May 6, 2021 • 49 mins
Mining uranium is dangerous work. Not only does it involve mining, which is dangerous itself, uranium is also found alongside some very radioactive stuff. Learn the ins and outs of this thrilling endeavor in this episode of SYSK.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's
over there out there in the ether, but here still,
and this is stuff you should know. Jerry, whom we
(00:24):
love so much. UM. So we're talking Chuck about uranium mining, obviously,
because anytime Jerry comes up, he goes pretty much hand
in hand with uranium mining, right. Um. And like we
talked about mining before, none of our finest episode, if
I remember correctly from some of the listener mail corrections
(00:46):
we got, you know, it's like underground mining. We're gonna
secret around that. And um, uranium mining is like its
own thing. Like all mining is pretty bears some resemblance
to want a but uranium mining in particular, is um
really heavily regulated. Um, the stuff that it produces, uranium
(01:08):
appropriately enough, is a a really regulated substance because it
can do some pretty powerful stuff. And it's just kind
of interesting, especially considering the history of uranium and humans,
which is a fairly recent history. Yeah, I mean, you know,
it kind of depends on what era you're talking about.
But um, uranium brings to mind a couple of things
(01:32):
depending on when you're talking about. If you're talking about
the fifties during the Cold War and the arms race,
then you can only think about enriched uranium in nuclear
nuclear war and nuclear bombs. If you fast forward to
the seventies, you think about a kinder, gentler uranium, uh,
still radioactive, but um one that would be used for
(01:55):
energy production. And here's a pretty whopping stat on on
the kind of punch it packs as far as producing energy.
And this is startling, frankly, A seven gram pellet of
uranium fuel produces as much energy as almost eight pounds
of coal and three and a half barrels of oil.
I I love that too, So I fiddled with it
(02:18):
on a calculator a little bit. So if you took
about seventy fives of enriched uranium fuel, it would produce
the same amount of energy as something like almost two
million pounds of coal. Just just hundred and fifty pounds
produces two million pounds of coal's worth of energy. And
(02:40):
it's pretty amazing stuff. And it's because uranium is is radioactive,
like it decays spontaneously over um over time, right, and
when it does, it releases gamma, radiation and energy in
the form of heat. And if you can contain and
kind of encourage this decay um, these these reactions where
(03:01):
neutrons kind of bombard uranium atoms and create all sorts
of energy release um, and it happens like trillions of
times a second. You can generate enough heat to boil
water to spin a turbine, which to me still is
one of the most hilarious things that humans have ever
come up with. Using nuclear fuel to generate steam to
turn a turbine to produce electricity is just as hilariously
(03:26):
roundabout as it gets. But that's what nuclear energy does.
That's how it produces electricity. Yeah, And kind of the
cool thing about that production of electricity and regards to
nuclear warheads is after the de escalation after the Cold War,
and we could still go back and use that stuff.
We could take that enriched uranium that was stored in
(03:46):
nuclear weapons and reuse a lot of that stuff. In fact,
most of it, I think for reactors to power reactors. Yeah,
and you can get a lot of use out of
it because typically the nuclear fuel, the enriched uranium that
they use in a nuclear reactor to create electricity is
about five cent um uranium two thirty five, which is
(04:10):
that's the money isotope when you're creating nuclear power, that's right.
If you're using it for military purposes like a nuclear bomb,
it's like, so you could get a lot of nuclear
fuel out of ranium uranium that was enriched for a
nuclear bomb and reusing it for nuclear fuel. I think
that's just such a great like like swords to plowshares,
(04:32):
kind of kind of fable. Yeah, and there's um, you know,
it can also be used for other stuff. It does,
it's not just for making power super efficiently. Um. There's
something called and I don't know how it's pronounced, but
it's m O l y B denim d U d
E n U M so. I don't know if it's
(04:52):
the B asylum and it's molly denom ninety nine or
molly B denim, but I think they call it MO
ninety nine, which is super useful. But it's this is
a decay product, uh, one of the decay products of uranium.
And it is really useful for medical imaging, like to
see if your hard is bumping right, or to see
(05:14):
if your cancer is metastasized and the kind of freaky
thing is until it was actually made and used from
weapons grade uranium UH, and then starting in two thousand ten,
now that it's a low enriched version that they used
for it, and I saw that there are nuclear reactors
that produce electricity that don't have to use enriched uranium.
They can actually use like natural uranium or and still
(05:38):
generate electricity from that UM, which I think that might be.
I don't know if that's a trend or not, but
I'd like to see it become one where it's like,
if we can get away with nuclear enrichment UH and
not do that anymore, it would save a lot of
problems because nuclear in and of itself isn't necessarily problematic,
and it is like low carbon or almost carbon free
(06:00):
a form of energy, but there's a lot of problems
with the byproducts of the enrichment processes we'll talk about. Yeah.
And another cool little um fact about when they first
discovered uranium as well as radium is that there really
uses Radium was used to make glow paint, and UH,
(06:23):
uranium was used as a glaze, a decorative glaze, and
then all of a sudden they're like, hey, guys, this
stuff is actually nuclear no wonder, it glows and it
makes a nice glaze. Yeah, there's there's also something called
vasoline glass, which is a collector's item, but it has
like a radioactive glow to it because it has uranium
in it. And then Fiesta weare like that celebrated twentieth
(06:46):
century dinner ware the red um used uranium in its
glaze until what's it called Fia you know, the really
right colored play and bowls and everything that we're like
really kind of big from the thirties until I think
it's still around today. You've seen it. Yeah, I like
(07:07):
that stuff. That's uh, we have some of that stuff
for like you know, barbecues and stuff exactly well instead
of fine china and Chris right. Um, So if you
if you got it in h nineteen seventy three or prior,
you may want to just update your collection because that's
stuff we we have like the new target versions of that. Okay,
(07:31):
that's probably not radioactive so uranium. It was discovered in
seventeen eighty nine by a subject of the Kingdom of Bohemia,
which is present day Czech Republic. His name was Martin
Claproth and he was actually a German chemist. I guess
he liked Bohemia more. But um, he discovered it and
(07:51):
named it uranium after the planet Uranus, which have been
discovered earlier in the decade. And I guess it was
still just the hot new thing everybody's mind, because that's
what uranium is named after. Yeah, and there's you know,
there's different kinds of uranium U. It has different kinds
of isotopes, which basically are the different forms with different
(08:13):
number of neutrons. And depending on how stable each isotope is,
each version is Some are more radioactive, some are more
likely to uh, to produce nuclear fissions, some are less likely.
I think you mentioned uranium two thirty five is the
money when for you know, for nuclear war and I
guess for power production too, Right, that's the one you want.
You don't want any of that garbage to thirty eight stuff,
(08:37):
but to thirty eight is the most abundant, so there
is more of that stuff. Uh, And you don't even
ask about thirty seven. So there's three that are naturally
occurring to two thirty four And what's really cool about
it is uranium two thirty five and uranium two thirty
eight or what are called primordial um elements where they're
(08:59):
like genuine, real deal star dust, like they were created
in or shortly after the Big Bang. So the uranium
around here on Earth was like was around at the
beginning of the universe. It's way older than Earth, hence
the name primordial and right exactly. And it's half life
get this, chuck, is three thousand years, which is you
(09:21):
know why it's been around for longer than Earth. Did
you get that joke? I mean, someone's gonna be mad
at us, but oh man, they're gonna be so man. Now. Actually,
the half life of two thirty five is about seven
million years and then two eight a half life. So
if you take a gram of pure uranium two thirty
(09:43):
eight and store it in a container and you come
back and check on it in four and a half
billion years, only half of it will have decayed in
that time. It is ancient stuff, and it's pretty cool.
We figured out a way to use that primordial element,
this ancient stuff that was created in the Big Bang,
to generate steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity.
(10:08):
It's amazing. Uh. If you want to mind this stuff,
Australia is number one in the world. I think about
thirty percent of all uranium in the world is in Australia. Uh.
Number two is Kazakhstan. Yeah, that was a terrible boor
maybe the worst I've ever heard. Wow. Number three is Russia.
(10:31):
I'm really ashamed of myself. And then number four is
is Canada. It Russias got Canada beat Yeah, Russia's number
three ahead of Canada this year. Okay, gotcha Gota? Yeah,
because I know, I guess last year Kazakhstan came up
in the last Within about the last decade, Canada's got
the number one producing mind Cigar Lake mine. It produced
(10:53):
something like thirtcent of the world's geranium single handedly in
two thousand nineteen, just this one mine in can Nada. Um.
And Canada's uranium is so rich. Remember we rich? Is it?
I'm glad you asked Chuck. Um. It's so rich that
they have to use robots to mine it because the
humans can't get near it. It's too dangerous. Well, yeah,
(11:17):
this will be talking about that a little bit later.
It's as rich as it comes, which is good for Canada. Sure,
the US doesn't have a ton of it. UM. I
believe that there are currently six states that have mining operations. Wyoming,
New Mexico and Utah have the bulk of it, and
then there's also some in Arizona, Nebraska, and Texas. And
(11:39):
Arizona's is interesting because there is UH in Grand Canyon
National Park, there is uranium. And in twelve President Obama said,
you know what, for twenty years, there's a ban on
uranium uranium mining on this million acres of land around
the Grand Canyon. And then just a couple of months ago,
in February of this year, they passed the House passed
(12:01):
the Grand Canyon Protection Act to make that permanent. And
I think it now goes to Senate committee. UH. It
passed generally, of course, our long party lines, with Democrats saying,
you know, we got to protect our land and Republicans saying, oh,
it's fine, right. I saw I saw a press release
(12:22):
from Mark Kelly, who's now a Senator from Arizona, and
he and I think Kristen Cinema um co sponsored a
bill because they're both from Arizona to basically do what
that House bill did was protect or make that band permanent. UM.
And in this press release, he said that the the
Grand Canyon generated different one. I think it was a
(12:43):
concurrent bill. Yeah, it was a different bill. I think
that there was the House bill in the Senate bill.
I think they do this sometimes. It makes it happen
faster because when it goes through committee, it gets they
come together and work out the differences, rather than you know,
it goes through the House and then it goes to Senate.
Can happen concurrent, Yeah, concurrently. I think that's what was
going on. But anyway, the upshot of it is that
(13:06):
the in the press release, Mark Kelly said that the
Grand Canyon generates something like one point three billion dollars
in tourist revenue for the state of Arizona every year,
which is like, how long is it going to take
you to to mind that much uranium? It just makes
sense to protect the Grand Canyon and that just that
case alone. Yeah, I mean, that was the point that
(13:28):
that they were making on the Democrat side, is the
amount of uranium was I can't remember, but it was
not that much. I think it was like less than
one percent of the total in the United States, and
they were just saying the benefits just don't even come
closed out weighing the risks here. Yeah, And I mean again, well,
like I don't think I'm not, but I would say
we're not here to just knock uranium as a as
(13:50):
an energy source or even uranium mining when it's done correctly.
But yeah, when when it butts up against maybe the
most celebrated natural treasure in an entire nation, on an
entire continent, maybe just skip that one. I think is
kind of my my take on it. Yeah, to squeeze
(14:11):
just a little bit of urania there. Yeah, it's just
so shortsighted. I'm so sick of shortsightedness. To um. There's
a cool quote in here, and this this was from
originally from the Housetop Works website, right ah, yeah, it
was as a matter of fact, Laurel Bells uh and
this guy, Michael Ahmandson, he's a historian on the atomic age.
(14:34):
He's talking about, you know, basically World War two coming
around and uranium being the hot ticket. And he said,
uranium went from being a weed to a weapon. Uh,
instead of serving as this useless pigment and glaze, became
a strategic element of war. And I think that happened
pretty quickly when the arms race heated up at like Russia,
the Soviet Union, and the United States were really really
(14:57):
moving fast to get as much uranium as possible on
their hands. And I mean, up to that point, uranium
was like again there it was used for pigment, a
ceramic glaze, not for much. And then the Manhattan Project happens,
and all of a sudden, it's like every country in
the world is looking to see whether they have uranium
deposits or not. Because the USSR in the United States
(15:17):
one as much as it can get, not just even
necessarily to build up its stock, poled to keep the
other guy from getting his hands on it as well.
So the the the human introduction, the general public's introduction
to uranium was kind of jarring in that sense because
it came hand in hand with the atomic age. Uranium
to thirty five was what was used as the nuclear
(15:39):
core for um Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped
on Hiroshima. So it was like it was a very
um memorable debut uranium had in the public mind for
and it stayed that way for a while until it's
sort to become associated more with nuclear energy. Did we
take a break? I think we should take a break. Yeah,
(16:02):
all right, let's do it. Stuff you should know, h
and sh stuff you should know. Alright. So let's say
(16:28):
you want to mind uranium. The first thing you have
to do is find uranium. And you know you're looking
for these large deposits. It's you know, you don't open
up a mine unless you do the math and you
figure out that hey, there's enough. I mean, it's a
really simple math formula basically like this is how much
it costs to mind, and this is how much we
(16:48):
can possibly get from this place. Is it worth it
or not? Because I think one and every one thousand
exploration sites of all metals and minerals are ever really
used as the mining site. So they're just they're poking
around at first, and they're using these Uh you can
actually walk around with a Geiger counter on the on
(17:10):
the ground and look for it close up after you
have used something called a I'm gonna go with centilometer.
Oh yeah, that's good. I was gonna say sentilometer because
it's based on the word scintillating, like exciting. You can
do that from further range and that picks up gamma
rays at at bigger distances, so you'll use that at first.
(17:30):
Then you'll zero in with that Geiger counter. You'll check
out the landscape and see how viable it is, and
you know, you'll just enter that all into your little
spreadsheet or however you're determining that equation, and if it
spits out, yes, good place for a mine, then they'll
go through this really long, arduous process of getting permitted. Yeah,
(17:51):
and the stuff that you're going to mind then becomes
what's known as or bodies, which are deposits that are
economically worth mining and extracting. Right, Um, and yeah, it
does take a lot of time. I saw this article
says between three and ten years to go from basically
prospecting to production. I saw a ten to fifteen elsewhere,
(18:15):
but right to add another year onto that one. But um, yeah,
so say anywhere between three and fifteen years. I'm leaning
more towards the ten to fifteen years side, just because
of the permitting, having to deal with the public saying
like you're not going to do that in my backyard
kind of thing. Um, it's there. It's rather involved. It's
involved for any mind because you have to plan the
(18:37):
mind too. Is You'll see in a second, like we've
got to. You've got a plan what kind of mind
you're going to build. You have to plan the mind itself.
You have to figure out what to do with it,
who you're gonna sell it to. Then you have to
go through the permitting process. Then you have to actually
start to extract it. And one of the things that
really jumped out to me, Chuck, was how few people
it actually takes to mine. Yeah, I mean this article
(19:00):
made it sound like kind of a full scale operation.
I'm sure they range in size, but it has to
be a certain size to make it worth your while.
Like we said, so it seems like a hundred people
are less, yeah, total and run this mining. So the
whole shebang, hundred people of the mine uranium, which I
just thought that was really surprising. Yeah, and we should
(19:21):
also mention too that, uh, they just don't go digging
in there, like uranium could be mistaken for u when
it decays. Their byproducts called daughter elements radon and radium,
and that can also set off the Geiger counter. So well, yeah,
they make they make super sure that it's uranium down
there before they get coming. Right. Well, that's actually how
they find it using the Geiger counters because because the
(19:42):
uranium itself it has such a long half life, it
decays so slowly that it's it's daughter isotopes or daughter
elements that are the ones where setting the Geiger counter off.
But then you have to say, okay, well, how much
uranium is in here, because I don't want that rate on.
That's just a hazard to our health. Even though we
use it to find the uranium. How much uranium is
(20:03):
here and how much rate on is there? Because if
you find a really really ancient deposit that's just been
sitting undisturbed and it has been slowly but surely decaying,
all of those daughter isotopes are going to keep building up.
So you might find a deposit that's a lot of
raid on you don't want to have anything to do with,
but not that much uranium to thirty five, you know. Yeah,
(20:24):
So once you have found your stuff, you've got your permit,
you're all ready to go. It's ten to fifteen years on.
You need to figure out and you probably already figure
out at this point what kind of mind you're gonna have. Uh,
And there's a few different ones. I know, we've talked
about mountain top removal mining and regular underground mining, um,
but open pit mining is one one thing they can do,
(20:48):
which is basically they blast away land and create a
big pit and then they go in there and they
remove big uranium or chunks and say, here you go,
go process it, go crush it up and slurry and
what's that? Uh, what's that saying? They have? That's kind
of cool. So apparently the miners themselves like, if you're
a if you're a uranium miner, you're not just an
(21:11):
ordinary miner, in no disrespect to ordinary miners, but you're
especially trained, especially to recognize uranium because it's up to
you in an open pit process to pick the stuff
out and and get as as much of the actual
uranium as possible. So they do have this saying a
mind is a terrible thing to waste. You want to
(21:31):
get all the uranium out, and a waste is a
terrible thing to mind. You don't want to mind the
stuff that's not uranium. And so I added a little
bit of extra to that, saying it's a lot more
succinct than that. But I think you get let's hear it. Oh,
I thought you I thought you were gonna add even more. No, surprisingly,
I wasn't uh the um, I think you can also
(21:57):
strip mine, Is that true? Yeah? Open pit and strip
mining are like within if you've got the deposit within
like fot of the surface. Um. But I think the
big difference between those two, chucks, Strip mining is just
like taking the layers of soil off the top until
you reach the deposit. Whereas open pit, like you were saying,
you use you know, you blasted in the rubble. But
(22:17):
they're related, they're like, um, they're surface mining. I think
they both qualifies that. Yeah. I mean then you've got
underground mining, of course, which is just deeper and they
you go down in those mine shafts or what's called adits,
which are the vertical and horizontal tunnels, and it's just
way more labor intensive. It's obviously a bit more expensive,
(22:38):
it's a bit more dangerous, higher health risks. Uh. So
they would prefer out of those two two, probably open
pit mine. Well, yes, but it also depends on you
know who you're talking about prefers that. Like, if you're
a miner, you probably prefer open pit because you're exposed
open air. If you're um concerned agent of the e
(23:03):
p A, you probably prefer a well run underground mind,
because if it's done correctly and built properly, it's probably
going to have less of an environmental foot print then
blowing a huge pit into the earth and getting all
the radioactive chunks out. Yeah, and I think the one
that's has the least environmental impact is in situ, which
(23:26):
means in the original place. And this is interesting and
that they basically, you know, they don't take these big
chunks out of the ground and process it. They use chemicals.
They use baking soda and sort of like a club
soda mixture solution, and they they inject it into the
rock through pipes and that separates that the uranium from
(23:48):
the rock, but it turns it into a solution that
they then pump back up to the surface. Yeah, there's
injection wells that go down into the deposit because sometimes
the like uranium can be kind of suspence ended in
sand or sandstone or even gravel or near the water table. Yes,
so that's the that's something that confounds it. Let's say
(24:09):
you're going and you've got top soil and a little
bit of bed rock, and then you've got a nice
aquifer of fresh, unpolluted drinking water. Then below that you've
got a big clay strip of impermeable clay. Then you've
got the uranium, and you've got another clay st're pulling
that uranium deposits sand in between it. Right, your job
is to drill down past that aquifer, past the clay
(24:32):
into the uranium sand injected with all that stuff, and
then leached the dissolved uranium out through a pump through
that aquifer without leaking it into the aquifer, and then
taking it off site for processing. And if you do
it right, you don't pollute the groundwater, and you don't
(24:54):
disrupt or make the the clay permeable so that you
actually like let the uranium lead out of deposit. If
you do it right, it would have the least environmental footprint.
