fettus, 14 May 12,  For decades, uranium has been mined in ways that damage our waters and land, put our communities at risk, and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-up costs.

Now, for the first time in years, the environmental community has the chance to make its case before one of the crucial federal regulators on how we can do better. The stakes are high – especially for Western communities and their groundwater.

Environmental damage by In Situ Leach uranium mining

14 oct 11, Public submissions for Samphire Uranium’s application for an In Situ Leach trial mine closed yesterday. Better known as the Mullaquana project, the proposed trial site is located 20km from Whyalla, 3.6km from the Upper Spencer Gulf. Samphire Uranium is wholly owned by UraniumSA, a new entrant in the uranium mining industry.

In Situ Leach mines pump highly acidic substances into an aquifer to mobilise uranium. The liquid is then pumped out of the aquifer and processed to remove the uranium. The waste liquid is then pumped back into the aquifer.

Two grassroots environmental groups, Friends of the Earth Adelaide and West Mallee Protection, stated in their joint submission that:

“Given the number of risks involved with the proposed Mullaquana trial, particularly the routine contamination of groundwater by heavy metals and radioactive materials associated with In Situ Leach mining…we strongly recommend that this proposal is rejected.”

“Using…questionable, fuzzy logic, attempts are made to argue that low soil productivity and the low quality of groundwater negate potential risks and minimise the impact of contamination…this is essentially saying that it’s okay to pollute soil and groundwater with radioactive materials and heavy metals simply because it is of a lower quality.”

Friends of the Earth Adelaide and West Mallee Protection are calling on PIRSA to reject the application.

“The In Situ Leach method of mining has left numerous sites in Eastern Europe heavily contaminated. In South Australia, there have been over 20 spills at the Beverley In Situ Leach mine. In January 2002 a pipe burst, releasing 62, 000 litres of contaminated water. UraniumSA claim that they have recruited heavily from within this sector,” said Nectaria Calan, of Friends of the Earth Adelaide.

No commercial acid leach mine in the USA has ever been given environmental approval because of the high risk of contamination.

 “Given UraniumSA’s public commitment to transparency, we are calling on the company to commit to making publically available the In Situ data that will be obtained during the trial, and the models they use to obtain it,” stated Ms Calan.