2. Filippova, L. G., A. P. Nifatov, and E. R. Lyubchanskii, Some of the long-term sequelae of giving rats enriched uranium (in Russian), Radiobiologiya, v. 18, n. 3,, pp. 400-405. 1978. Translated in NTIS UB/D/120-03 (DOE-TR-4/9), National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia. Return to document.

3. Uranium-235 and plutonium-239 are called "fissile" isotopes--defined as materials that can be fissioned by low-energy (ideally zero energy) neutrons. Return to document.

4. Uranium-238 is converted to plutonium-239 by bombarding it with neutrons: U-238 + neutron -->> U-239 U-239 ==> Np-239 + beta particle (electron) Np-239 ==> Pu-239 + beta particle (electron) Return to document.

5. Energy Information Administration, Uranium Purchases Report 1992, DOE/EIA-0570(92), Washington, D.C., August 1993. The number of conventional mines operating in the U.S. has declined from a peak of hundreds to zero in 1993, seven "non-conventional" mining operations (e.g., in-situ leach) accounted for all domestic ore production for that year. (NUEXCO, NUEXCO Review: 1993 Annual, Denver, 1994). Return to document.

6. Benedict, Manson, Thomas Pigford, and Hans Wolfgang Levi. Nuclear Chemical Engineering. 2 ed.. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981), p. 265. Note that pure U3O8 is black. Yellowcake gets its color from the presence of ammonium diuranate. Return to document.

7. Based on the total volume of all radioactive waste (including spent fuel, high-level waste, transuranic waste, low-level waste and uranium mill tailings) from all sources (both commercial and military) produced in the U.S. since the 1940s, as compiled in Scott Saleska, et al. Nuclear Legacy: An Overview of the Places, Politics, and Problems of Radioactive Waste in the United States (Washington, DC: Public Citizen, 1989), Appendix C. Return to document.

8. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Final Environmental Impact Statement for Standards for the Control of Byproduct Materials from Uranium Ore Processing, Washington, D.C., 1983, v. 1, pp. D-12, D-13. Return to document.

9. Gilles, Cate, Marti Reed, and Jacques Seronde, Our Uranium Legacy, 1990 [available from Southwest Research and Information Center, Albuquerque, NM]. Return to document.

10. In 1979, a dam holding water in a mill tailings settling pond at the United Nuclear Fuels Corporation mill near Church Rock, New Mexico gave way and released about 100 million gallons of contaminated water into the Puerco River which cuts through Navajo grazing lands. Return to document.

11. One such accident at the Sequoyah Fuels conversion plant in Gore, Oklahoma killed one worker, hospitalized 42 others, and approximately 100 residents. Return to document.

12 .For more information about cleanup standards, see Science for Democratic Action, (IEER, Takoma Park, MD), Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1994. Return to document.