Abundant amounts of water are used in a multiple ways in the process of extracting uranium ore from the earth and processing it into the convenient swellings of "yellowcake."
By means of "open-pit mining" techniques (conventional mining), the soil and rock ("overburden") on top of the original uranium-laden rock is removed by explosion and drilling, and water is widely sprayed to restrain airborne particles, to diminish the workers' experience to inhalation of radioactive dust. By "underground mining" techniques, rays and tunnels are dug into the ground, and water leaks in and becomes perused with radioactive and toxic waste. This is the most exclusive method, because of the associated cost of explosion, drilling, digging and transportation, and because it is a lot slower.
With " leaching" techniques, liquids (solutions that unite caustic acids with water from wells that tap underground aquifers) are forced into "injection wells" placed on one side of the uranium deposit, and then sucked up through the"recovery wells" on the other side of the deposit, and hence filter out the uranium which appears mixed with the large amounts of water pumped throughout the deposit. The huge amounts of waste liquids must then be dumped anywhere, and they leak into the groundwater. This type of uranium extraction is the only type of uranium mining practiced at present in the U.S., and in the U.S. it is convoyed by environmental impact studies since the ground water can be affected harmfully. This type of extraction is also one of the most widely favored, because it is the cheapest, no widespread digging of volumes of overburden. In addition, uranium companies get their uranium a lot faster in this way.
By means of "open-pit mining" techniques (conventional mining), the soil and rock ("overburden") on top of the original uranium-laden rock is removed by explosion and drilling, and water is widely sprayed to restrain airborne particles, to diminish the workers' experience to inhalation of radioactive dust. By "underground mining" techniques, rays and tunnels are dug into the ground, and water leaks in and becomes perused with radioactive and toxic waste. This is the most exclusive method, because of the associated cost of explosion, drilling, digging and transportation, and because it is a lot slower.
With " leaching" techniques, liquids (solutions that unite caustic acids with water from wells that tap underground aquifers) are forced into "injection wells" placed on one side of the uranium deposit, and then sucked up through the"recovery wells" on the other side of the deposit, and hence filter out the uranium which appears mixed with the large amounts of water pumped throughout the deposit. The huge amounts of waste liquids must then be dumped anywhere, and they leak into the groundwater. This type of uranium extraction is the only type of uranium mining practiced at present in the U.S., and in the U.S. it is convoyed by environmental impact studies since the ground water can be affected harmfully. This type of extraction is also one of the most widely favored, because it is the cheapest, no widespread digging of volumes of overburden. In addition, uranium companies get their uranium a lot faster in this way.
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