Uranium mining and milling have a number of potential impacts on human health and the environment. These include:

(a)Contamination of mine water with uranium and other radionuclides;

(b)Release of mill wastewaters to surface waters (usually after treatment);

(c)Runoff of water from contaminated areas of the mine or mill;

(d)Radon release from mines, waste rock dumps and mill tailings piles;

(e)Leaching of radionuclides from tailings and their subsequent transport in water;

(f)Erosion of tailings storage systems, leading to dispersal of tailings by wind and water;

(g)Contamination of underground and surface waters by toxic non-radioactive substances such as heavy metals and the chemicals used in processing.

The most important waste from the milling of uranium is the finely divided solid residue known as tailings. Tailings typically contain 70% of the radioactivity in the original ore and remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The main long lived radionuclides are residual uranium, 230Th (half-life 80 000 years) and 226Ra (half-life 1600 years). Radium is a continual source of 222Rn (half-life 3.8 days), which, being a gas, is readily dispersed. Radon daughters are a source of radiation exposure and a known cause of lung cancer in uranium miners.

Section 6 gives information on uranium mining and processing in Ukraine and on their impact on the environment and public health. Where available, monitoring data are presented and an assessment is made of the long term stability of the tailings and the need for countermeasures.

3.4.RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE AND DISPOSAL SITES

Radioactive storage and disposal sites in the Dnieper River basin include:

(a)The Ecores State facility near Minsk, which comprises two closed trenches and two repositories that are being progressively filled. This facility accepts radioactive waste from the nearby Sosny Institute and from more than

100 organizations from the industrial, research and medical sectors.

(b)Two disposal sites operated by the RADON State enterprise at Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk. These sites handle both radioactive waste and spent radiation sources from the non-nuclear power plant sector, including the industrial, medical and agricultural sectors.

(c)Many disposal or ‘temporary’ storage sites for Chernobyl waste in Belarus and Ukraine.

These sites are assessed in Section 7.

3.5. NON-POWER SOURCES

Non-power sources include research reactors and those arising from the application of radioisotopes and radiation in medicine, industry and research. Radioisotopes are used in medicine for diagnosis and treatment in all three countries.

Nuclear research facilities in the Dnieper River basin are limited. The research reactors at the Sosny Institute near Minsk and the Institute for Nuclear Research at Kiev are shut down. Radioactive waste from these facilities is stored in dedicated waste storage sites.

Non-power sources of radioactivity are discussed briefly in Section 7.

REFERENCES TO SECTION 3

[3.1] UNITED NATIONS, Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation (Report to the General Assembly), Annex J: Exposures and Effects of the Chernobyl Accident, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), UN, New York (2000).

[3.2] DE CORT, M., Atlas of Caesium Deposition on Europe after the Chernobyl Accident, Rep. 16733, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg (2001) CD-ROM.

[3.3] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Summary Report on the Post-accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident, INSAG Series No. 1, IAEA, Vienna (1986).

[3.4] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY

AGENCY, The International Chernobyl Project:

Assessment of the Radiological Consequences

and Evaluation of Protective Measures, IAEA,

Vienna (1991).

[3.5] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, INSAG Series No. 7, IAEA, Vienna (1992).

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[3.6] One Decade after Chernobyl: Summing up the	[3.8] WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, Health
Consequences of the Accident (Proc. Int. Conf.	Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident: Results
Vienna, 1996), IAEA, Vienna (1996).	of the IPHECA Pilot Projects and Related
[3.7] Fifteen Years after the Chernobyl Accident:	National Programmes (SOUCHKEVITCH, G.N.,
Lessons Learned (Proc. Int. Conf. Kiev, 2001),	TSYB, A.F., Eds), Rep. WHO/EHG 95-19, WHO,
United Nations, New York (2001).	Geneva (1996).

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