Radioactive City: Johannesburg!

[Oscar]

Radioactive city: How Johannesburg's townships are paying for its mining past

[ http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/ ... ining-past ]

Much of the waste from 600 abandoned mines around South Africa's largest city is piled high next to residential communities - most of which are poor and black

Oliver Balch, Johannesburg, South Africa, The Guardian, 6 July 2015

[ http://tinyurl.com/ooeu2ap ]

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[ Check URL for horrific photos. Ed. ]

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Johannesburg’s mine dumps look strangely beautiful from a distance. Lustrously yellow in the sun, blazing red at dusk, their huge molehill shapes provide the city with its distinctive skyline.

Up close, it’s a different story. Rasalind Plaatjies has lived in the shadow of a “tailing” – as these piles of mine waste are known – all her adult life. Today, the 62-year-old grandmother from the city’s Riverlea district suffers severe respiratory problems. For 16 hours a day, she is hooked up to an oxygen tank, her lungs debilitated by dust from the waste heap.

“Sometimes I don’t have the energy to get up. I just have to stay in bed and do nothing,” she says. She feels fortunate, though. A number of her elderly neighbours have died from respiratory disease.

Plaatjies is one of tens of thousands in Johannesburg’s impoverished townships who are paying a high cost for the city’s rich mining past. More than 600 abandoned mines surround South Africa’s largest city, with much of their waste now piled up high next to residential communities – most of which are poor and black.

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An even more dangerous pollutant is lurking in Johannesburg’s mine dumps, however: radioactive waste. According to one university study, an estimated 600,000 metric tonnes of radioactive uranium are buried in waste rock in and around Johannesburg – around three times what was exported during the Cold War. [ http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/10274 ]

“[Johannesburg] is undoubtedly the most uranium-contaminated city in the world,” says Dr Antony Turton, a professor at the University of Free State’s Centre for Environmental Management.

Uranium naturally occurs in reefs alongside gold, meaning the two are often excavated at the same time. For every tonne of gold mined in the Witwatersrand gold fields [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witwatersrand ] – the southern sections of which border western Johannesburg – between 10 and 100 tonnes of uranium were also mined. [ http://www.ajol.info/index.php/wsa/article/view/5067 ]

“For most of the gold mines, uranium was merely a waste product and therefore dumped without being recovered. Those tailing disposal facilities therefore have a relatively high uranium concentration today,” Turton says.

Without the proper precautions in place, ore-bearing uranium leaches from the tailings and enters as run-off into surrounding streams and wetlands. A similar process occurs in abandoned mines underground, with polluted water seeping through porous rock as the mines flood.

Despite its vast reserves of groundwater, Johannesburg pumps most of its drinking water from Lesotho – more than 380km away – because its own water reserves are too polluted.

A hardened white wasteland stands where plants used to grow. The soil has a pH of 2.67 – more acidic than vinegar

Mine waste is also removed illegally from tailings for use in the manufacture of bricks and for other construction purposes, some environment groups allege. Potentially, the physical infrastructure of Johannesburg could be becoming radioactive as well.

The release of uranium in dust form can be exacerbated by the re-mining of tailings – a process that happens in various locations across the city. The companies involved in this re-mining maintain that they are providing an environmental service by removing waste and depositing it in modern tailings that are better regulated.

David van Wyk, chief researcher at the Bench Marks Foundation, a church-funded non-profit based in Johannesburg, is sceptical about mining companies’ environmental practices. “When the uranium price is very low, the mining companies simply dump it. That’s why the dust is yellow. We call it ‘yellow cake’,” he says.

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[ http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/ ... ining-past ]