Radioactive fertilizer and the nuclear industry
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2025 3:59 pmRadioactive fertilizer and the nuclear industry
UPDATED: December 19, 2025
Dr. Gordon Edwards, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (wp.ccnr.org)
Friends,
A lot of the phosphate used for fertilizer production comes from Florida where the phosphate ore is mined. That ore is contaminated with uranium and its decay products, especially radium. Radium disintegrates to produce radon gas (radon-222). That radioactive gas will build up in an enclosed space, without adequate ventilation, reaching a “radioactive equilibrium” with its radium parent in about one month. That’s why radon gas is much more dangerous in unventilated areas like many basements.
Radioactive equilibrium means "number of becquerels of radium = number of becquerels of radon", where one becquerel is one radioactive disintegration per second. In a similar way, if pure radon gas is trapped in an enclosed container, it will reach equilibrium with its four short-lived decay products in a couple of hours – at which time the radioactivity in the container is about five times greater than it was originally, as all the short-lived decay products have attained roughly the same level of radioactivity as the radon itself. That’s why radon gas is far more dangerous in unventilated areas.
That’s also why Florida was the first “hot spot” that alerted the US government to the major public health hazard posed by radon, which is estimated to kill about 20-30 thousand Americans every year. Every atom of radon comes from the disintegration of a radium atom, and in turn, every atom of radium started out as an atom of uranium.
When this radioactive phosphate fertilizer is used on tobacco crops, the radon from the soil and from the fertilizer builds up under the thick canopy of tobacco leaves and hangs there for a time (radon being 7-8 times heavier than air). The radon atoms disintegrate to produce four airborne solid short lived decay products – polonium-218, bismuth-214, lead-214, polonium-214, all of which decay into longer-lived radioactive lead-210 and polonium-210. [Note: the last two nuclides never reach equilibrium, unlike the first four.]
These radon decay products are airborne solids. They stick to the resinous (sticky) hairs on the undersides of the tobacco leaves and when the tobacco is harvested, these decay products are harvested along with the tobacco. By the time the tobacco is cured, rolled into cigarettes, packaged, and sent to retail outlets, small quantities of lead-210 (22-year half-life) and its immediate successor polonium-210 are left in the tobacco/cigarettes for the unwitting smoker (or second-hand-smoke inhaler) to encounter.
When a smoker lights the cigarette and draws on it, the temperature at the tip increases dramatically. It vaporizes the lead-210 and polonium-210, which is inhaled deep into the lungs, where polonium-210 sticks to and attacks the sensitive lung tissue with its very energetic alpha particles.
Polonium-210 is a very damaging radionuclide. Los Alamos Labs reckons is about 250 billion time more toxic than hydrogen cyanide. It’s what was used to murder Alexander Litvenenko in London at the “request” of Putin who was openly criticized by Litvenenko.
Polonium-210 adds greatly to the cancer-causing characteristic of the tobacco residues lodged in the lung, making cigarettes smoke significantly more carcinogenic than it would otherwise be. When the smoker is not inhaling, the lead-210/polonium-210 is wafted away in the second-hand cigarette smoke as a respirable aerosol to endanger the health of those within sniffing distance.
Inside the lung, some of the inhaled polonium-210 crosses the blood-air barrier end enters the bloodstream. Being solid, it attaches itself to pre-existing plaque build-up in the arteries of the smoker, usually near the arterial valves, where the alpha particle bombardment causes fibrosis of the nearby arterial wall and valve. Fibrosis exacerbates further plaque build-up, increasing the restriction of blood flow, thereby contributing substantially to the incidence of heart attacks and strokes among smokers – because of the alpha emitting polonium-210 in the plaque.
What you may not have heard is that radioactively contaminated waste from the uranium industry is also sold as fertilizer without any warnings about the radioactive content. For example, ammonium sulphate is recovered from Cameco’s Key Lake uranium processing circuits in Saskatchewan and sold as fertilizer. In Ontario, a liquid by-product of Cameco’s Port Hope uranium dioxide conversion plant – an ammonium nitrate solution –is also sold to a local agricultural supply company for use in fertilizer production. The use of similar waste solutions from nuclear fuel facilities as fertilizer has been a concern in other jurisdictions as well.
