France dicovers legacy of its uranium mining League of Individuals for the Environment, 24 Jan 2010 Recently, uranium wastes in France have been receiving more and more attention in the media. Among some of the headlines: “Many uranium mill tailings deposits found to be illegal”; “200,000 nuclear waste casks found in mined-out uranium mines”; “severe contamination of the environment with transport of uranium ores and uranium mill tailings”……...a significant long-term hazard to ground water......published by WISE News Communique on January 31, 1992 Amsterdam -
France produces about one half of its reactor-related uranium needs from domestic mines, in addition to the uranium needed for nuclear weapons………….
uranium mining in France has been carried out with little interference. Protests were often raised when the opening up of new mines were proposed, but the mines received no more attention once mining operations began. ………environmental problems related to mining activities, the milling of the ore and especially the uranium mill tailings deposits went unnoticed for a long time. ….
…change was initiated by the independent radiation monitoring group Commission de Recherche d’Information Independente sur la Radioactivite (CRII-Rad). CRII-Rad discovered in a statement by Cogema (a state-owned company and the main uranium producer in France) that several uranium mill tailings deposits in the Limoges area contain more than 1000 Curie (37 TeraBequerels, i.e. 37 trillion Bq) of radium-226 and thus should have been licensed as basic nuclear installations………
ll uranium production (until 1990) at Bessines resulted in the production of 19.86 million tonnes of radioactive sludges and wastes which were dumped on the mill site and in the surrounding area
…………….Recently, the disposal of the radioactive uranium mill tailings itself has become a matter of concern for French environmental organizations.A visit to Limoges on 18 January 1992 made it painfully clear that the sludges are simply dumped in mined-out open pit mines without any special protective measures being taken. Thus they present a significant long-term hazard to ground water.
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