#radionuclides — Public Fediverse posts

The effect of #ClimateChange on sources of #radionuclides to the #MarineEnvironment

Published: 16 March 2024
Justin P. Gwynn, Vanessa Hatje, Núria Casacuberta, Manmohan Sarin & Iolanda Osvath

Abstract:
"Climate change interacts with the sources and cycling of contaminants, such as radionuclides, in the environment. In this review, we discuss the implications of climate change impacts on existing and potential future sources of radionuclides associated with human activities to the marine environment. The overall effect on operational releases of radionuclides from the nuclear and non-nuclear sectors will likely be increased interference or prevention of normal operations due to weather-related events. For certain #RadioactiveWaste dumped at sea and sunken #NuclearSubmarines, the impact of climate change and ocean #acidification on the release of radionuclides and their subsequent fate in the marine environment should be considered further. Fluxes from secondary sources of radionuclides in the marine and terrestrial environment and cryosphere will change in response to climate change impacts such as sea level rise, warming and changes in precipitation patterns. In addition, climate change impacts may increase the risk of releases of radionuclides from operational and legacy wastes on land to the marine environment. Overall, our synthesis highlights that there is a need to understand and assess climate change impacts on sources of radionuclides to the marine environment to meet environmental and management challenges under future climate scenarios."

Full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01241-w

#NoNukes #NoNuclearWeapons #NoNuclearDumping #ToxicLegacy #LegacyWastes #RethinkNotRestart #NuclearWaste #NuclearWasteStorage #IllegalDumping

The effect of #ClimateChange on sources of #radionuclides to the #MarineEnvironment

Published: 16 March 2024
Justin P. Gwynn, Vanessa Hatje, Núria Casacuberta, Manmohan Sarin & Iolanda Osvath

Abstract:
"Climate change interacts with the sources and cycling of contaminants, such as radionuclides, in the environment. In this review, we discuss the implications of climate change impacts on existing and potential future sources of radionuclides associated with human activities to the marine environment. The overall effect on operational releases of radionuclides from the nuclear and non-nuclear sectors will likely be increased interference or prevention of normal operations due to weather-related events. For certain #RadioactiveWaste dumped at sea and sunken #NuclearSubmarines, the impact of climate change and ocean #acidification on the release of radionuclides and their subsequent fate in the marine environment should be considered further. Fluxes from secondary sources of radionuclides in the marine and terrestrial environment and cryosphere will change in response to climate change impacts such as sea level rise, warming and changes in precipitation patterns. In addition, climate change impacts may increase the risk of releases of radionuclides from operational and legacy wastes on land to the marine environment. Overall, our synthesis highlights that there is a need to understand and assess climate change impacts on sources of radionuclides to the marine environment to meet environmental and management challenges under future climate scenarios."

Full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01241-w

#NoNukes #NoNuclearWeapons #NoNuclearDumping #ToxicLegacy #LegacyWastes #RethinkNotRestart #NuclearWaste #NuclearWasteStorage #IllegalDumping

The effect of #ClimateChange on sources of #radionuclides to the #MarineEnvironment

Published: 16 March 2024
Justin P. Gwynn, Vanessa Hatje, Núria Casacuberta, Manmohan Sarin & Iolanda Osvath

Abstract:
"Climate change interacts with the sources and cycling of contaminants, such as radionuclides, in the environment. In this review, we discuss the implications of climate change impacts on existing and potential future sources of radionuclides associated with human activities to the marine environment. The overall effect on operational releases of radionuclides from the nuclear and non-nuclear sectors will likely be increased interference or prevention of normal operations due to weather-related events. For certain #RadioactiveWaste dumped at sea and sunken #NuclearSubmarines, the impact of climate change and ocean #acidification on the release of radionuclides and their subsequent fate in the marine environment should be considered further. Fluxes from secondary sources of radionuclides in the marine and terrestrial environment and cryosphere will change in response to climate change impacts such as sea level rise, warming and changes in precipitation patterns. In addition, climate change impacts may increase the risk of releases of radionuclides from operational and legacy wastes on land to the marine environment. Overall, our synthesis highlights that there is a need to understand and assess climate change impacts on sources of radionuclides to the marine environment to meet environmental and management challenges under future climate scenarios."

