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Uranium mining in australia potential dangers
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Introduction:
Uranium has been mined in Australia since 1954 (NWA, 2014). Otherwise Australia is home to around 40% of the world's uranium holds and right now supplies around 20% of the global market (Australian conservation federation, 2015.). However, mining of uranium has some economic benefits and creates job opportunities for a lot of people but its effects on health and environment is more affecting than few benefits. Despite the fact that uranium mining aides in expanding fare and enhancing the economy of a nation, the risky impacts as far as wellbeing and environment of uranium mining are exceptionally harming and uranium mining ought to be banned. Australia is one of the best examples for uranium mining though its position is on the top.
Counter argument:
Uranium mining is beneficial for Australian economy. Recently Australia is operating 3 mines
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‘’The Australian association demand that Australian has enough saves to be to uranium what Saudi Arabia is to oil.’’ The examination proved wrong in 2011 while it figures that Saudi oil produces 466 times more income than Australian uranium. Export revenue could quadruple and uranium would fall outside of the top 20 list of exporting product comparing with number 1 and 2 iron ore and concentrates 62.7% and coal 47.9% whereas uranium is only 0.6%. Uranium every annum income would add up to around $10 billion and thus would fall short of Iron ore revenue by a factor of 6.5%. Otherwise, in the decade of nuclear power ‘renaissance’ and it didn’t increase at all.(The Economist, 2012). Perhaps, only 1 uranium mine has been begun operation in the past decade named Honeymoon in South Australia. Before long after first reaction from the little Honeymoon deposit, “project partner Mitsui (49%) announced its decision to withdraw as it couldn’t foresee sufficient economic return from the project”. Overall it’s not so beneficial for Australian
On top of it being cleaner it is cheaper the mining of uranium is cheaper than the mining of coal
Australia’s resources otherwise known as factors of production – natural resources, labour, capital and enterprise, are relatively scarce, resulting in the economic problem of relative scarcity as we cannot satisfy all our needs and wants in Australia as they are unlimited. Collective and individual wants are
Before we can analyze the ethical use of DU ammunition, it is important to first establish the technology behind DU and DU weapons. Uranium is one of the heaviest elements found in nature and is emits alpha, beta, and gamma particles. It is 1.7 times denser than lead.12 The half-life of U238 (DU is 99% U238) is 4.5 billion years!13 Uranium byproducts(such as Thorium (Th232)) have even longer half-lives, making uranium an element that gets more radioactive during its own decay process.5 Natural uranium is 99.274% U238, 0.720% U235, and 0.0055% U234.14a Uranium is enriched when its contents of U235 reaches 3.2-3.6% (since U235 is fissible). Weapon-grade uranium is +90% U235.14a What is depleted uranium? We start out with natural uranium and extract enriched uranium for nuclear fuel and weaponry. The leftover from the extraction process is something very similar to natural uranium, known as “depleted uranium”. The only difference is that DU has 0.202% of U235 and 0.0008% of U234.14a How much DU do we currently have? As of June 1998, we have around 57,800 huge steel cylinders of DU or 496,000 metric tons. 14b Storage of DU is very complicated and problematic since corrosion of DU storage cylinders often occurs over relatively short periods of time.15
First, the stance on nuclear power and uranium mining has been at the centre of fierce controversy. Tim Flannery stated (Boyd 2006):
mining of uranium which is a resource used to creating nuclear weapons also causes nuclear
Contamination from the depleted uranium weaponries and other pollution caused by war is alleged for the rise in congenital birth defects, cancer, and other illnesses (Jamail, 2013).
...nce World War II to the present day, the technology of nuclear power has increased significantly in terms of energy output and safety. The energy efficiency of nuclear power is far superior to its counterpart fossil fuel and renewable energy. Compared to fossil fuels, tiny amounts of fuel used by nuclear reactors is equivalent to a large sum of coal. This is a no brainer. Why mine a ton of coal when a little uranium can be used to gain the same amount of energy? Not only is it efficient, it’s safe to use. Used fuel is packed away in storage safely, so there isn’t any chance of radiation leaking out. In the present day, nuclear power incidents haven’t been occurring lately. Advancements in technology and equipment used have made nuclear energy a very reliable and safe source of energy. With today’s energy needs, nuclear power has the ability to keep up in the race.
There are many developing countries also looking into nuclear energy because of all the benefits nuclear power has to offer. As of right now between sixteen and thirty nuclear power plants are being made in developing countries like China and India. Both of these countries are moving towards nuclear energy for many reasons like its reliability and amount of energy it producing. It is very beneficial because it only takes up a small amount of space to make one of these nuclear plants and the amount of energy they produce is substantial. Both of these countries are looking into h...