It seems to me, probably the trickiest version of it. Yeah,
And I think sometimes when you combine too regular words,
it just ends up sounding super gross. And I think
(25:15):
leakey deposit fits into that category. Yeah, yeah, it definitely does,
especially a moist leaky deposit. I'm sorry. Uh. Then there's
heap leaching, which is terrible. It sounds like kind of
the worst of the environmental as far as environmental impact goes.
And that is when it sounds like, unless I'm reading
this wrong, they extract all the ore from the ground,
(25:39):
the big chunks, they bust it up on the ground
above ground, and then they leach that pile with chemicals
to separate it. So it's almost like it's almost like institute,
but above ground they're just like, hey, let's just take
it up here then leach it. Yeah, a lot of
these have a lot to do with one another. I
think with open pit you actually end up using heap
(26:00):
bleaching a lot of times because you're taking those chunks
that you blasted out of the earth, and you're you're
pouring acid, spraying acid all over this pile, and the
stuff that trickles down is caught by these these um
pipes and your uraniums dissolved in there, or like you're saying,
you're spraying it with hydrogen peroxide or club soda or
something like that. So it's all kind of you know,
(26:23):
you can do some of them in conjunction with one another,
but the point is you're getting that uranium out of
the ground somehow, and then you're trying to you're starting
the process of extracting it from the ore as best
you can. That's right. Then you've got your stuff. Then
you need to make it into different stuff. You need
to mill it at a uranium mill. And what you
(26:46):
want eventually to get to is and it's it's pretty
funny that they name it this. It's uranium powder, but
they call it yellow cake, which just sounds delicious. It says,
but if you ate that, you would be in big, big,
big trouble. Yes, very big trouble. And it's um it's
very highly regulated, of course. UM. I think they like
to put these mills pretty close by the minds themselves.
(27:11):
I think the US Atomic Energy Commission really kind of
aids people and saying, let's just bring it this all
close together, and you take that dry uranium or or
and you just you mill it up basically. I mean,
it's not unlike a lot of mining operations. At the
end of the day, you know, you're basically just trying
to separate all the byproducts that are not byproducts, but
(27:34):
all the stuff that you don't want out of the
way to get it gone. Yeah, that's that's what they're doing.
They just it's just depending on what mineral you're after. Um,
you're going to use different chemicals in um stages of
chemicals in the process. Right, So yeah, when when you
produce this yellow kike, what you've basically done is separated
(27:55):
natural uranium away from the ore, the rock that it
was part of or the sand that it was part of,
and you you you compress it into these yellow cakes
and you send it off. So now you've got um
milled and processed uranium, but it still isn't enriched. It's
still in its natural form and in about its natural percentages.
(28:16):
So natural uranium. If you have like a thing a
yellow cake in your hands, again, don't eat it. It
sounds delicious, it's just not it's not cheat cake. Which
even if I knew that was radioactive, I would still
I wouldn't be able to help myself. I would still
eat it. So you've got the yellow cake in your hands.
What you're holding is nine three percent uranium two thirty eight,
(28:40):
which is the one with the very very long half life,
that's not very radioactive as far as humans are concerned,
just holding things. And then it's point seven percent uranium
two thirty five. And again there's at least one Canadian
reactor that supposedly can create electricity through yellow cake. Um. Yeah, yeah,
that's how I was saying before that, that it can
(29:01):
in its natural form, which is great because all of
this mining and processing it's it's potentially harmful enough to
the environment. But wait until we tell you about enrichment,
right right, yeah, because what did you say? It was
point seven percent in its natural state and the Yeah,
the goal is to get it and it's not like
it has The goal is to enrich it to about
(29:22):
two to five, right, which is still that's significant, But
that's for if you want nuclear fuel, if you want
it for military purposes, you have to enrich that point
seven percent of uranium to thirty five up to and yes,
so that's what I was saying. If you get your
hands on some military enriched uranium, you could fuel a
(29:43):
lot of nuclear reactions with that. UM And the point
of enrichment. Enrichment is just another word for concentrating, basically,
where you're stripping out now from the yellow cake, not
just the other stuff that's not uranium, but the all
the uranium that's not uranium to thirty five five And
so it takes a lot of yellow cake to get
(30:04):
uranium to thirty five in enough abundance to actually produce fuel,
like for example, if you are if you're upgrading yellow
cake a thousand pounds of yellow cake from points a
thousand pounds of yellow cake, if you're if you're enriching
it up to five per cent. At the end of that,
(30:26):
you would have I think of fifty pounds of uranium
two thirty five, the stuff you could actually use to
make pellets out of in fuel and yeah, and then
you'd have nine and fifty pounds of what's called depleted uranium,
which is mostly uranium to thirty eight, some uranium two
thirty five that you couldn't get out of there, and
(30:47):
all sorts of other heavy metals and potentially radioactive impurities.
And you can use that for your glaze, your fiesta air.
When you're enriching to what your byproduct is going to
be ultimately is called hexa uranium hexafluoride gas UH, and
that will go into a cylinder and then as it cools,
(31:08):
it becomes a solid, and that's where you have your
ultimately your solid little you know, you can press it
down and you've got your little fuel pellet and that interesting.
They go from powder to gas too solid to fuel pellet,
And so when you take that that enriched uranium, you
turn it into pellets. That's the fabrication process, and I
(31:28):
believe yet another company is responsible for that. You just
get increasingly more specialized, and you even start out again
with specialized miners who are mining the uranium, and then
as it passes through hands to hands, you it's just
getting more and more specialized. Uh. And then finally you
have either enriched uranium for nuclear fuel or enrich uranium
(31:48):
to um explode significant portions of the planet up with. Yeah,
what I'm curious about is if it's all a group
profit share or if I if they just have a
fee that they charged to mill and a fee to enrich,
or if they're like, no, we're all in this together
and you know, we we get ultimately part of the profits.
(32:11):
I honestly don't know to tell you the truth. I mean,
I'm someone will know. Yeah, somebody will know. I'm guessing
because it's even though there's federal regulations, I don't think
the market itself is necessarily regulated. Um. Right, Oh that's
not true. The market would have to be regulated, But
I don't know if there's if it's regulated in the
(32:31):
sense that like it's it's not capitalists or there's there's
not a capitalist drive pushing it out. I'm not sure.
So we need to talk about health concerns for humans
and then the environment. So should we do health and
then break or break and then do both? I say
break and do both, Chuck, because I think we've come
to a pretty good breaking point. Huzzah him. Stuff you
(33:05):
should know. Okay, so we've got this stuff, we mind it.
First of all, we found it. I was really proud
of us or even finding it, Chuck. And then I
was astounded that we were able to not only mill
(33:28):
the stuff, but also enrich it and then fabricated into
nuclear fuel. And if you combine all those processes together,
you have what's called the front end of the nuclear
fuel cycle. And that's basically what we're talking about today,
the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, which is
basically what you do with this stuff once it's a rich,
enriched or if it's used as spent fuel. Um, that's
(33:50):
a whole other podcast that I would really love to
do someday totally, and our particular the stuff you should
know operation it's very fishing because we sent Jerry out
ahead and her hair glows green. Then where we've had her,
we've got our spot. She's like Hamana hammana hammana plus tax.
(34:14):
Oh Man. My friend Meredith, by the way, told me
someone alerted her to that, and because she was the
one who used to say that, her and my friend Bob,
and she told me what it meant, and now I
can't remember. I think it was just some I think
Bob said it was like someone he would say it
when he saw a hot guy or whatever. And if
(34:34):
he was, you know, a hot guy would be Hameda
hammana hammeda and a super hot guy would be Hameda
hammeda plus tax. That's pretty great. So it's just a designation.
I think. I gotta love Bob. He lives in New York.
The best you know, Bob moves around between New Jersey
and Portland. I think when you met him it was
in Portland, but you may have met him in both actually,
(34:55):
because I associate him with New York for some reason. Well,
he always due to Portland is a I'm not sure
why Bob moved to Portland, because he's a very New
York guy. He grew up in the New Jersey area.
But I'm not sure where he is right now. I
need to get in touch with Bob right home. Alright,
So health concerns for humans, you know, we there. You know,
(35:17):
people can debate whether or not we should mind uranium
all day long. But there's neither side that says it's
fine for people, it's good for a water supply, like
everyone acknowledges that it has serious health impacts for us
and our planet. Yeah, and one of the big ones
is again remember it occurs that co occurs with its
daughter um isotopes or its daughter elements, and in particular,
(35:42):
raid on is a real problem because rate on is
a daughter of radium two twenty six rate on gases.
Radium to comes from uranium to thirty eight decay. Right,
there's I think fourteen daughters and they follow this predictable
stage is uranium decays. Rate On gases the second leading
(36:03):
cause of lung cancer after smoking tobacco. It's the number
one cause of lung cancer among non smokers. And you
can actually get it from just sitting around in your house.
You It's the problem with it is you can inhale it,
and when you inhale it into your lungs, it becomes
I believe, polonium um, which decays itself in your lungs
(36:28):
and releases gamma radiation and alpha particles and beta particles
and does all sorts of terrible stuff to you which
can give you lung cancer over time. But like I said,
you can get it from sitting in your house. You
should actually get your house check for rate on once
in a while um, because it's possible there's a a
uranium deposit under your house somewhere and that radon has
(36:50):
made its way up. When you crack open the earth
to get to purposefully get to a uranium deposit, radon
is gonna come out in aces, which makes it a
very hazardous thing for uranium miners. Yeah, and if you
work at an underground mine especially, they're gonna be I
don't know how often, but they're gonna be checking and
(37:12):
testing for rate on gas all over that work site.
It's not just like right where they're they're digging or
whatever blasting. It's gonna be in the in the break room,
It's going to be in the kitchen, in the in
the office trailers. Like they're they're testing for rate on
gas everywhere at least here in the US it will
(37:33):
be man, I A'm gonna eat none of those os,
maybe some cheat cake from publisher. I don't even start
draw the line. Um, uranium itself actually is it's it's
toxicity is really the biggest danger there. Uh and like
ingesting that you can have serious kidney problems. Um, but
like you said, usually radium and radon are the biggest.
