Uranium Matters

Uranium Matters PDF

Author: Zbyn?k A. B. Zeman

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9789639776005

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Examines the impact of the Czechoslovak and East German uranium industries on local politics and on societies, particularly in the decade or so after the end of the Second World War. The Erzgebirge - the Ore Mountains - on the border of Czechoslovakia and East Germany of the time, was the oldest uranium mine in the world, whose important resources were badly needed for Stalin's atomic bomb. An introduction discusses the silver-mining industries of the Erzgebirge region, the history of experiments in physics on the instability of matter, and on the increasing demand for uranium beginning in the middle of the 19th century. The book outlines the fate of this mining region in the Cold War period, including the various political pressures and medical problems its inhabitants came under. The two industries are compared at the peak of their production and at the top of their strategic importance for Stalin. It helps the reader see the origins of the Cold War in a different perspective.

Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors

Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors PDF

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0309379210

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The continued presence of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civilian installations such as research reactors poses a threat to national and international security. Minimization, and ultimately elimination, of HEU in civilian research reactors worldwide has been a goal of U.S. policy and programs since 1978. Today, 74 civilian research reactors around the world, including 8 in the United States, use or are planning to use HEU fuel. Since the last National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report on this topic in 2009, 28 reactors have been either shut down or converted from HEU to low enriched uranium fuel. Despite this progress, the large number of remaining HEU-fueled reactors demonstrates that an HEU minimization program continues to be needed on a worldwide scale. Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors assesses the status of and progress toward eliminating the worldwide use of HEU fuel in civilian research and test reactors.

Uranium

Uranium PDF

Author: Tom Zoellner

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780670020645

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A history of the powerful mineral element explores its role as a virtually limitless energy source, its controversial applications as a healing tool and weapon, and the ways in which its reputation has been used to promote war agendas in the middle east.

Uranium - Past and Future Challenges

Uranium - Past and Future Challenges PDF

Author: Broder J. Merkel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 887

ISBN-13: 3319110594

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This book is the collection of papers from the latest International Uranium Mining and Hydrogeology Conference (UMH VII) held in September 2014, in Freiberg, Germany. It is divided to five sessions: Uranium Mining, Uranium and Phosphates, Clean-up technologies for water and soil. Uranium and daughter nuclides and basic research and modeling. Each session covers a wide range of related topic and provides readers with up to date research and solutions on those matters.

Wastelanding

Wastelanding PDF

Author: Traci Brynne Voyles

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1452944490

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Wastelanding tells the history of the uranium industry on Navajo land in the U.S. Southwest, asking why certain landscapes and the peoples who inhabit them come to be targeted for disproportionate exposure to environmental harm. Uranium mines and mills on the Navajo Nation land have long supplied U.S. nuclear weapons and energy programs. By 1942, mines on the reservation were the main source of uranium for the top-secret Manhattan Project. Today, the Navajo Nation is home to more than a thousand abandoned uranium sites. Radiation-related diseases are endemic, claiming the health and lives of former miners and nonminers alike. Traci Brynne Voyles argues that the presence of uranium mining on Diné (Navajo) land constitutes a clear case of environmental racism. Looking at discursive constructions of landscapes, she explores how environmental racism develops over time. For Voyles, the “wasteland,” where toxic materials are excavated, exploited, and dumped, is both a racial and a spatial signifier that renders an environment and the bodies that inhabit it pollutable. Because environmental inequality is inherent in the way industrialism operates, the wasteland is the “other” through which modern industrialism is established. In examining the history of wastelanding in Navajo country, Voyles provides “an environmental justice history” of uranium mining, revealing how just as “civilization” has been defined on and through “savagery,” environmental privilege is produced by portraying other landscapes as marginal, worthless, and pollutable.

Uranium for Nuclear Power

Uranium for Nuclear Power PDF

Author: Ian Hore-Lacy

Publisher: Woodhead Publishing

Published: 2016-02-19

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 0081003331

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Uranium for Nuclear Power: Resources, Mining and Transformation to Fuel discusses the nuclear industry and its dependence on a steady supply of competitively priced uranium as a key factor in its long-term sustainability. A better understanding of uranium ore geology and advances in exploration and mining methods will facilitate the discovery and exploitation of new uranium deposits. The practice of efficient, safe, environmentally-benign exploration, mining and milling technologies, and effective site decommissioning and remediation are also fundamental to the public image of nuclear power. This book provides a comprehensive review of developments in these areas. Provides researchers in academia and industry with an authoritative overview of the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle Presents a comprehensive and systematic coverage of geology, mining, and conversion to fuel, alternative fuel sources, and the environmental and social aspects Written by leading experts in the field of nuclear power, uranium mining, milling, and geological exploration who highlight the best practices needed to ensure environmental safety

Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation

Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation PDF

Author: Allan S. Krass

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-20

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 100020054X

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Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.