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America’s Secret Chernobyl – Uranium Mining & Pollution in the Upper Midwest

RUDSSELL MEANS FREEDOM July 27, 2009
“………………In northwestern South Dakota, the Cave Hills area is managed by the US Forest Service. The area currently contains 89 abandoned open-pit uranium mines. Studies by the USFS show that one mine alone has 1,400 millirems per hour (mR/hr) of exposed radiation, a level of radiation that is 120,000 times higher than normal background of 100 millirems per year (mR/yr)! In the southwestern Black Hills, the US Forest Service reported on 29 abandoned open-pit uranium mines, one of which is about 1 square mile in size.

It is estimated that more than 1,000 open-pit uranium mines and prospects can be found in the four state region from a map developed by the US Forest Service. The water runoff from the creeks and rivers near these abandoned uranium mines eventually empties into the Missouri River which empties into the Mississippi River…………………

This Fact Sheet regarding past and planned uranium and coal mining in the Upper Midwest region should give cause for alarm to all thinking people in the United States. This is the area that has been called “the Bread Basket of the World.” For more than forty years, the people of South Dakota and beyond have been subjected to radioactive polluted dust and water runoff from the hundreds of abandoned open pit uranium mines, processing sites, underground nuclear power stations, and waste dumps.

There needs to be a concerted effort to determine the extent of the radioactive pollution in the environment, and the health damage that has been and is currently being inflicted upon the people of the United States.

America’s Secret Chernobyl – Uranium Mining & Pollution in the Upper Midwest : Russell Means Freedom

July 28, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium