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The release of radiation can come from different areas in the nuclear cycle. One of the biggest radiation threats is uranium mill tailings. ?After the uranium ore is separated, the tailings are left behind. Tailings contain radioactive thorium which remains dangerous for over 100,000 years? (?Nuclear Waist: The Big Picture?, 2). Thousands of tons of uranium mill tailings are being produced each year. Abbots and Nader comment that uranium mill tailings is a byproduct of the enrichment process. Less than one fifth of the amount of potential uranium is extracted in a given amount of rock or sand. (90) This leaves four fifths of the uranium that was inside the rock deep in the earth, on top of the ground in the form of sand. This sand can blow across large amounts of land. ?By 1986 2.7 billion cubic feet of tailings were blowing in the wind, damaging native crops and human life? (Nuclear Waist, the Big Picture 2). This is one of the biggest environmental hazard that we face today. Expressing their concern about uranium dust, Nader and Abbotts write :

Uranium dust represents a respiratory hazard to mine and mill workers, but most of the problems with uranium mining and milling are associated with uranium?s decay products. They present a much greater radiation hazard. Through a series of nuclear reactions, uranium undergoes radioactive decay to radium, which in turn decays ro radon gas. The radon gas in turn decays to isotopes which in turn can cause serious biological damage, particulary when inhaled. (82 – 84)

The serious results of having mill tailings open to the environment are just being felt now. Since the beginning of the nuclear age to the late 1960’s there has been no official record kept on where mill tailings have been stored. Many towns in the middle of the United States have been built on mill tailings. Some people unknowingly have used mill tailings as building materials. Corinne Browne and Robert Munroe, who are very well internationally known authors, state that :

In some places, such as Grand Junction, Colorado, people used the mill tailings as landfill and construction material. In Grand Junction, five thousand houses, a school, a church, a supermarket, and a hospital were built on tailings, thus creating situations where people live and work in buildings emitting radioactivity. (81)

In towns that have been built on mill tailings there is a great increase in health related costs because of an increase in cancers and radiation induced diseases. Corinne Browne and Robert Munroe go comment on the effects of living in an environment that has radiation.

In the early 1970s, a pediatrician in Grand Junction noticed an abnormally large number of children being born with cleft lips and cleft palates. A study showed that there was a far higher incidence of leukemia, hydroencephalitis, and subtle birth defects in the Grand Junction area than in surrounding counties. (81)

A person could then conclude that the nuclear industry is mostly to blame for the nation wide increase of cancers and deaths. Is the nuclear industry really benefitting the nation or is it just making the world into a radioactive dump which takes thousands of years to clean up?

One last major problem with nuclear energy that needs to be touched on is the storage of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste includes all contaminated parts that have had contact with any source of nuclear energy and all products of a nuclear reaction that was discussed at the beginning of the paper. There are several problems that relate to the storage of nuclear energy.

At a nuclear storage facility, there are security officers, technicians, scientists, and regular staff which make sure the facility is safe. In the paper, ?Uranium: Its Uses and Hazards?, it states the half-life of some radioactive isotopes. Uranium-238 which has a half-life of 4.46 billion years and that uranium-235 which has a half-life of 704 million years represent most of nuclear waste stored at nuclear waist facilities. (1) This means that people will have to be monitoring these facilities for about ten billion years. Fred H. Knelman is very concerned about the time and man power required to run these storage facilities. Knelman wrote :

There must always be intelligent people around to cope with eventualities we have not thought of….Reactor safety, waste disposal, and the transport of radioactive materials are complex matters about which little can be said with absolute certainty. Is mankind prepared to exert the eternal vigilance needed to ensure proper and safe operation of its nuclear system? (39)

The searching for proper storage facilities and places has always been one of the top priorities of the nuclear industry. The problem is that no one wants a nuclear waste facility in there back yard. Literally billions of dollars has been spent just on looking for places to store nuclear waste.

Nuclear energy has many short term benefits but many more short term and long term problems. If anyone of the lethal potential problems develop and get out of control than the world is in serious trouble. Can the world afford to be dancing with death? Just think if a nuclear plant exploded because of a terrorist attack how our lives would be changed forever. Are we unselfish enough live without a few comforts now so that our children can have a brighter future? A nuclear disaster is the worst thing that can happen to this planet because it threatens the whole future of the human race. Nuclear energy is not worth the risk. The problem of nuclear energy such as terrorism, plutonium production, uranium mill tailings, and waste storage problems make nuclear energy too risky for humans to even experiment with. Nuclear energy holds our future in a tight grip so we must do

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