Student Essay on Uranium

Tammie Saccheus
Writing
Uranium essay
September 5, 2007

Uranium is a very heavy dense metal. It is also radioactive. Uranium metal has a very high density. Uranium can react with cold water when it is finely divided. It can form solids solutions and intermetallic compounds with many of the metals. Uranium is used to make nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants. More than half of the uranium people mine for is to make nuclear weapons. After the people get the uranium out of the Earth, there are very bad environmental effects, and even has effects on humans.
Natural uranium is found in the earth’s crust as a large mixture of two isotopes, which is uranium-238, accounting for 99.3% and U-235 about 0.7%. The first thing that happens in mining uranium is that people fly over areas and see which spot gives off radiation. After they find a spot, they drill holes into the earth and test it for uranium by geologists. In either open pits or underground mines the ore is dug out of the ground mainly by drilling and blasting. After they get the ore out, they need to make it into fine fragments to treat it. Then they make it into a powder and that is when it is ready for treatment. The next step is precipitation and drying then after that they do the tailing waste step, next is storage and shipping.
After the people that mined for uranium leaves a lot of radioactive minerals behind. Uranium can travel through water and it is air borne,  that means wherever the people mine for uranium, the ore can travel through water and air, with a radius of forty miles away. The most radiation that is released is at mines. Mining areas will have long-term damage on the environment. While uranium itself is not really dangerous, some of it decay products do pose a threat, especially radon, which can build up confined spaces such as basements. Uranium can seep into the earth and ruin the soil and that will contaminate the plants that grow on the soil. The plants can also be contaminated by uranium in the air. Uranium can also travel through the water, which can contaminate the marine life.
Uranium can cause all kinds of health problems to the human body. It causes toxic damage to the kidneys. Exposure to uranium increases your risk of getting cancer due to radioactivity. Since uranium tends to concentrate in specific locations in the body, risk of cancer in the bone, liver cancer, and blood diseases, such as leukemia, are increased. Inhaling uranium increases the risk of lung cancer.  Uranium even causes birth defects. Women that get or are pregnant and hang around uranium or get the uranium radiation have babies that are deformed in some way. The babies either have no arms and just hands, a very big belly, deformed head, and some babies have big eyes along with black eyes.
There are a lot of environmental effects and a lot of health problems when people take uranium ore out of the ground. By far the greatest long-term radiation damage to our planet is cased by uranium mining. Mining uranium gives off a lot of radiation, way more than nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants. When people get in contact with uranium ore for a long enough time for it to get into your body, it causes a lot of health problems. What would you do if a uranium company were trying to mine at least 30 miles away from your hometown, where you grew up and where you are going to stay and raise a family?