Australia’s dust storms raise concern over radioactivity from uranium mining

FILMMAKER DAVID BRADBURY: RED DUST DUMP ORIGINATING AT WOOMERA IS GRAVE CONCERN FOR PUBLIC HEALTH
September 25, 2009 by Coober Pedy Regional Times“…….70 million tonnes of radioactive tailings to be dumped at the Roxby mine site each year without evidence of dust control is cause for concern”, says David Bradbury..
Academy Award nominated documentary maker David Bradbury has spoken out, raising public concerns of the red dust dumped onto east coast cities this week as concerning with BHP Billiton proposing to turn South Australia’s Olympic Dam uranium mine into an open-cut mine larger than Adelaide. ……….

BHP Billiton have refused to discuss “in public,” an issue which has the potential to effect the health of the entire population of Australia.

The public are also wondering with the proposed life of the mine, where the water will come from to contain radioactive tailings of such magnitude. ………..
David’s concern is that with the open-cut mine expansion that BHP Billiton is trying to achieve permission from state and federal governments to go ahead, with radioactive tailings left behind which will blow over the heavily populated cities of the rest of Australia…………

Those tailings are radioactive for 4.5 billion years. Most of the radioactivity in the tailings stays in the fine dust once they extract the copper, gold and uranium.

It is only 1000 kms to Melbourne as the crow flies. 1350 km to Sydney as the wind blows. And that is the direction Easterly – that the prevailing winds blow from Roxby.

Seventy million tonnes each year dug out of the huge hole in the ground and dumped there for the next 100 years once they take out the valuable minerals. Radioactive polonium, thorium, radium, bismuth, radioactive lead…and what uranium they can´t finally extract is all left behind in the tailings and will be just dumped there according to BHPB´s hitherto released plans for ´environmental protection´

Those radioactive heavy metals (above) are always found in association with uranium, are not commercially viable or of any monetary use to BHP. That is why they just want to dump them at the mine´s surface. Too huge a volume and people´s awareness on scarcity of water such that they will not be able to dump them under water in holding dams as they do now, to leach into the surrounding water table.

Then there is the release of radon gas into the surface of the air when they mine uranium, particularly open cut mine. Radon gas released from the dug up uranium is seven times heavier than air so it does not evaporate into ´space´ but hugs the earth and attaches itself to water molecules (which we or livestock or native animals drink), can be breathed into our lungs like the radioactive dust particles from the tailings thus triggering cancers and birth defects or attaches itself to growing crops and vegetation which we also eat.

Radon gas has a radioactive half life of 3.8 days (when airborne) so in that half life it can easily blow on a light wind of 20 kph to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane etc. People don´t even know they are breathing it in because it is odourless. So the triggering of cancers begins… which doesn´t come out for 20 years or more. And how can you shaft home responsibility to the board of BHP and its CEO then who will be long gone or moved onto greener pastures in that time?