This only confirms what I've said about DU... It's blowing in the wind...
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3436/australian-uranium-blows-antarctica
Be Well.
David
Australian uranium blows to Antarctica
WASHINGTON DC: Traces of uranium have been found in Antarctic ice, say scientists, and they believe it may have been carried on the wind from Australia's three massive uranium mines.
According to Ricardo Jana, a geophysicist at the Chilean Antarctic Institute in Punta Arenas, trace uranium levels were found in parts per quadrillion-level (ppq) concentrations which started rising from 1995 and have correlated with the increase in Australia's uranium production since then.
The researcher were taking ice cores to look for evidence of climate changes when they discovered the "interesting scientific evidence," said Jana. But the ramifications are hard to define.
Air flowing over the ocean
Scientists speculate that the traces were carried from Australia to the Detroit Plateau in the northern part of Antarctica's Peninsula on the wind.
"Based on modeling of air mass transport we've done," and how these masses flow over the ocean, Jana said, "Australia is the likely source, but we are looking for the best interpretation about how much of these concentration levels should be related to man-made activities and how much it may be associated with the increasing intensities in the last decades of westerly winds."
Australia's uranium reserves are the largest in the world, comprising 23% globally with nearly 10,000 tons of it produced and exported every year, all of it used for electricity. The mines go back nearly 150 years.
Australian mines have low dust levels
Uranium has a low level of radioactivity and the biggest concerns with the mines have involved groundwater contamination, not airborne hazards, according to the World Nuclear Association's website.
Added Peter Johnston, Director of the Environmental and Radiation Health Branch at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), "In terms of airborne uranium which is typically 1 part per million of soil, other forms of agriculture, other mining, coal fired power production and natural sources are all much larger sources."
ARPANSA monitored Sydney during the 2009 dust storm, but no elevated levels of uranium were detected, according to Johnston. Each of Australia's three mines have low dust levels at the surface and are tightly controlled.
"Only one [of the three mines] is above ground level, Ranger Uranium mine which dates from 1980 or so," Johnston said, and "at Beverley, no solid compounds incorporating uranium are at the surface except product which is tightly controlled and in small quantity."
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