(37:58):
I mean that stuff can get in your bones. Yeah, yeah,
it's a real problem. Um. The thing is so like uranium,
when it releases alpha particles, those things kind of tend
to bounce right off for your skin. So with with uranium,
remember how it's not particularly radioactive. That's if it's just
sitting there outside, like even if you're holding in your hands.
(38:19):
It becomes particularly problematic when it's broken and you either
inhale it like you're inhaling rate on or you ingest it.
It just gets on your fingers or your food or something.
It's this invisible thing, but it goes into your body
and it reeks havoc in particular kidney damage because it
gets into your blood. Your poor kidneys have to filter
it out of the blood. And it's like I'm not
equipped for this kind of thing. Um, it might even
(38:42):
say Hamana hameda hammeda itself, and then you have real
serious kidney problems after that. Yeah. And since part of
the process involves breaking it up, like that's the whole goal, Uh,
then you know it's it's a it's an issue. But
also it also is problematic with depleted uranium two, which
(39:02):
again is the byproduct of uranium enrichment. It's a big, big,
old dense hunk of uranium two thirty eight and a
bunch of other heavy metals. And they use that for
all sorts of stuff. They use it for UM shielding
to shield out other other radiation. They use it as
weights and airplanes, they use it um for bullets. It's
(39:24):
like tank piercing bullets. And I was reading a V.
A Um post about how some Gulf war veterans may
have been exposed to depleted uranium UM toxicity because if
they came under friendly fire because some of the shells
were coated and depleted uranium, because it's so dense, it'll
(39:45):
go right through a tank. But it also has this
terrible secondary side effect where that means that the depleted
uranium breaks up and it can be inhaled, it can
get ingested, it can go into your skin. So even
if you weren't killed by the depleted uranium shell piercing
the tank that you're in, you may actually get cancer
later on or kidney failure down the road because of
that depleted uranium. So there is like a real problem
(40:08):
with it. And then above all that too or in
addition to it, it's a it's toxic just because it's
a heavy metal as well, which you don't want anywhere
in your in your body. Yeah, and this is you know,
we haven't even really touched on the environmental impact. Obviously.
These minds that were around and then abandoned before you know,
(40:29):
the sort of mid nineteen seventies are super dangerous places
because they leave behind something called tailings. These are those
leftover pieces of ore that they don't use, and they
have those byproducts that we were talking about, like radon
and radium, but also polonium and sometimes even arsenic. And
if it was pre nine five or so, an abandoned
(40:50):
uranium mind was not cleaned up very well. Um, they've
had to do a lot of work since then to
clean this stuff up. Like things are way different now
and they've gone back to try and clean and stuff up,
but it's um, you know, the wind and the rain
carries the stuff away, it gets into the water supply. Uh.
And it's like I think they said something like, you know,
it takes forty years to restore the environment back to
(41:13):
its natural state. And I hear that, I'm like, no way, man,
you can. You can never restore it to its natural state,
like as if it had never happened. I don't I
don't buy I'm with you. I don't buy an either.
That seems a really short time for a radioactive substance
contaminating groundwater for pize's sake, you know, but this is
something that's especially affected uh Native American population and even
(41:34):
more specifically the Navajo Nation, because a lot of uranium
minds are in the you know, hundreds of thousands of
acres of the Navajo land. I think seventy million pounds
of uranium reserves in the nineteen seventies were on Navajo land.
And in on July six, nineteen seventy nine, there was
(41:57):
the biggest expulsion of radioactive material in the history of
the United States when a dan broke at the church
Rocky Ranium Mill operated by the United Nuclear Corporation under uh, Well,
I say, Andrew Jimmy Carter's watch. It's not like it
was his fault or anything, but he is the one
of the people who first said, hey, we should really
use the stuff for nuclear power. Yeah, and I mean
this happened while everybody was thinking about Three Mile Island,
(42:20):
and still no one ever heard of It happened four
months after Three Mile Island and three Mile Island that
you know, I think we should do one on like
nuclear releases a whole episode on that. But Three Mile
Island scared the Bejesus out of everybody because all of
a sudden, this green nuclear energy was really threatening and scary,
and it really put a dent in the public opinion
(42:42):
on nuclear powder power. But with the the Church Rock release,
it just dwarfed Three Mile Islands released, and still I
hadn't heard of it until two days ago when I
started researching this, And it's like it was a huge deal,
like people dying, well, like going It contaminated the river,
like ninety three million gallons of toxic radioactive sludge tailings
(43:08):
from uranium mining just contaminated the river. And they did
tests of the drinking water eighty miles downstream of this release,
and they found that it had seven thousand times the
acceptable radioactivity of drinking water, the acceptable drinking water standards,
seven thousand times eighty miles downstream. And just because it
(43:30):
happened on this Navajo land, everybody's like, I hadn't heard
of that. Well, and they I mean, all of it
as a crime, but the real crime at the center
of it is is they didn't even notify them hardly.
They did a really bad job of even letting them know. So, like,
that's eighty miles away, you're getting radioactive fallout in the water.
But right there where it happened, they were walking into
(43:52):
the river like they always do, and they were their
skin was literally burned on contact, and they were getting
boils because from this Yellow River all of us. Yeah,
it's just it's so shameful and it's and whoever wrote
this article, I think was from the Navajo Nation and
they said, yes, it was an accident, but Exon Valdis
was an accident, and they're always accidents. Three Mile Island
(44:12):
was an accident. But that's kind of the point. It's like,
accidents happen, and when an accident happens at a uranium operation,
it's catastrophic. And I mean, like even the best designed
mine operation has to figure out what to do with
those tailings, all that toxic sludge and radioactive sledge and
all gets combined. And if you don't design your damn right,
your damn is gonna fail. But even if you do
(44:32):
design your damn right, how long is it going to
stick around? Even under the best of circumstances. You know,
this is not just your normal stuff. This is stuff
that's going to be radioactive for a very long time.
So it's a it's a real problem. Like figuring out
what to do with this on the back end is
a huge problem that humanity just keeps kicking down the road.
(44:54):
You know what other two words sound gross together? Let
me let me hear it. Nuclear release. That's not as
bad as what was the other one. I don't even remember.
I think it was like, already forgot have moist in it?
Well you added moist, but I don't know, I always
add moist. Uh, just to put a tag on all this.
(45:14):
They do require companies, I believe, to um engage in
what's called the reclamation bond, which basically says, hey, we're
set us setting aside so much of our budget to
come back and clean this up, so they can't at
the end say we went broke. Sorry, So they set
aside that money up front, supposedly, and the fines are
pretty steep, up to a quarter of a million bucks um,
(45:38):
you know, if you break these land management rules. So
they you know, all the incentive is there for them
to do a good job, and their reputation is at stakes.
So we don't want to make it appear like it's
just willy nilly, they're just doing whatever they are. Accidents
and they they a company wouldn't work again if they
have one of those accidents. So but but it's you know,
it's also it's just one of those things. Well, it's
(45:59):
also a demonst station of like it matters who is
in charge of the country at any given point in time,
because you have to have a will to enforce those
regulations that are meant to keep communities safe, or you
don't and you just let business do its thing. And
that seems to go hand in hand with an increase
in accident you know. Ye, so you got anything else,
(46:20):
I got nothing else? A little bit of contempt but
I I have I have hope that we can figure
it out because I think that nuclear energy is not
inherently problematic, it's just our understanding of how to use
it is. Yeah, we did a good episode. Thanks. I
think so too, Chuck. Uh well, thanks, thanks? Yeah, Okay,
(46:41):
how about thanks for the last one. Thanks for nothing
for this one. I guess if you want to know
more about uranium and uranium mining and all that jazz,
go onto the Internet and then keep an ear out
for our episode on accidental nuclear releases sometime in the future.
Since I said sometime in the future, it's time for
listener mayo, I'm gonna call this from a teacher. Hey guys,
(47:04):
my name is Emilyam, a full time high school teacher
from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I want to thank you for
a number of things. First of all, your podcast on
stamp collecting was hilarious. I was in stitchous thinking about
Josh's joke about FDR coming up with terrible stamp ideas
for the Postmaster General. Additionally, as you know, this pandemic
has been so hard on nearly everyone, but I think
(47:25):
maybe hardest on students and teachers. Uh. As teachers We've
gone from me honored thank to Dedmired a year ago
for all the quick work we are able to do
when we first shut down, to being vilified for not
doing enough. It's been exhausting. At the end of the day,
it's been hard to find much joy in anything, the
exception your podcast. The excitement and enthusiasm I have for
knowledge is the only thing my brain seems to up
(47:45):
space for these days, especially as of late, I found
myself literally laughing out loud more often at your jokes
and one liners. Uh, at least truly tired obviously. Uh.
This is so invaluable to me, as most days end
with me feeling like crying or calling in to a
ball and sleeping. Also, your most recent post on your
respective Instagram accounts showing you all together give me hope
(48:07):
that things are returning to normal soon. All this to say,
you're providing such an essential service to people around the globe.
For most of us who have been confined to our
homes and towns, you bring the world to us. I
am and will forever be grateful that is Emily Gunch,
a truly tired teacher, and Emily that that means more
(48:27):
to us than you will ever understand, So thanks for
sending that. Let's also really well said. I'm glad that
this is like a teacher totally and uh if you
don't know what she's talking about. We posted photos of
the three of us together again, including a picture of
Jerry at Josh mcclark's Instagram and at Chuck the podcasters. Wow, nice, Chuck.
(48:48):
I didn't know we were going to get an insta
shout out. We never plug our instagrams, but why not?
Why not? Why not? You just don't see a picture
of Jerry. Yeah, people tape over her mouth, over it,
scowling at her, and she looks sheepish. People really did
(49:09):
lose their minds to see Jerry's face, her beautiful face. Um,
so okay. If you want to get in touch of this,
like ms Gunch did right, Yes, gunch rhymes with lunch.
