Contamination assessment to a uranium mine in China based on the fault tree analysis

On the basis of using the fault tree analysis method to analyse the sources of heavy metal pollution to a uranium mine, the cumulative index method and the potential ecological risk assessment methods were used to quantitatively evaluate pollution of the eight metal(U, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, Zn) in the study area soil. The result shows that the heavy metal contamination degree to soil decreased with distance from the uranium mines. The evaluation results of the cumulative index method were that the Cd is the highly polluting element, U is medium-heavy polluting element, followed by the Cr, Pb, Zn, Mn, Cu, and Ni element is pollution-free. The evaluation results of the potential ecological risk assessment methods showed that Cd is extremely strong element, followed by the Cr, Pb, Zn, Mn, Cu and Ni, which are slightly polluted elements. (authors)