Toxic Legacy: Uranium Mining in New Mexico

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JAMAIL: Toxic Legacy: Uranium Mining in New Mexico

[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/21959-to ... new-mexico ]

Thursday, 20 February 2014 00:00 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report

Most people are unaware that the third-largest nuclear disaster in world history occurred in New Mexico.

Less than four months after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in 1979, three times as much radiation [ http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/ab ... 006.103044 ] was released when a spill at a uranium mill at Church Rock, New Mexico, dumped 94 million gallons of mill effluent and more than 1,000 tons of acidic, radioactive sludge into an arroyo that emptied into the Puerco River.

The only two nuclear disasters that have released more radiation were those at Fukushima and Chernobyl.

The Navajo Nation, where the spill occurred, is riddled with 521 abandoned uranium mines across the three states included within the reservation, according to the EPA; [ http://www.epa.gov/region09/superfund/n ... anium.html ] 450 of those mines and eight former uranium mill sites are in New Mexico, and three of these are designated superfund sites. These sites are the source of contamination for tens of millions of gallons of groundwater and countless acres, the brunt of which is on Navajo land.

Like other indigenous peoples whose reservations happened to have uranium deposits the federal government, and later private companies, desired, the Navajo were not warned of the dangers of radiation.

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