She's so nice. I nailed it, you can send us
an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
(49:32):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's
over there out there in the ether, but here still,
and this is stuff you should know. Jerry, whom we
(00:24):
love so much. UM. So we're talking Chuck about uranium mining, obviously,
because anytime Jerry comes up, he goes pretty much hand
in hand with uranium mining, right. Um. And like we
talked about mining before, none of our finest episode, if
I remember correctly from some of the listener mail corrections
(00:46):
we got, you know, it's like underground mining. We're gonna
secret around that. And um, uranium mining is like its
own thing. Like all mining is pretty bears some resemblance
to want a but uranium mining in particular, is um
really heavily regulated. Um, the stuff that it produces, uranium
(01:08):
appropriately enough, is a a really regulated substance because it
can do some pretty powerful stuff. And it's just kind
of interesting, especially considering the history of uranium and humans,
which is a fairly recent history. Yeah, I mean, you know,
it kind of depends on what era you're talking about.
But um, uranium brings to mind a couple of things
(01:32):
depending on when you're talking about. If you're talking about
the fifties during the Cold War and the arms race,
then you can only think about enriched uranium in nuclear
nuclear war and nuclear bombs. If you fast forward to
the seventies, you think about a kinder, gentler uranium, uh,
still radioactive, but um one that would be used for
(01:55):
energy production. And here's a pretty whopping stat on on
the kind of punch it packs as far as producing energy.
And this is startling, frankly, A seven gram pellet of
uranium fuel produces as much energy as almost eight pounds
of coal and three and a half barrels of oil.
I I love that too, So I fiddled with it
(02:18):
on a calculator a little bit. So if you took
about seventy fives of enriched uranium fuel, it would produce
the same amount of energy as something like almost two
million pounds of coal. Just just hundred and fifty pounds
produces two million pounds of coal's worth of energy. And
(02:40):
it's pretty amazing stuff. And it's because uranium is is radioactive,
like it decays spontaneously over um over time, right, and
when it does, it releases gamma, radiation and energy in
the form of heat. And if you can contain and
kind of encourage this decay um, these these reactions where
(03:01):
neutrons kind of bombard uranium atoms and create all sorts
of energy release um, and it happens like trillions of
times a second. You can generate enough heat to boil
water to spin a turbine, which to me still is
one of the most hilarious things that humans have ever
come up with. Using nuclear fuel to generate steam to
turn a turbine to produce electricity is just as hilariously
(03:26):
roundabout as it gets. But that's what nuclear energy does.
That's how it produces electricity. Yeah, And kind of the
cool thing about that production of electricity and regards to
nuclear warheads is after the de escalation after the Cold War,
and we could still go back and use that stuff.
We could take that enriched uranium that was stored in
(03:46):
nuclear weapons and reuse a lot of that stuff. In fact,
most of it, I think for reactors to power reactors. Yeah,
and you can get a lot of use out of
it because typically the nuclear fuel, the enriched uranium that
they use in a nuclear reactor to create electricity is
about five cent um uranium two thirty five, which is
(04:10):
that's the money isotope when you're creating nuclear power, that's right.
If you're using it for military purposes like a nuclear bomb,
it's like, so you could get a lot of nuclear
fuel out of ranium uranium that was enriched for a
nuclear bomb and reusing it for nuclear fuel. I think
that's just such a great like like swords to plowshares,
(04:32):
kind of kind of fable. Yeah, and there's um, you know,
it can also be used for other stuff. It does,
it's not just for making power super efficiently. Um. There's
something called and I don't know how it's pronounced, but
it's m O l y B denim d U d
E n U M so. I don't know if it's
(04:52):
the B asylum and it's molly denom ninety nine or
molly B denim, but I think they call it MO
ninety nine, which is super useful. But it's this is
a decay product, uh, one of the decay products of uranium.
And it is really useful for medical imaging, like to
see if your hard is bumping right, or to see
(05:14):
if your cancer is metastasized and the kind of freaky
thing is until it was actually made and used from
weapons grade uranium UH, and then starting in two thousand ten,
now that it's a low enriched version that they used
for it, and I saw that there are nuclear reactors
that produce electricity that don't have to use enriched uranium.
They can actually use like natural uranium or and still
(05:38):
generate electricity from that UM, which I think that might be.
I don't know if that's a trend or not, but
I'd like to see it become one where it's like,
if we can get away with nuclear enrichment UH and
not do that anymore, it would save a lot of
problems because nuclear in and of itself isn't necessarily problematic,
and it is like low carbon or almost carbon free
(06:00):
a form of energy, but there's a lot of problems
with the byproducts of the enrichment processes we'll talk about. Yeah.
And another cool little um fact about when they first
discovered uranium as well as radium is that there really
uses Radium was used to make glow paint, and UH,
(06:23):
uranium was used as a glaze, a decorative glaze, and
then all of a sudden they're like, hey, guys, this
stuff is actually nuclear no wonder, it glows and it
makes a nice glaze. Yeah, there's there's also something called
vasoline glass, which is a collector's item, but it has
like a radioactive glow to it because it has uranium
in it. And then Fiesta weare like that celebrated twentieth
(06:46):
century dinner ware the red um used uranium in its
glaze until what's it called Fia you know, the really
right colored play and bowls and everything that we're like
really kind of big from the thirties until I think
it's still around today. You've seen it. Yeah, I like
(07:07):
that stuff. That's uh, we have some of that stuff
for like you know, barbecues and stuff exactly well instead
of fine china and Chris right. Um, So if you
if you got it in h nineteen seventy three or prior,
you may want to just update your collection because that's
stuff we we have like the new target versions of that. Okay,
(07:31):
that's probably not radioactive so uranium. It was discovered in
seventeen eighty nine by a subject of the Kingdom of Bohemia,
which is present day Czech Republic. His name was Martin
Claproth and he was actually a German chemist. I guess
he liked Bohemia more. But um, he discovered it and
(07:51):
named it uranium after the planet Uranus, which have been
discovered earlier in the decade. And I guess it was
still just the hot new thing everybody's mind, because that's
what uranium is named after. Yeah, and there's you know,
there's different kinds of uranium U. It has different kinds
of isotopes, which basically are the different forms with different
(08:13):
number of neutrons. And depending on how stable each isotope is,
each version is Some are more radioactive, some are more
likely to uh, to produce nuclear fissions, some are less likely.
I think you mentioned uranium two thirty five is the
money when for you know, for nuclear war and I
guess for power production too, Right, that's the one you want.
You don't want any of that garbage to thirty eight stuff,
(08:37):
but to thirty eight is the most abundant, so there
is more of that stuff. Uh, And you don't even
ask about thirty seven. So there's three that are naturally
occurring to two thirty four And what's really cool about
it is uranium two thirty five and uranium two thirty
eight or what are called primordial um elements where they're
(08:59):
like genuine, real deal star dust, like they were created
in or shortly after the Big Bang. So the uranium
around here on Earth was like was around at the
beginning of the universe. It's way older than Earth, hence
the name primordial and right exactly. And it's half life
get this, chuck, is three thousand years, which is you
(09:21):
know why it's been around for longer than Earth. Did
you get that joke? I mean, someone's gonna be mad
at us, but oh man, they're gonna be so man. Now. Actually,
the half life of two thirty five is about seven
million years and then two eight a half life. So
if you take a gram of pure uranium two thirty
(09:43):
eight and store it in a container and you come
back and check on it in four and a half
billion years, only half of it will have decayed in
that time. It is ancient stuff, and it's pretty cool.
We figured out a way to use that primordial element,
this ancient stuff that was created in the Big Bang,
to generate steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity.
(10:08):
It's amazing. Uh. If you want to mind this stuff,
Australia is number one in the world. I think about
thirty percent of all uranium in the world is in Australia. Uh.
Number two is Kazakhstan. Yeah, that was a terrible boor
maybe the worst I've ever heard. Wow. Number three is Russia.
(10:31):
I'm really ashamed of myself. And then number four is
is Canada. It Russias got Canada beat Yeah, Russia's number
three ahead of Canada this year. Okay, gotcha Gota? Yeah,
because I know, I guess last year Kazakhstan came up
in the last Within about the last decade, Canada's got
the number one producing mind Cigar Lake mine. It produced
(10:53):
something like thirtcent of the world's geranium single handedly in
two thousand nineteen, just this one mine in can Nada. Um.
And Canada's uranium is so rich. Remember we rich? Is it?
I'm glad you asked Chuck. Um. It's so rich that
they have to use robots to mine it because the
humans can't get near it. It's too dangerous. Well, yeah,
(11:17):
this will be talking about that a little bit later.
It's as rich as it comes, which is good for Canada. Sure,
the US doesn't have a ton of it. UM. I
believe that there are currently six states that have mining operations. Wyoming,
New Mexico and Utah have the bulk of it, and
then there's also some in Arizona, Nebraska, and Texas. And
(11:39):
Arizona's is interesting because there is UH in Grand Canyon
National Park, there is uranium. And in twelve President Obama said,
you know what, for twenty years, there's a ban on
uranium uranium mining on this million acres of land around
the Grand Canyon. And then just a couple of months ago,
in February of this year, they passed the House passed
(12:01):
the Grand Canyon Protection Act to make that permanent. And
I think it now goes to Senate committee. UH. It
passed generally, of course, our long party lines, with Democrats saying,
you know, we got to protect our land and Republicans saying, oh,
it's fine, right. I saw I saw a press release
(12:22):
from Mark Kelly, who's now a Senator from Arizona, and
he and I think Kristen Cinema um co sponsored a
bill because they're both from Arizona to basically do what
that House bill did was protect or make that band permanent. UM.
And in this press release, he said that the the
Grand Canyon generated different one. I think it was a
(12:43):
concurrent bill. Yeah, it was a different bill. I think
that there was the House bill in the Senate bill.
I think they do this sometimes. It makes it happen
faster because when it goes through committee, it gets they
come together and work out the differences, rather than you know,
it goes through the House and then it goes to Senate.
