Introduction

Uranium is the source of fuel for the U.S. nuclear power and weapons infrastructure. The U.S. Manhattan Project built an immense infrastructure during world war II that resulted in dropping to nuclear bombs on Japan killing over 200,000 civilians. A nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union followed, with the U.S. spending close to $5 trillion to date on its nuclear operations. The U.S. nuclear agenda is the single most actively opposed policy. The U.S. peace movement has pointed out the complete moral failure of this country and the impacts it has had. With President Eisenhowers warning about the Industrial Military Complex, huge private corporations have fueled this weapons war with their greed and propaganda machines.

After the Soviet collapse, the hopes that there might be a peace dividend, with a shutdown of massive Department of Energy weapons infrastructure started with calls for cleanup and closure of the hundreds of nuclear contaminated sites across the country. Cleanup costs estimates soared well above $100 billion. Scandal after scandal hit the country with stories of secret experiments on the public. The military secrecy placed over the DOE's operations started to lift and with it the stories that hundred's of thousands of nuclear workers having had their health destroyed. Prying control back from the huge pork barrel addicted communities across the country was started. Nuclear power was also on the wane. But then came Bush II. In less than 8 years, we have watched a whole new push to reopen the nuclear weapons and power industry back up, with calls for literally trillions of dollars to be invested (Senator Lieberman tried to sneak in a $518 billion commercial reactor program in June 2008). In October 2008, Bush made statements before a world nuclear body that the U.S. would help finance the "nuclear renaissance" worldwide, just as the global economic meltdown was occuring!

The price of Uranium has skyrocketed with Bush's 2005 $4 billion handout to the nuclear industry. Calls to start mining in the U.S. have exploded. Thousands of uranium mining claims have been posted on federal lands in the southwest. New reactor orders have been made for the first time since the early 1970's. Nuclear proponents are calling for the federal government to give out over $120 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors, and we have yet to even talk of the money be called to completely rebuild the entire nuclear weapons infrastructure. Bush has started building a Star Wars curtain between Russia and Europe igniting a new cold war mindset. His evil empire approach to North Korea and Iran has put attempted peaceful approaches to these countries back decades. His half trillion dollar Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP) that would turn the world into a nuclear security state has made the head of the DOE the most globally travelled government official in the world has contracts to push Plutonium Breeder reactor operations has spread to over 25 countries. Even though the funding has been cut here in the U.S. by democrats, Pro-nuclear states like France and Japan continue to fund the idea via the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Bush's Star Wars agenda has trampled on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) a violation of his constitutional duties. The Department of Energy has been reinvigurated with its old cold war agenda to rebuild the entire nuclear weapons infrastructure at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. As other bombshell issues race across an increasingly distracted public, the headlines about the nuclear renaissance have all but ignored the implcations of this Bush's nuclear push on both fronts.

Fuel Cycle

The process of exploration, mining and milling Uranium is the first step of the nuclear fuel cycle for both commercial nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The nuclear fuel cycle has many steps, as can be seen in the graphic. Whether the uranium is destined for a nuclear warhead or to generate electricity, the first steps in the nuclear fuel-cycle are identical. Awareness of uranium and its properties has long been known, but the intensive fuel process as it is known today started with the Manhattan Project and the race to make the first nuclear bomb during World War II.

 

Uranium Mill

During the last 60 years the government has spent hundred's of bilions of dollars on this infrastructure. The fuel-cycle represents generations of government subsidies to for the commercial nuclear power industry.

Go here for more on the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Uranium

Uranium (U-92)

Uranium is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol U and atomic number 92. Heavy, silvery-white, toxic, metallic, naturally radioactive, pyrophoric, and teratogenic uranium belongs to the actinide series and its isotope U-235 is used as the fuel for nuclear reactors and the explosive material for nuclear weapons. Depleted uranium is used in incendiary projectile weapons. Uranium is commonly found in very small amounts in rocks, soil, water, plants, and animals (including humans).

U.S. uranium concentrations

U.S. concentrations of uranium ore in the U.S. exist primarily in two areas of the country. In the Appalachians and in the Southwest, up through the Rocky Mountain range.

Wikipedia: Uranium reference

Fuel

The front end of the nuclear fuel cycle as described in the above sections ends with a variety of uranium products, from Depleted Uranium which is now used to armor piercing weapons to medical applications, and even the irradiation of food.

HEU-LEU (Megatons to Megawatts Program: Nearly half of all U.S. reactor fuel comes from a legislated contract setup between Russia and the U.S. to downblend former Soviet weapons grade uranium. The twenty year program is now under attack by USEC because it is in the way of bootstrapping uranium mining in the U.S.

 

Impacts

Imapcts from the spread of uranium and other nuclear contaminants is one of the most controversial subjects in the world. The nuclear industry in the U.S. has failed in its duty to protect or inform the public of its hazards. Former DOE whistleblower and health physicist Dr. John Goffman suggested that the U.S. should be subjected to Nuremburg trials over its failure to reign in its misuse of nuclear materials. Over a half million military personel were exposed to radiation in the 50's from atmospheric tests. Those tests also exposed the midwest to fallout that damaged the health of millions of Americans who were born between 1948 - 1963.

Human Impacts

Radiation Pathways

In 1988 the formal body charged with monitoring the health impacts of Hiroshima bomb victims called for a 4-16 fold increase in safety standards as a results of their studies. The UK immediately complied by increasing their safety standards by a factor of fourt. The U.S. ignorred those calls. And today, its ALARA standards even include fine print that allow economic interests to be taken into account. Babies in the womb, young children, the old and infirm are all far more suseptible to radiation impacts. Yet the radiation standards set by the U.S. are based on what a healthy 21 year old male can sustain without impacts. Nearly 700 radiactive Isotopes, nearly all of which have never been part of the natural environment are now floating around, thanks to our nuclear experiments. Long lived isotopes of Plutonium, uranium and Radon are endangering our genetic future.

Resources

Mox Fuel
Megatons to Megawatts Program
LEU Case goes to the Supreme Court
Scientists attack Megatons to Megawatts
CDI: The U.S.-Russia HEU Agreement

The Gore HEU Scandal
POGO: Securing HEU sites around the country
$500 million HEU Facility at ORNL