tagged w/ Permanent Pollution
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DU: Depleted uranium, a unique waste that will become more and more radioactive until, roughly, the year 1002009. The acronym also gives sound guidance for where depleted uranium should be buried: deep underground.
But a lack of deep, underground storage space and a growing need to find permanent storage for 1.4 million tons of DU is "clearly driving" federal regulators to erroneously steer the materials to shallow burial sites like EnergySolutions' low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Utah.
That's the contention of Kansas State University Geologist Charles G. Oviatt and a pair of Brigham Young University scientists, geologist Steve Nelson and climatologist Summer Rupper. In a letter to the NRC, which is gathering input in the early stages of a three-year review of DU disposal issues, they cite a "programmatic failure" by the agency to properly plan for deep disposal of depleted uranium.
The trio are experts on Utah's Great Salt Lake, which, every couple of millenniums, rises high enough to submerge EnergySolutions' landfill in Tooele County. When that occurs, the DU could wash away and eventually be deposited throughout the Great Salt Lake Basin, causing a "massive environmental catastrophe," according to Johnson, a past chairman of the Utah Radiation Control Board.
(more at link)
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Yet tens of thousands of tons of depleted uranium has been rained on Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, with the Pentagon declaring that it is perfectly safe - and you can be sure that tens of thousands more tons will be used in a like manner. Way to get rid of horrendously poisonous waste, dumping it on millions of innocent children, women and men (and as many future generations as there will be in those countries before DU has killed off the whole population, fauna and flora) on the other side of the world - DU has a half-life of 4.5 BILLION years.DU: Depleted uranium, a unique waste that will become more and more radioactive until,... more
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