Full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01241-w

#NoNukes #NoNuclearWeapons #NoNuclearDumping #ToxicLegacy #LegacyWastes #RethinkNotRestart #NuclearWaste #NuclearWasteStorage #IllegalDumping

The effect of #ClimateChange on sources of #radionuclides to the #MarineEnvironment

Published: 16 March 2024
Justin P. Gwynn, Vanessa Hatje, Núria Casacuberta, Manmohan Sarin & Iolanda Osvath

Abstract:
"Climate change interacts with the sources and cycling of contaminants, such as radionuclides, in the environment. In this review, we discuss the implications of climate change impacts on existing and potential future sources of radionuclides associated with human activities to the marine environment. The overall effect on operational releases of radionuclides from the nuclear and non-nuclear sectors will likely be increased interference or prevention of normal operations due to weather-related events. For certain #RadioactiveWaste dumped at sea and sunken #NuclearSubmarines, the impact of climate change and ocean #acidification on the release of radionuclides and their subsequent fate in the marine environment should be considered further. Fluxes from secondary sources of radionuclides in the marine and terrestrial environment and cryosphere will change in response to climate change impacts such as sea level rise, warming and changes in precipitation patterns. In addition, climate change impacts may increase the risk of releases of radionuclides from operational and legacy wastes on land to the marine environment. Overall, our synthesis highlights that there is a need to understand and assess climate change impacts on sources of radionuclides to the marine environment to meet environmental and management challenges under future climate scenarios."

Full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01241-w

#NoNukes #NoNuclearWeapons #NoNuclearDumping #ToxicLegacy #LegacyWastes #RethinkNotRestart #NuclearWaste #NuclearWasteStorage #IllegalDumping

Advocates demand halt to #uranium #mine near the #GrandCanyon

#EnergyFuels says #nuclear power is necessary to fight #ClimateChange, but #Indigenous tribes fear losing their homes

By Matthew Rozsa
January 31, 2024

"The Grand Canyon truly lives up to its name, being the largest canyon on Earth and one of the most popular national parks in America. But due to #UraniumMining in the area, some advocates are warning it could become the site of a future #EnvironmentalDisaster, which threatens to make one Indigenous village 'extinct.'

"More than 80 groups signed onto a statement on Monday — representing Indigenous communities, scientists and environmental nonprofits such as the #SierraClub and the #CenterForBiologicalDiversity — directed at President #JoeBiden and #Arizona Gov. #KatieHobbs, demanding they close the #PinyonPlain uranium mine, which is located near the Grand Canyon.

"'We have a choice in front of us. Allowing the Pinyon Plain mine to proceed is subjecting this landscape and its interconnected waters to a legacy of devastation and disregarding the rights of the #IndigenousPeoples on the land,' Sanober Mirza, Arizona program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said in the statement. 'Or we can choose a different path — one that holds a promise of protecting the Grand Canyon’s cultural sanctity, its people and natural resources.'

"To understand why the mine's opponents feel so strongly, one can turn to #AmberReimondo, who work as energy director at a conservationist non-profit called the #GrandCanyonTrust. Reimondo explained to Salon by email that, on the one hand, #Biden permanently banned mining operations on nearly 1 million acres of federal managed lands by creating the #BaajNwaavjo I'tah Kukveni - Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in August 2023. Yet the Pinyon Plain mine was #exempt from this prohibition, and Reimondo argues that the impact on the region has been 'several fold.'

"'What they've created here is a long-term, slow motion #EnvironmentalDisaster."

"'The Grand Canyon region as a whole and especially the location of the mine, is deeply significant to Indigenous cultures and is a place where tribal members have conducted #ceremonies, collected medicine, hunted, and more, for centuries,' Reimondo said. 'The mine also overlies critical and complex [and] not well understood groundwater systems. One #aquifer in particular — the #RedWallMuavAquifer — is the sole source of water for the remote #HavasupaiVillage of #Supai inside the Grand Canyon. The mine poses a #contamination threat to these #groundwater resources not just today, but importantly, after the mine's mere 28-month operational lifespan has concluded and the mining operator 'cleans up' and moves on.'

"Supai is so remote, it's only accessible only by helicopter or an 8-mile mule ride or hike, Reimondo explained, noting that if the newly-oxygenated groundwater comes into contact with nearby rocks, minerals like #arsenic and #uranium will be dissolved by the groundwater and enter aquifers used by the local community and essential to local ecology, including #HavasuFalls. Taylor McKinnon, Southwest Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed similar concerns.

