Environmental contamination from uranium production facilities and their remediation. Proceedings of an international workshop

The legacies of past uranium mining and milling activities continue to be a cause of concern and require assessment and remedial action. This problem has been recognized in many parts of the world over the past three decades, but has received special attention since the end of the Cold War. The larger uranium producers have expended considerable effort and resources in dealing with this legacy. However, it has to be noted that the search for uranium covered almost all countries in the world. The result in some countries is a legacy of numerous small scale mines and mills. For economic and other reasons, including less stringent environmental standards and lack of awareness at the time, these operations may not have been properly closed out and made safe from both a radiological as well as a general safety point of view. It was thought that countries with this type of uranium mining and milling legacy would benefit from an exchange of views and experiences. The remediation strategies and techniques developed by countries with major problems such as the United States of America or Germany are often not on the scale of the problems in other countries and could not be implemented in those countries. Therefore, this international workshop was organized in Lisbon from 11 to 13 February 2004. This workshop marked the successful completion of an IAEA technical cooperation project designed to assist Portugal in dealing with its uranium mining legacy of over 50 small sites. The workshop provided a forum for sharing the experience gathered during this project