Can happen concurrent, Yeah, concurrently. I think that's what was
going on. But anyway, the upshot of it is that
(13:06):
the in the press release, Mark Kelly said that the
Grand Canyon generates something like one point three billion dollars
in tourist revenue for the state of Arizona every year,
which is like, how long is it going to take
you to to mind that much uranium? It just makes
sense to protect the Grand Canyon and that just that
case alone. Yeah, I mean, that was the point that
(13:28):
that they were making on the Democrat side, is the
amount of uranium was I can't remember, but it was
not that much. I think it was like less than
one percent of the total in the United States, and
they were just saying the benefits just don't even come
closed out weighing the risks here. Yeah, And I mean again, well,
like I don't think I'm not, but I would say
we're not here to just knock uranium as a as
(13:50):
an energy source or even uranium mining when it's done correctly.
But yeah, when when it butts up against maybe the
most celebrated natural treasure in an entire nation, on an
entire continent, maybe just skip that one. I think is
kind of my my take on it. Yeah, to squeeze
(14:11):
just a little bit of urania there. Yeah, it's just
so shortsighted. I'm so sick of shortsightedness. To um. There's
a cool quote in here, and this this was from
originally from the Housetop Works website, right ah, yeah, it
was as a matter of fact, Laurel Bells uh and
this guy, Michael Ahmandson, he's a historian on the atomic age.
(14:34):
He's talking about, you know, basically World War two coming
around and uranium being the hot ticket. And he said,
uranium went from being a weed to a weapon. Uh,
instead of serving as this useless pigment and glaze, became
a strategic element of war. And I think that happened
pretty quickly when the arms race heated up at like Russia,
the Soviet Union, and the United States were really really
(14:57):
moving fast to get as much uranium as possible on
their hands. And I mean, up to that point, uranium
was like again there it was used for pigment, a
ceramic glaze, not for much. And then the Manhattan Project happens,
and all of a sudden, it's like every country in
the world is looking to see whether they have uranium
deposits or not. Because the USSR in the United States
(15:17):
one as much as it can get, not just even
necessarily to build up its stock, poled to keep the
other guy from getting his hands on it as well.
So the the the human introduction, the general public's introduction
to uranium was kind of jarring in that sense because
it came hand in hand with the atomic age. Uranium
to thirty five was what was used as the nuclear
(15:39):
core for um Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped
on Hiroshima. So it was like it was a very
um memorable debut uranium had in the public mind for
and it stayed that way for a while until it's
sort to become associated more with nuclear energy. Did we
take a break? I think we should take a break. Yeah,
(16:02):
all right, let's do it. Stuff you should know, h
and sh stuff you should know. Alright. So let's say
(16:28):
you want to mind uranium. The first thing you have
to do is find uranium. And you know you're looking
for these large deposits. It's you know, you don't open
up a mine unless you do the math and you
figure out that hey, there's enough. I mean, it's a
really simple math formula basically like this is how much
it costs to mind, and this is how much we
(16:48):
can possibly get from this place. Is it worth it
or not? Because I think one and every one thousand
exploration sites of all metals and minerals are ever really
used as the mining site. So they're just they're poking
around at first, and they're using these Uh you can
actually walk around with a Geiger counter on the on
(17:10):
the ground and look for it close up after you
have used something called a I'm gonna go with centilometer.
Oh yeah, that's good. I was gonna say sentilometer because
it's based on the word scintillating, like exciting. You can
do that from further range and that picks up gamma
rays at at bigger distances, so you'll use that at first.
(17:30):
Then you'll zero in with that Geiger counter. You'll check
out the landscape and see how viable it is, and
you know, you'll just enter that all into your little
spreadsheet or however you're determining that equation, and if it
spits out, yes, good place for a mine, then they'll
go through this really long, arduous process of getting permitted. Yeah,
(17:51):
and the stuff that you're going to mind then becomes
what's known as or bodies, which are deposits that are
economically worth mining and extracting. Right, Um, and yeah, it
does take a lot of time. I saw this article
says between three and ten years to go from basically
prospecting to production. I saw a ten to fifteen elsewhere,
(18:15):
but right to add another year onto that one. But um, yeah,
so say anywhere between three and fifteen years. I'm leaning
more towards the ten to fifteen years side, just because
of the permitting, having to deal with the public saying
like you're not going to do that in my backyard
kind of thing. Um, it's there. It's rather involved. It's
involved for any mind because you have to plan the
(18:37):
mind too. Is You'll see in a second, like we've
got to. You've got a plan what kind of mind
you're going to build. You have to plan the mind itself.
You have to figure out what to do with it,
who you're gonna sell it to. Then you have to
go through the permitting process. Then you have to actually
start to extract it. And one of the things that
really jumped out to me, Chuck, was how few people
it actually takes to mine. Yeah, I mean this article
(19:00):
made it sound like kind of a full scale operation.
I'm sure they range in size, but it has to
be a certain size to make it worth your while.
Like we said, so it seems like a hundred people
are less, yeah, total and run this mining. So the
whole shebang, hundred people of the mine uranium, which I
just thought that was really surprising. Yeah, and we should
(19:21):
also mention too that, uh, they just don't go digging
in there, like uranium could be mistaken for u when
it decays. Their byproducts called daughter elements radon and radium,
and that can also set off the Geiger counter. So well, yeah,
they make they make super sure that it's uranium down
there before they get coming. Right. Well, that's actually how
they find it using the Geiger counters because because the
(19:42):
uranium itself it has such a long half life, it
decays so slowly that it's it's daughter isotopes or daughter
elements that are the ones where setting the Geiger counter off.
But then you have to say, okay, well, how much
uranium is in here, because I don't want that rate on.
That's just a hazard to our health. Even though we
use it to find the uranium. How much uranium is
(20:03):
here and how much rate on is there? Because if
you find a really really ancient deposit that's just been
sitting undisturbed and it has been slowly but surely decaying,
all of those daughter isotopes are going to keep building up.
So you might find a deposit that's a lot of
raid on you don't want to have anything to do with,
but not that much uranium to thirty five, you know. Yeah,
(20:24):
So once you have found your stuff, you've got your permit,
you're all ready to go. It's ten to fifteen years on.
You need to figure out and you probably already figure
out at this point what kind of mind you're gonna have. Uh,
And there's a few different ones. I know, we've talked
about mountain top removal mining and regular underground mining, um,
but open pit mining is one one thing they can do,
(20:48):
which is basically they blast away land and create a
big pit and then they go in there and they
remove big uranium or chunks and say, here you go,
go process it, go crush it up and slurry and
what's that? Uh, what's that saying? They have? That's kind
of cool. So apparently the miners themselves like, if you're
a if you're a uranium miner, you're not just an
(21:11):
ordinary miner, in no disrespect to ordinary miners, but you're
especially trained, especially to recognize uranium because it's up to
you in an open pit process to pick the stuff
out and and get as as much of the actual
uranium as possible. So they do have this saying a
mind is a terrible thing to waste. You want to
(21:31):
get all the uranium out, and a waste is a
terrible thing to mind. You don't want to mind the
stuff that's not uranium. And so I added a little
bit of extra to that, saying it's a lot more
succinct than that. But I think you get let's hear it. Oh,
I thought you I thought you were gonna add even more. No, surprisingly,
I wasn't uh the um, I think you can also
(21:57):
strip mine, Is that true? Yeah? Open pit and strip
mining are like within if you've got the deposit within
like fot of the surface. Um. But I think the
big difference between those two, chucks, Strip mining is just
like taking the layers of soil off the top until
you reach the deposit. Whereas open pit, like you were saying,
you use you know, you blasted in the rubble. But
(22:17):
they're related, they're like, um, they're surface mining. I think
they both qualifies that. Yeah. I mean then you've got
underground mining, of course, which is just deeper and they
you go down in those mine shafts or what's called adits,
which are the vertical and horizontal tunnels, and it's just
way more labor intensive. It's obviously a bit more expensive,
(22:38):
it's a bit more dangerous, higher health risks. Uh. So
they would prefer out of those two two, probably open
pit mine. Well, yes, but it also depends on you
know who you're talking about prefers that. Like, if you're
a miner, you probably prefer open pit because you're exposed
open air. If you're um concerned agent of the e
(23:03):
p A, you probably prefer a well run underground mind,
because if it's done correctly and built properly, it's probably
going to have less of an environmental foot print then
blowing a huge pit into the earth and getting all
the radioactive chunks out. Yeah, and I think the one
that's has the least environmental impact is in situ, which
(23:26):
means in the original place. And this is interesting and
that they basically, you know, they don't take these big
chunks out of the ground and process it. They use chemicals.
They use baking soda and sort of like a club
soda mixture solution, and they they inject it into the
rock through pipes and that separates that the uranium from
(23:48):
the rock, but it turns it into a solution that
they then pump back up to the surface. Yeah, there's
injection wells that go down into the deposit because sometimes
the like uranium can be kind of suspence ended in
sand or sandstone or even gravel or near the water table. Yes,
so that's the that's something that confounds it. Let's say
(24:09):
you're going and you've got top soil and a little
bit of bed rock, and then you've got a nice
aquifer of fresh, unpolluted drinking water. Then below that you've
got a big clay strip of impermeable clay. Then you've
got the uranium, and you've got another clay st're pulling
that uranium deposits sand in between it. Right, your job
is to drill down past that aquifer, past the clay
(24:32):
into the uranium sand injected with all that stuff, and
then leached the dissolved uranium out through a pump through
that aquifer without leaking it into the aquifer, and then
taking it off site for processing. And if you do
it right, you don't pollute the groundwater, and you don't
(24:54):
disrupt or make the the clay permeable so that you
actually like let the uranium lead out of deposit. If
you do it right, it would have the least environmental footprint.