"'Ultimately, this mine is going to require political leadership,' McKinnon told Salon in an interview, referring to both the Biden and #Hobbs administrations. 'Those administration's agencies have the authority to fix this problem if they so choose, and that's what they should do.'

"We have detailed strenuously for years that neither regulators nor industry can ensure against the permanent and irretrievable damage to Grand Canyon's aquifers and springs," McKinnon added. "This mine was approved originally in 1986, under a record of decision from the US Forest Service under a presumption that it was highly unlikely that the mine would encounter groundwater, and further unlikely that if it did, it had the potential to contaminate deeper aquifers in the springs that they feed. Subsequent state permitting from the #ArizonaDepartment OfEnvironmentalQuality has basically parroted those same assumptions.'

"Yet McKinnon alleges that in 2016 the mine punctured a perched aquifer, causing roughly 10 million gallons of water per year to drain into the mine workings. From there he asserts that a surface pond formed with water that has concentrations of uranium and arsenic far in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency (#EPA)'s water quality standards. Not only does this threaten the local endangered and endemic species, but it also impacts the nearby Havasupai tribe.

"Havasupai means 'people of the blue-green water,' McKinnon said. "It's their longstanding cultural identity, and it is the water they drink, they farm with and that provides for all of their tourism economy because it is this just a beautiful series of massive verdant waterfalls that flow through the village and down into a series of waterfalls and pools where people camp and they derive tourism dollars.'

"In a 2022 letter of opposition, the Havasupai Tribal Council, laid out what is at stake in the uranium mining controversy.

"'Our identity as a people is intrinsically intertwined with the health of #HavasuCreek and the environment to which it gives life,' the tribe’s letter explained. 'We use this water for drinking, #gardening and irrigating, municipal uses, and #cultural and #religious uses. If the water source becomes contaminated like we have seen in other areas of Arizona due to uranium mining, we will no longer be able to live in our homes and Supai Village will become extinct.'

"These fears are based on precedent. The nearby #NavajoNation is scattered with old uranium mines — over 500, in fact — awaiting cleanup, exposing locals to risk of '#LungCancer from inhalation of #radioactive particles, as well as #BoneCancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to #radionuclides in drinking water,' according to the EPA. Likewise, members of the #UteMountain #Ute tribe in #WhiteMesa, Utah have protested against uranium mines they say have contaminated local groundwater, air and even wildlife."

https://www.salon.com/2024/01/31/advocates-demand-halt-to-uranium-mine-near-the-grand-canyon/

#NoNukes #WaterIsLife #AirIsLife #CulturalGenocide #EnvironmentalRacism #CorporateColonialism #NoMining #UraniumMining #NuclearPowerNoThanks #IndigenousActivism

Wood pellets ash – radioactive contamination and cesium 137 measured values

"In the event of a #nuclear accident in which radionuclides are released into the biosphere, radioactive contamination of forests can become a significant potential source of public radiation exposure. #Cesium 137 and #strontium 90 remain in the upper soil layers in forest ecosystems for a long time. These #radionuclides get into the wood via the roots and can thus store radioactivity and represent a potential radiation exposure for humans. We provide an overview of our radioactive measurements as well as a literature review on wood, pellets and ash with a focus on cesium 137

"Two of these accidents – the #Kyshtim accident in the Urals in the USSR (now the Russian Federation) in 1957 and the #Chernobyl accident in the USSR (now Ukraine) in 1986 – resulted in significant contamination of thousands of square kilometers of forest land with radionuclide mixtures, including long-lived fission products such as Cs 137 and Sr 90. Measurements and modeling of forest ecosystems after both accidents have shown that after initial contamination, the activity concentration of long-lived radionuclides in wood gradually increases over one to two decades and slowly decreases over the following decades Period. The longevity of contamination is due to the slow migration and persistent bioavailability of radionuclides in the forest soil profile, leading to long-term transfer into wood through the tree root system.

"The transfer of cesium-137 from the soil into the wood of trees is relatively low. Wood from Germany is radiobiological harmless to humans. In the ashes, however, the radiocesium activity can be up to 100 times higher than in wood."

https://www.umweltanalysen.com/en/radioactivity/wood-pellets-ash/

#NoNukes #NoNewNukes #NoWar #AirQuality #AirPollution #Wildfires #ClimateCrisis #Climate #Environment #Radiation