The justification for this practice seems to be, that since “natural” phosphate from Florida is used to make fertilizer, and it is clearly radioactive (due to the radium-radon chain), and since these uranium industry byproducts have not much higher levels of radioactivity, then what the heck, we (the uranium industry) may as well turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse by selling the radioactive waste byproducts as fertilizer.
Spreading radioactive waste around is not the best policy. Sand-like radioactive residues called “raffinate” from one of the world’s first uranium refineries in Port Hope, Ontario, was spread all over town and used widely in construction projects during the early decades of the nuclear industry (prior to 1985). The result was extensive radioactive contamination of homes, schools, roadways, ravines, the harbour and the public beach. That radioactive fiasco has led to a $2.6 billion environmental cleanup of the town (paid for by the federal government) resulting in over a million cubic metres – about a million tonnes – of radioactive waste to be stored for the first 500 years in a gigantic earthen mound just north of town. The subsequent fate of the still-radioactive mound of waste after 500 years, will be decided at that time.
Nowadays, Cameco’s uranium refinery – the largest in the world – is located in Blind River, Ontario, on the north shore of Georgian Bay. The Blind River plant receives uranium mill concentrates called “yellowcake” (mostly U3O8) from Saskatchewan, Australia and South Africa,, and turns it into a product called “uranium trioxide” (UO3).
The trioxide is then sent to Port Hope Ontario, where it is chemically converted into UO2 (uranium dioxide) for domestic use, about 15% of Canada’s total uranium production, and the remainder is turned into UF6 (uranium hexafluoride or “hex”) for export to enrichment plants outside of Canada. At the enrichment plant, the concentration of U-235 is increased to whatever level is required by the customer.
Enrichment is not an easy task. The “hex” is turned into a gas at a fairly low temperature so that the heavier U-238 atoms can be separated from the lighter U-235 atoms, resulting in an enriched uranium product that goes out the front door while the voluminous discarded U-238 (called depleted uranium or “DU”) goes out the back door.
You can only increase the percentage of U-235 by discarding a great deal of U-238. In order to produce low enriched uranium (LEU) for use as fuel in light water nuclear power plants, about 85% of the initial uranium is discarded in the form of depleted uranium (DU, mostly U-238). The DU has important military uses, and a few civilian uses, but the bulk of the DU inventory is just another part of the vast radioactive legacy of the nuclear age, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
DU metal is used by the military in the manufacture of conventional bullets, shells, missiles, tanks, et cetera. These were used as highly penetrating radioactive munitions in the former Yugoslavia and in other conflicts, resulting in a battlefield littered with long-lived radioactive waste. The military-industrial complex also uses DU metal as “target rods” in plutonium production reactors to breed plutonium for nuclear warheads. In addition, the military uses DU metal in almost all nuclear warheads as a way of significantly multiplying the explosive power of the warhead by a sizable factor. These weapons are called “fission-fusion-fission” weapons, and DU plays an essential role in both the first stage (producing the plutonium) and the third stage
The first fission is from a small ball of plutonium (usually with a tritium “spark-plug” inside) whose sole purpose is to ignite the fusion reaction by raising it to a temperature of about 100 million degrees. It’s a small atomic bomb that serves to ignite the H-bomb, based on nuclear fusion. When fusion occurs, extremely energetic neutrons are given off, and these fission the U-238 metal that has been used for that exact purpose in the construction of the warhead. That third stage, the fission of U-238, provides most of the explosive blast as well as the lion’s share of the radioactive fallout from such so-called “thermonuclear” weapons..
It is a sad story from beginning to end.
And, to add to this tale of woe, Canada currently has about 220 million tonnes of radioactive waste (tailings) stored at or near the surface from uranium milling (the operation that produces yellowcake) along with about 167 million tonnes of radioactive “waste rock”. Yet Canadian authorities and nuclear promoters routinely and unabashedly declare that nuclear power is a “clean” source of energy – and for the most part, Canadian academic scientists and scientific bodies say not a peep to the contrary.
