Potential negative impacts of uranium mining and milling

  1. Serious health risks due to exposure to gamma radiation and the inhalation of radon gas. This causes cancer. Radiation and radioactive radon gas can affect mineworkers as well as people living and working close to mining areas and roads that are used for transport of ores and yellow cake.
  2. Destruction of the environment. An open-pit mine can be hundreds of meters wide and deep. As the name suggests, large pits will be dug which can entail the destruction of local ecosystems.
  3. Pollution of the environment with radioactive materials. Radioactivity, either in solid, liquid or gaseous state, is transported by air, water and in soils and therefore negatively affects their quality.
  4. Water shortages. Uranium mining and milling needs the input of large quantities of fresh water. This can lead to water shortages in other sectors of society as in many places in Africa water supply is already problematic.
  5. Waste rock. Waste-rock contains low grades of uranium which can be carried away by the wind.
  6. Uranium mill tailings. Uranium mill tailings are normally dumped as a sludge in special ponds or piles, where they are abandoned. The tailings still contain 85% of the initial radioactivity of the original ore. Also, the sludge contains heavy metals and other contaminants such as arsenic, as well as chemical reagents used during the milling process. Additionally, uranium mill tailings keep on emitting dangerous radon-222 gas for many years. The dangerous components of tailings are transported into the environment by wind, erosion or dam failures. This happened, for example, in Zambia in 2006 where failure of a tailings slurry pipeline of a copper mine caused the contamination of a river that served as an important drinking water supply.
  7. Social impacts. Uranium mining can cause conflict. In Niger, an Areva base was attacked by dissatisfied Tuareg rebels. At the same time, Areva was accused by the Nigerian government of supporting Tuareg militia groups to deter competitors. Social conflict due to uranium mining can also be caused by the unequal distribution of mining profits and revenue.

Case 'Workers health in the Rössing mine, Namibia'

SOMO and LaRRI describe in their 2009 report that in the Rössing uranium mine in Namibia (operated by Rio Tinto) workers expressed complaints “that the company does not provide satisfactory information about the link between exposure to radiation and possible occupational diseases”. The same research states that “many workers were exposed to dust and inhale radon gas on a daily basis, and therefore some current and former workers have contracted health problems such as TB as well as lung cancer. [Also] workers no longer trusted the opinion of the medical personnel at Rössing because they believe the true nature of their health problems is concealed”.

Read the full report here