Reply #11: You're overlooking a few things

[Dogmudgeon]

"Uranium mining is one of most destructive practices on our planet."

More so than coal mining?

There is a fairly easy way to determine whether that's true or not -- data are kept on these kinds of things.

U.S. Department of Labor Mine Safety and Health Administration
National Mining Association Safety Statistics
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

All have search tools. You'll be looking for coal mining vs. metal/non-metal mining (uranium mining is a subset of metal/non-metal mining). There are also links to studies on Navajo health issues, the most recent antinuclearist talking point.

Just a word of warning: Coal mining is FAR deadlier than metal/non-metal mining, and uranium mining is only a part of metal/non-metal mining. This is not my opinion -- by every criterion, coal mining is more deadly than uranium mining, it's been researched for over a century, and the work has been scrutinized in every detail.

Since you may then be tempted to claim that the radiation from mined uranium is much more lethal than greenhouse gases, organic and metallic coal pollutants, and even the uranium and thorium naturally present in coal, you may want to look for the table of metals in coal fly-ash posted by philb and myself. For each GW-year (8760 GW-hours) of electrical energy produced by burning Appalachian coal, 49.5 tons (99,000 pounds) of uranium and thorium are put into the atmosphere. That means that a modern coal power plant puts about 11 lb. 5 oz. of uranium and thorium are put into the atmosphere each hour or 271 lb. 1 oz. per day -- multiply by 250 for the entire coal industry in the USA alone. (FYI, it's about 67,750 lb. or 33+ tons -- of airborne radioactive ash. Per day.) You should also note that philb is much more critical of nuclear technology than I am.

For reference, we get almost three times as much of our electrical energy from burning coal as from nuclear energy; you may want to use that as a rough guideline for comparing absolute numbers.

"Like oil, it (uranium) is a finite resource, and we would soon be discussing 'peak uranium.'"

What would happen if we had a nearly unlimited supply of uranium that could be gotten with much less risk -- even remotely, by machine?

In a few years years with the current market trends, it will be economical to extract uranium from seawater by mainly automated processes. We will then have a multi-millennium supply. At that point, mining will become a financial loser, and it simply won't be done. The mines can close.

This isn't theoretical -- we already extract a little uranium experimentally from seawater. The barrier is the marketplace. At about $120/lb U3O8, the investment picture changes. (U3O8 was $133/lb the last time I checked a week ago. Reference for uranium prices.) So if that price stays stable, extraction plants will be designed and built. ~$300/lb U3O8 is the estimated price where the process will start being a compellingly attractive (i.e. high-profit, low-risk) investment to the energy financiers, who are historically timid. Here is a recent article about it from The Oil Drum.

I assume that within 1000 years, it will be possible to move all heavy industry and ecologically damaging work "off-planet", into habitats in space, where the processes can be isolated. I also assume that we will develop a much greater respect for our home planet by then. I may be over-optimistic, though.

Anyway, if you spend a few hours looking at the data and following the links, you can see just how damaging different mining practices are -- with no punches pulled, no bullshit, and no politicking. If you DO find any, get a lawyer and sue them; you'll get a cut under the recent Federal Watchdog Act.

Good luck!

--p!