Author Topic: BFR - disposal of nuclear wastes  (Read 16891 times)

Offline Dave G

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Re: BFR - disposal of nuclear wastes
« Reply #60 on: 12/25/2017 11:58 pm »
You'd be happy living next to a uranium mine too... in Canada or Australia... not so much in Kazakhstan (where the majority of the world's uranium still comes from), as they use a different process.
Uranium that comes out of the ground is not particularly toxic.  It's mostly U-238, which is not radioactive.  Less than 1% is the radioactive isotope U-235.

To make enriched uranium fuel, they separate out the radioactive U-235.  The leftover U-238 is called "depleted uranium", which is not radioactive, so this is not considered nuclear waste.

However, mining any mineral from the earth often brings up many other toxic minerals in the ore, and there's a lot of dust involved in processing that ore.  For these reasons, I would not want to live next to a uranium mine.

Offline Andy USA

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Re: BFR - disposal of nuclear wastes
« Reply #61 on: 12/26/2017 03:34 am »
Thread is totally off topic. Locking as it started very leftfield in the first place.

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