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Rare Earths carry radioactive hazards for workers

REE deposits are usually found in the same vicinity as major lodes of uranium, radium and other radioactive ores.

Rare Earths: China’s not-so-secret secret weapon, Toronto Sun, By alan.parker  January 5, 2011“…………The environment concerns were very real. Mining and refining rare earth elements is a dirty, dangerous business and — at that time — the Mountain Pass operation in California had a lot of environmental sins to answer for, foremost the massive amounts of toxic, chemical-laced wastewater being pumped out into the Mojave Desert as a result of the open-pit mining technique and multiple chemical processes required to separate the REEs from other ores and from each other.

Then there were the health issues of carcinogenic and radioactive dust floating around the Clark Mountains in the vicinity of the mine. You though the nuclear bomb tests of the ´50s were the only radioactive worry in the Vegas area?

You see, rare earth elements are mighty useful to 21st Century technology, but they are also tricky, nasty, unstable little buggers, especially when pulled kicking and screaming by man from their inert hiding places in the bosom of the earth. It should be no surprise that the world´s larger REE deposits are usually found in the same vicinity as major lodes of uranium, radium and other radioactive ores. They´re sort of kissin´cousins. Most rare-earth deposits have been found by prospectors seeking radium and uranium, sometimes gold……..

Rare Earths: China’s not-so-secret secret weapon | Nosey Parker | Blogs | Toronto Sun

January 7, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, technology, Uranium, USA