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
UPDATED: December 19, 2025
Dr. Gordon Edwards, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (wp.ccnr.org)
Friends,
A lot of the phosphate used for fertilizer production comes from Florida where the phosphate ore is mined. That ore is contaminated with uranium and its decay products, especially radium. Radium disintegrates to produce radon gas (radon-222). That radioactive gas will build up in an enclosed space, without adequate ventilation, reaching a “radioactive equilibrium” with its radium parent in about one month. That’s why radon gas is much more dangerous in unventilated areas like many basements.
Radioactive equilibrium means "number of becquerels of radium = number of becquerels of radon", where one becquerel is one radioactive disintegration per second. In a similar way, if pure radon gas is trapped in an enclosed container, it will reach equilibrium with its four short-lived decay products in a couple of hours – at which time the radioactivity in the container is about five times greater than it was originally, as all the short-lived decay products have attained roughly the same level of radioactivity as the radon itself. That’s why radon gas is far more dangerous in unventilated areas.
That’s also why Florida was the first “hot spot” that alerted the US government to the major public health hazard posed by radon, which is estimated to kill about 20-30 thousand Americans every year. Every atom of radon comes from the disintegration of a radium atom, and in turn, every atom of radium started out as an atom of uranium.
When this radioactive phosphate fertilizer is used on tobacco crops, the radon from the soil and from the fertilizer builds up under the thick canopy of tobacco leaves and hangs there for a time (radon being 7-8 times heavier than air). The radon atoms disintegrate to produce four airborne solid short lived decay products – polonium-218, bismuth-214, lead-214, polonium-214, all of which decay into longer-lived radioactive lead-210 and polonium-210. [Note: the last two nuclides never reach equilibrium, unlike the first four.]
These radon decay products are airborne solids. They stick to the resinous (sticky) hairs on the undersides of the tobacco leaves and when the tobacco is harvested, these decay products are harvested along with the tobacco. By the time the tobacco is cured, rolled into cigarettes, packaged, and sent to retail outlets, small quantities of lead-210 (22-year half-life) and its immediate successor polonium-210 are left in the tobacco/cigarettes for the unwitting smoker (or second-hand-smoke inhaler) to encounter.
When a smoker lights the cigarette and draws on it, the temperature at the tip increases dramatically. It vaporizes the lead-210 and polonium-210, which is inhaled deep into the lungs, where polonium-210 sticks to and attacks the sensitive lung tissue with its very energetic alpha particles.
Polonium-210 is a very damaging radionuclide. Los Alamos Labs reckons is about 250 billion time more toxic than hydrogen cyanide. It’s what was used to murder Alexander Litvenenko in London at the “request” of Putin who was openly criticized by Litvenenko.
Polonium-210 adds greatly to the cancer-causing characteristic of the tobacco residues lodged in the lung, making cigarettes smoke significantly more carcinogenic than it would otherwise be. When the smoker is not inhaling, the lead-210/polonium-210 is wafted away in the second-hand cigarette smoke as a respirable aerosol to endanger the health of those within sniffing distance.
Inside the lung, some of the inhaled polonium-210 crosses the blood-air barrier end enters the bloodstream. Being solid, it attaches itself to pre-existing plaque build-up in the arteries of the smoker, usually near the arterial valves, where the alpha particle bombardment causes fibrosis of the nearby arterial wall and valve. Fibrosis exacerbates further plaque build-up, increasing the restriction of blood flow, thereby contributing substantially to the incidence of heart attacks and strokes among smokers – because of the alpha emitting polonium-210 in the plaque.
What you may not have heard is that radioactively contaminated waste from the uranium industry is also sold as fertilizer without any warnings about the radioactive content. For example, ammonium sulphate is recovered from Cameco’s Key Lake uranium processing circuits in Saskatchewan and sold as fertilizer. In Ontario, a liquid by-product of Cameco’s Port Hope uranium dioxide conversion plant – an ammonium nitrate solution –is also sold to a local agricultural supply company for use in fertilizer production. The use of similar waste solutions from nuclear fuel facilities as fertilizer has been a concern in other jurisdictions as well.