It seems to me, probably the trickiest version of it. Yeah,
And I think sometimes when you combine too regular words,
it just ends up sounding super gross. And I think
(25:15):
leakey deposit fits into that category. Yeah, yeah, it definitely does,
especially a moist leaky deposit. I'm sorry. Uh. Then there's
heap leaching, which is terrible. It sounds like kind of
the worst of the environmental as far as environmental impact goes.
And that is when it sounds like, unless I'm reading
this wrong, they extract all the ore from the ground,
(25:39):
the big chunks, they bust it up on the ground
above ground, and then they leach that pile with chemicals
to separate it. So it's almost like it's almost like institute,
but above ground they're just like, hey, let's just take
it up here then leach it. Yeah, a lot of
these have a lot to do with one another. I
think with open pit you actually end up using heap
(26:00):
bleaching a lot of times because you're taking those chunks
that you blasted out of the earth, and you're you're
pouring acid, spraying acid all over this pile, and the
stuff that trickles down is caught by these these um
pipes and your uraniums dissolved in there, or like you're saying,
you're spraying it with hydrogen peroxide or club soda or
something like that. So it's all kind of you know,
(26:23):
you can do some of them in conjunction with one another,
but the point is you're getting that uranium out of
the ground somehow, and then you're trying to you're starting
the process of extracting it from the ore as best
you can. That's right. Then you've got your stuff. Then
you need to make it into different stuff. You need
to mill it at a uranium mill. And what you
(26:46):
want eventually to get to is and it's it's pretty
funny that they name it this. It's uranium powder, but
they call it yellow cake, which just sounds delicious. It says,
but if you ate that, you would be in big, big,
big trouble. Yes, very big trouble. And it's um it's
very highly regulated, of course. UM. I think they like
to put these mills pretty close by the minds themselves.
(27:11):
I think the US Atomic Energy Commission really kind of
aids people and saying, let's just bring it this all
close together, and you take that dry uranium or or
and you just you mill it up basically. I mean,
it's not unlike a lot of mining operations. At the
end of the day, you know, you're basically just trying
to separate all the byproducts that are not byproducts, but
(27:34):
all the stuff that you don't want out of the
way to get it gone. Yeah, that's that's what they're doing.
They just it's just depending on what mineral you're after. Um,
you're going to use different chemicals in um stages of
chemicals in the process. Right, So yeah, when when you
produce this yellow kike, what you've basically done is separated
(27:55):
natural uranium away from the ore, the rock that it
was part of or the sand that it was part of,
and you you you compress it into these yellow cakes
and you send it off. So now you've got um
milled and processed uranium, but it still isn't enriched. It's
still in its natural form and in about its natural percentages.
(28:16):
So natural uranium. If you have like a thing a
yellow cake in your hands, again, don't eat it. It
sounds delicious, it's just not it's not cheat cake. Which
even if I knew that was radioactive, I would still
I wouldn't be able to help myself. I would still
eat it. So you've got the yellow cake in your hands.
What you're holding is nine three percent uranium two thirty eight,
(28:40):
which is the one with the very very long half life,
that's not very radioactive as far as humans are concerned,
just holding things. And then it's point seven percent uranium
two thirty five. And again there's at least one Canadian
reactor that supposedly can create electricity through yellow cake. Um. Yeah, yeah,
that's how I was saying before that, that it can
(29:01):
in its natural form, which is great because all of
this mining and processing it's it's potentially harmful enough to
the environment. But wait until we tell you about enrichment,
right right, yeah, because what did you say? It was
point seven percent in its natural state and the Yeah,
the goal is to get it and it's not like
it has The goal is to enrich it to about
(29:22):
two to five, right, which is still that's significant, But
that's for if you want nuclear fuel, if you want
it for military purposes, you have to enrich that point
seven percent of uranium to thirty five up to and yes,
so that's what I was saying. If you get your
hands on some military enriched uranium, you could fuel a
(29:43):
lot of nuclear reactions with that. UM And the point
of enrichment. Enrichment is just another word for concentrating, basically,
where you're stripping out now from the yellow cake, not
just the other stuff that's not uranium, but the all
the uranium that's not uranium to thirty five five And
so it takes a lot of yellow cake to get
(30:04):
uranium to thirty five in enough abundance to actually produce fuel,
like for example, if you are if you're upgrading yellow
cake a thousand pounds of yellow cake from points a
thousand pounds of yellow cake, if you're if you're enriching
it up to five per cent. At the end of that,
(30:26):
you would have I think of fifty pounds of uranium
two thirty five, the stuff you could actually use to
make pellets out of in fuel and yeah, and then
you'd have nine and fifty pounds of what's called depleted uranium,
which is mostly uranium to thirty eight, some uranium two
thirty five that you couldn't get out of there, and
(30:47):
all sorts of other heavy metals and potentially radioactive impurities.
And you can use that for your glaze, your fiesta air.
When you're enriching to what your byproduct is going to
be ultimately is called hexa uranium hexafluoride gas UH, and
that will go into a cylinder and then as it cools,
(31:08):
it becomes a solid, and that's where you have your
ultimately your solid little you know, you can press it
down and you've got your little fuel pellet and that interesting.
They go from powder to gas too solid to fuel pellet,
And so when you take that that enriched uranium, you
turn it into pellets. That's the fabrication process, and I
(31:28):
believe yet another company is responsible for that. You just
get increasingly more specialized, and you even start out again
with specialized miners who are mining the uranium, and then
as it passes through hands to hands, you it's just
getting more and more specialized. Uh. And then finally you
have either enriched uranium for nuclear fuel or enrich uranium
(31:48):
to um explode significant portions of the planet up with. Yeah,
what I'm curious about is if it's all a group
profit share or if I if they just have a
fee that they charged to mill and a fee to enrich,
or if they're like, no, we're all in this together
and you know, we we get ultimately part of the profits.
(32:11):
I honestly don't know to tell you the truth. I mean,
I'm someone will know. Yeah, somebody will know. I'm guessing
because it's even though there's federal regulations, I don't think
the market itself is necessarily regulated. Um. Right, Oh that's
not true. The market would have to be regulated, But
I don't know if there's if it's regulated in the
(32:31):
sense that like it's it's not capitalists or there's there's
not a capitalist drive pushing it out. I'm not sure.
So we need to talk about health concerns for humans
and then the environment. So should we do health and
then break or break and then do both? I say
break and do both, Chuck, because I think we've come
to a pretty good breaking point. Huzzah him. Stuff you
(33:05):
should know. Okay, so we've got this stuff, we mind it.
First of all, we found it. I was really proud
of us or even finding it, Chuck. And then I
was astounded that we were able to not only mill
(33:28):
the stuff, but also enrich it and then fabricated into
nuclear fuel. And if you combine all those processes together,
you have what's called the front end of the nuclear
fuel cycle. And that's basically what we're talking about today,
the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, which is
basically what you do with this stuff once it's a rich,
enriched or if it's used as spent fuel. Um, that's
(33:50):
a whole other podcast that I would really love to
do someday totally, and our particular the stuff you should
know operation it's very fishing because we sent Jerry out
ahead and her hair glows green. Then where we've had her,
we've got our spot. She's like Hamana hammana hammana plus tax.
(34:14):
Oh Man. My friend Meredith, by the way, told me
someone alerted her to that, and because she was the
one who used to say that, her and my friend Bob,
and she told me what it meant, and now I
can't remember. I think it was just some I think
Bob said it was like someone he would say it
when he saw a hot guy or whatever. And if
(34:34):
he was, you know, a hot guy would be Hameda
hammana hammeda and a super hot guy would be Hameda
hammeda plus tax. That's pretty great. So it's just a designation.
I think. I gotta love Bob. He lives in New York.
The best you know, Bob moves around between New Jersey
and Portland. I think when you met him it was
in Portland, but you may have met him in both actually,
(34:55):
because I associate him with New York for some reason. Well,
he always due to Portland is a I'm not sure
why Bob moved to Portland, because he's a very New
York guy. He grew up in the New Jersey area.
But I'm not sure where he is right now. I
need to get in touch with Bob right home. Alright,
So health concerns for humans, you know, we there. You know,
(35:17):
people can debate whether or not we should mind uranium
all day long. But there's neither side that says it's
fine for people, it's good for a water supply, like
everyone acknowledges that it has serious health impacts for us
and our planet. Yeah, and one of the big ones
is again remember it occurs that co occurs with its
daughter um isotopes or its daughter elements, and in particular,
(35:42):
raid on is a real problem because rate on is
a daughter of radium two twenty six rate on gases.
Radium to comes from uranium to thirty eight decay. Right,
there's I think fourteen daughters and they follow this predictable
stage is uranium decays. Rate On gases the second leading
(36:03):
cause of lung cancer after smoking tobacco. It's the number
one cause of lung cancer among non smokers. And you
can actually get it from just sitting around in your house.
You It's the problem with it is you can inhale it,
and when you inhale it into your lungs, it becomes
I believe, polonium um, which decays itself in your lungs
(36:28):
and releases gamma radiation and alpha particles and beta particles
and does all sorts of terrible stuff to you which
can give you lung cancer over time. But like I said,
you can get it from sitting in your house. You
should actually get your house check for rate on once
in a while um, because it's possible there's a a
uranium deposit under your house somewhere and that radon has
(36:50):
made its way up. When you crack open the earth
to get to purposefully get to a uranium deposit, radon
is gonna come out in aces, which makes it a
very hazardous thing for uranium miners. Yeah, and if you
work at an underground mine especially, they're gonna be I
don't know how often, but they're gonna be checking and
(37:12):
testing for rate on gas all over that work site.
It's not just like right where they're they're digging or
whatever blasting. It's gonna be in the in the break room,
It's going to be in the kitchen, in the in
the office trailers. Like they're they're testing for rate on
gas everywhere at least here in the US it will
(37:33):
be man, I A'm gonna eat none of those os,
maybe some cheat cake from publisher. I don't even start
draw the line. Um, uranium itself actually is it's it's
toxicity is really the biggest danger there. Uh and like
ingesting that you can have serious kidney problems. Um, but
like you said, usually radium and radon are the biggest.
(37:58):
I mean that stuff can get in your bones. Yeah, yeah,
it's a real problem. Um. The thing is so like uranium,
when it releases alpha particles, those things kind of tend
to bounce right off for your skin. So with with uranium,
remember how it's not particularly radioactive. That's if it's just
sitting there outside, like even if you're holding in your hands.
(38:19):
It becomes particularly problematic when it's broken and you either
inhale it like you're inhaling rate on or you ingest it.
It just gets on your fingers or your food or something.
It's this invisible thing, but it goes into your body
and it reeks havoc in particular kidney damage because it
gets into your blood. Your poor kidneys have to filter
it out of the blood. And it's like I'm not
equipped for this kind of thing. Um, it might even
(38:42):
say Hamana hameda hammeda itself, and then you have real
serious kidney problems after that. Yeah. And since part of
the process involves breaking it up, like that's the whole goal, Uh,
then you know it's it's a it's an issue. But
also it also is problematic with depleted uranium two, which
(39:02):
again is the byproduct of uranium enrichment. It's a big, big,
old dense hunk of uranium two thirty eight and a
bunch of other heavy metals. And they use that for
all sorts of stuff. They use it for UM shielding
to shield out other other radiation. They use it as
weights and airplanes, they use it um for bullets. It's
(39:24):
like tank piercing bullets. And I was reading a V.
A Um post about how some Gulf war veterans may
have been exposed to depleted uranium UM toxicity because if
they came under friendly fire because some of the shells
were coated and depleted uranium, because it's so dense, it'll
(39:45):
go right through a tank. But it also has this
terrible secondary side effect where that means that the depleted
uranium breaks up and it can be inhaled, it can
get ingested, it can go into your skin. So even
if you weren't killed by the depleted uranium shell piercing
the tank that you're in, you may actually get cancer
later on or kidney failure down the road because of
that depleted uranium. So there is like a real problem
(40:08):
with it. And then above all that too or in
addition to it, it's a it's toxic just because it's
a heavy metal as well, which you don't want anywhere
in your in your body. Yeah, and this is you know,
we haven't even really touched on the environmental impact. Obviously.
These minds that were around and then abandoned before you know,
(40:29):
the sort of mid nineteen seventies are super dangerous places
because they leave behind something called tailings. These are those
leftover pieces of ore that they don't use, and they
have those byproducts that we were talking about, like radon
and radium, but also polonium and sometimes even arsenic. And
if it was pre nine five or so, an abandoned
(40:50):
uranium mind was not cleaned up very well. Um, they've
had to do a lot of work since then to
clean this stuff up. Like things are way different now
and they've gone back to try and clean and stuff up,
but it's um, you know, the wind and the rain
carries the stuff away, it gets into the water supply. Uh.
And it's like I think they said something like, you know,
it takes forty years to restore the environment back to
(41:13):
its natural state. And I hear that, I'm like, no way, man,
you can. You can never restore it to its natural state,
like as if it had never happened. I don't I
don't buy I'm with you. I don't buy an either.
That seems a really short time for a radioactive substance
contaminating groundwater for pize's sake, you know, but this is
something that's especially affected uh Native American population and even
(41:34):
more specifically the Navajo Nation, because a lot of uranium
minds are in the you know, hundreds of thousands of
acres of the Navajo land. I think seventy million pounds
of uranium reserves in the nineteen seventies were on Navajo land.
And in on July six, nineteen seventy nine, there was
(41:57):
the biggest expulsion of radioactive material in the history of
the United States when a dan broke at the church
Rocky Ranium Mill operated by the United Nuclear Corporation under uh, Well,
I say, Andrew Jimmy Carter's watch. It's not like it
was his fault or anything, but he is the one
of the people who first said, hey, we should really
use the stuff for nuclear power. Yeah, and I mean
this happened while everybody was thinking about Three Mile Island,
(42:20):
and still no one ever heard of It happened four
months after Three Mile Island and three Mile Island that
you know, I think we should do one on like
nuclear releases a whole episode on that. But Three Mile
Island scared the Bejesus out of everybody because all of
a sudden, this green nuclear energy was really threatening and scary,
and it really put a dent in the public opinion
(42:42):
on nuclear powder power. But with the the Church Rock release,
it just dwarfed Three Mile Islands released, and still I
hadn't heard of it until two days ago when I
started researching this, And it's like it was a huge deal,
like people dying, well, like going It contaminated the river,
like ninety three million gallons of toxic radioactive sludge tailings
(43:08):
from uranium mining just contaminated the river. And they did
tests of the drinking water eighty miles downstream of this release,
and they found that it had seven thousand times the
acceptable radioactivity of drinking water, the acceptable drinking water standards,
seven thousand times eighty miles downstream. And just because it
(43:30):
happened on this Navajo land, everybody's like, I hadn't heard
of that. Well, and they I mean, all of it
as a crime, but the real crime at the center
of it is is they didn't even notify them hardly.
They did a really bad job of even letting them know. So, like,
that's eighty miles away, you're getting radioactive fallout in the water.
But right there where it happened, they were walking into
(43:52):
the river like they always do, and they were their
skin was literally burned on contact, and they were getting
boils because from this Yellow River all of us. Yeah,
it's just it's so shameful and it's and whoever wrote
this article, I think was from the Navajo Nation and
they said, yes, it was an accident, but Exon Valdis
was an accident, and they're always accidents. Three Mile Island
(44:12):
was an accident. But that's kind of the point. It's like,
accidents happen, and when an accident happens at a uranium operation,
it's catastrophic. And I mean, like even the best designed
mine operation has to figure out what to do with
those tailings, all that toxic sludge and radioactive sledge and
all gets combined. And if you don't design your damn right,
your damn is gonna fail. But even if you do
(44:32):
design your damn right, how long is it going to
stick around? Even under the best of circumstances. You know,
this is not just your normal stuff. This is stuff
that's going to be radioactive for a very long time.
So it's a it's a real problem. Like figuring out
what to do with this on the back end is
a huge problem that humanity just keeps kicking down the road.
(44:54):
You know what other two words sound gross together? Let
me let me hear it. Nuclear release. That's not as
bad as what was the other one. I don't even remember.
I think it was like, already forgot have moist in it?
Well you added moist, but I don't know, I always
add moist. Uh, just to put a tag on all this.
(45:14):
They do require companies, I believe, to um engage in
what's called the reclamation bond, which basically says, hey, we're
set us setting aside so much of our budget to
come back and clean this up, so they can't at
the end say we went broke. Sorry, So they set
aside that money up front, supposedly, and the fines are
pretty steep, up to a quarter of a million bucks um,
(45:38):
you know, if you break these land management rules. So
they you know, all the incentive is there for them
to do a good job, and their reputation is at stakes.
So we don't want to make it appear like it's
just willy nilly, they're just doing whatever they are. Accidents
and they they a company wouldn't work again if they
have one of those accidents. So but but it's you know,
it's also it's just one of those things. Well, it's
(45:59):
also a demonst station of like it matters who is
in charge of the country at any given point in time,
because you have to have a will to enforce those
regulations that are meant to keep communities safe, or you
don't and you just let business do its thing. And
that seems to go hand in hand with an increase
in accident you know. Ye, so you got anything else,
(46:20):
I got nothing else? A little bit of contempt but
I I have I have hope that we can figure
it out because I think that nuclear energy is not
inherently problematic, it's just our understanding of how to use
it is. Yeah, we did a good episode. Thanks. I
think so too, Chuck. Uh well, thanks, thanks? Yeah, Okay,
(46:41):
how about thanks for the last one. Thanks for nothing
for this one. I guess if you want to know
more about uranium and uranium mining and all that jazz,
go onto the Internet and then keep an ear out
for our episode on accidental nuclear releases sometime in the future.
Since I said sometime in the future, it's time for
listener mayo, I'm gonna call this from a teacher. Hey guys,
(47:04):
my name is Emilyam, a full time high school teacher
from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I want to thank you for
a number of things. First of all, your podcast on
stamp collecting was hilarious. I was in stitchous thinking about
Josh's joke about FDR coming up with terrible stamp ideas
for the Postmaster General. Additionally, as you know, this pandemic
has been so hard on nearly everyone, but I think
(47:25):
maybe hardest on students and teachers. Uh. As teachers We've
gone from me honored thank to Dedmired a year ago
for all the quick work we are able to do
when we first shut down, to being vilified for not
doing enough. It's been exhausting. At the end of the day,
it's been hard to find much joy in anything, the
exception your podcast. The excitement and enthusiasm I have for
knowledge is the only thing my brain seems to up
(47:45):
space for these days, especially as of late, I found
myself literally laughing out loud more often at your jokes
and one liners. Uh, at least truly tired obviously. Uh.
This is so invaluable to me, as most days end
with me feeling like crying or calling in to a
ball and sleeping. Also, your most recent post on your
respective Instagram accounts showing you all together give me hope
(48:07):
that things are returning to normal soon. All this to say,
you're providing such an essential service to people around the globe.
For most of us who have been confined to our
homes and towns, you bring the world to us. I
am and will forever be grateful that is Emily Gunch,
a truly tired teacher, and Emily that that means more
(48:27):
to us than you will ever understand, So thanks for
sending that. Let's also really well said. I'm glad that
this is like a teacher totally and uh if you
don't know what she's talking about. We posted photos of
the three of us together again, including a picture of
Jerry at Josh mcclark's Instagram and at Chuck the podcasters. Wow, nice, Chuck.
(48:48):
I didn't know we were going to get an insta
shout out. We never plug our instagrams, but why not?
Why not? Why not? You just don't see a picture
of Jerry. Yeah, people tape over her mouth, over it,
scowling at her, and she looks sheepish. People really did
(49:09):
lose their minds to see Jerry's face, her beautiful face. Um,
so okay. If you want to get in touch of this,
like ms Gunch did right, Yes, gunch rhymes with lunch.
She's so nice. I nailed it, you can send us
an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
(49:32):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
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Josh Clark
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