The use and management of radioactive materials is not a topic that is generally discussed in abundance to everyday citizens. Many people do not know what radioactive waste is or even the effect that it can have on the human body. Radioactive waste is a type of waste that has some type of radioactive material inside of it. The managing of this radioactive waste is extremely important because it can cause damage to living tissue. Without a place to properly dispose of or contain, the radioactive waste can contaminate our water, food, air, or even our land. If this happened it would be detrimental to all human’s health, causing many different problems throughout the world not only with the health of the population, but problems with the environment as well. Therefore it is vital that we have somewhere to put these radioactive wastes.
...for nuclear power has declined as support for renewable energy has increased. Though nuclear power produces zero energy and is seen by many as a cheap way to reduce the world’s carbon emissions (Kessides 2012), several major factors have affected its support amongst the general population. Incidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima have forever shifted support away from nuclear power (Burton 2006, Cyranoski & Brumfiel 2011) as governments shift support to renewable energy sources that do not pose the same risk.
Uranium, a radioactive element, was first mined in the western United States in 1871 by Dr. Richard Pierce, who shipped 200 pounds of pitchblende to London from the Central City Mining District. This element is sorta boring but I found something interesting, they used it to make an an atomic bomb in the Cold War. In 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie and G. Bemont isolated the "miracle element" radium from pitchblende. That same year, uranium, vanadium and radium were found to exist in carnotite, a mineral containing colorful red and yellow ores that had been used as body paint by early Navajo and Ute Indians on the Colorado Plateau. The discovery triggered a small prospecting boom in southeastern Utah, and radium mines in Grand and San Juan counties became a major source of ore for the Curies. It was not the Curies but a British team working in Canada which was the first to understand that the presence of polonium and radium in pitchblende was not due to simple geological and mineral reasons, but that these elements were directly linked to uranium by a process of natural radioactive transmutation. The theory of radioactive transformation of elements was brilliantly enlarge in1901 by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the English chemist Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal. At dusk on the evening of November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, noticed a cathode tube that a sheet of paper come distance away. He put his hand between the tube and the paper, he saw the image of the bones in his hand on the paper.
Iron ore is Australia’s highest valued and most successful commodity export (see Figure 1). Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, this mining industry played a key role in both Australia’s and the global economy. The change in the industry was brought about, particularly, by the many operations and movements resulting from globalisation that pushed Australia’s exports further than they had ever been. In 2007, “Australia produced around 16% of the world's iron ore and was ranked third behind China (32%) and Brazil (19%)” (Minerals Council of Australia, 2008). Although Australia is not the largest producer, it is currently the largest exporter of iron ore in the world (Australian Minerals Industry, 2008).
Though it has had many negative impacts on the environment in the past, mining is a vital industry completely necessary to our economy and lives. Nearly every item we use or encounter in our day to day lives is mined or contains mined products. Without the excavation of such materials things like computers, televisions, large building structures, electricity, and cars would not be possible. Virtually every technological and medical advance uses minded materials, without which millions would suffer. Some examples of minerals in the home include the telephone which is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, silver, and talc. A television requires over 35 different minerals, and more than 30 minerals are needed to make a single personal computer. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year, which is higher than all other countries with the exception of Japan, which is a staggering figure representative of our dependence and need for mined minerals. Coal makes up more than half of nation’s electricity, and will continue to be the largest electrical supplier into 2020 & accounting for some 95 percent of the nation's fossil energy reserves – nine of every ten short-tons of coal mined in the United States is used for electricity generation. As the population of the world grows more mineral resources must be exploited through mining in order to support the rising demand for such products. Though it may present a hazard to the environment and those physically located nears the mines, the materials extracted from mines...
Media coverage of such cases have made the public less comfortable with the idea of moving further towards nuclear power and they only opt for reducing human activities to reduce global warming. It is true that there have been some notable disasters involving nuclear power, but compared to other power systems, nuclear power has an impressive track record. First, it is less harmful and second, it will be able to cater for the growing world population. Nuclear power produces clean energy and it delivers it at a cost that is competitive in the energy market (Patterson). According to the US Energy Information Administration, there are currently 65 such plants in the Unite States (National Research Council). They produce 19 percent of the total US energy generation.
In our days, mining for resources is inevitable. The resources we need are valuable in everyday life. Such resources mined up are coal, copper, gold, silver, and sand. However, mining poses environmental risks that can degrade the quality of soil and water, which can end up effecting us humans if not taken care of and many of the damages are irreversible once they have occurred.