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rur muse uniammar wun the properties of uranium, Scott gave a brief description, along with a chart of uranium’s decay elements. The usefulness of this mineral and its dangers to life revolve around the same property - its unstable atomic nucleus. Uranium changes, with the nucleus giving off radioactivity with each change, to other elements which in turn change to still other elements. The decay elements, or “daughters” may have a half-life of a few seconds or minutes indicating rapid change accompanied by intense radioactivity. Others have a half-life of what might as well be called forever. Although uranium companies point out that uranium is present everywhere, a fact that has some truth, Scott said, the removal of the ore from its protective coating of earth greatly increases its potential for human harm.
Scott’s slides pictured uranium mines in the West, where both open pit and underground mining methods are employed. Both techniques present some of the same safety hazards: problems of pumping and storing water which has come into contact with fractured ore and therefore contains water-soluble components of uranium and radium. “All mining of uranium has been done so far in the West,” Scott commented after showing slides of ponds and trenches of water pumped from mines. "Imagine a mine site in Virginia where rainfall is at least four times greater.”
Another huge safety problem is presented by the mill tailings pile, the solids remaining alter the removal of the easily available uranium. This waste ac
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