The justification for this practice seems to be, that since “natural” phosphate from Florida is used to make fertilizer, and it is clearly radioactive (due to the radium-radon chain), and since these uranium industry byproducts have not much higher levels of radioactivity, then what the heck, we (the uranium industry) may as well turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse by selling the radioactive waste byproducts as fertilizer.
Spreading radioactive waste around is not the best policy. Sand-like radioactive residues called “raffinate” from one of the world’s first uranium refineries in Port Hope, Ontario, was spread all over town and used widely in construction projects during the early decades of the nuclear industry (prior to 1985). The result was extensive radioactive contamination of homes, schools, roadways, ravines, the harbour and the public beach. That radioactive fiasco has led to a $2.6 billion environmental cleanup of the town (paid for by the federal government) resulting in over a million cubic metres – about a million tonnes – of radioactive waste to be stored for the first 500 years in a gigantic earthen mound just north of town. The subsequent fate of the still-radioactive mound of waste after 500 years, will be decided at that time.
Nowadays, Cameco’s uranium refinery – the largest in the world – is located in Blind River, Ontario, on the north shore of Georgian Bay. The Blind River plant receives uranium mill concentrates called “yellowcake” (mostly U3O8) from Saskatchewan, Australia and South Africa,, and turns it into a product called “uranium trioxide” (UO3).
The trioxide is then sent to Port Hope Ontario, where it is chemically converted into UO2 (uranium dioxide) for domestic use, about 15% of Canada’s total uranium production, and the remainder is turned into UF6 (uranium hexafluoride or “hex”) for export to enrichment plants outside of Canada. At the enrichment plant, the concentration of U-235 is increased to whatever level is required by the customer.
Enrichment is not an easy task. The “hex” is turned into a gas at a fairly low temperature so that the heavier U-238 atoms can be separated from the lighter U-235 atoms, resulting in an enriched uranium product that goes out the front door while the voluminous discarded U-238 (called depleted uranium or “DU”) goes out the back door.
You can only increase the percentage of U-235 by discarding a great deal of U-238. In order to produce low enriched uranium (LEU) for use as fuel in light water nuclear power plants, about 85% of the initial uranium is discarded in the form of depleted uranium (DU, mostly U-238). The DU has important military uses, and a few civilian uses, but the bulk of the DU inventory is just another part of the vast radioactive legacy of the nuclear age, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
DU metal is used by the military in the manufacture of conventional bullets, shells, missiles, tanks, et cetera. These were used as highly penetrating radioactive munitions in the former Yugoslavia and in other conflicts, resulting in a battlefield littered with long-lived radioactive waste. The military-industrial complex also uses DU metal as “target rods” in plutonium production reactors to breed plutonium for nuclear warheads. In addition, the military uses DU metal in almost all nuclear warheads as a way of significantly multiplying the explosive power of the warhead by a sizable factor. These weapons are called “fission-fusion-fission” weapons, and DU plays an essential role in both the first stage (producing the plutonium) and the third stage
The first fission is from a small ball of plutonium (usually with a tritium “spark-plug” inside) whose sole purpose is to ignite the fusion reaction by raising it to a temperature of about 100 million degrees. It’s a small atomic bomb that serves to ignite the H-bomb, based on nuclear fusion. When fusion occurs, extremely energetic neutrons are given off, and these fission the U-238 metal that has been used for that exact purpose in the construction of the warhead. That third stage, the fission of U-238, provides most of the explosive blast as well as the lion’s share of the radioactive fallout from such so-called “thermonuclear” weapons..
It is a sad story from beginning to end.
And, to add to this tale of woe, Canada currently has about 220 million tonnes of radioactive waste (tailings) stored at or near the surface from uranium milling (the operation that produces yellowcake) along with about 167 million tonnes of radioactive “waste rock”. Yet Canadian authorities and nuclear promoters routinely and unabashedly declare that nuclear power is a “clean” source of energy – and for the most part, Canadian academic scientists and scientific bodies say not a peep to the contrary.
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility