Mining Impacts · impact
Radioactive legacy
Health · After closure
- Category
- Health
- Timescale
- After closure
Mitigation
Thick engineered covers to cut radon exhalation, relocation of tailings away from watercourses, and institutional control that has to outlast any company.
Case
The Wismut operations in East Germany left one of the largest uranium legacies anywhere; the German rehabilitation programme has run since 1991 and is measured in decades and billions of euros.
Mechanism
Uranium ore holds the whole decay chain, so its tailings retain most of the original radioactivity as thorium-230 and radium-226 long after the uranium is gone. Radium decays to radon, a gas that escapes the pile continuously, and radium-226's 1,600-year half-life sets the timescale for containment.
Where
UndergroundOpen pitIn-situ leach
Open on the Mining Impacts shelf — the interactive card, the filters, and everything alongside it.