Environmental impact assessment of radionuclides and trace elements at the Kurday U mining site, Kazakhstan

Salbu, Brit; Burkitbaev, M.; Strømman, G.; Shishkov, I.A.; Kayukov, P.G.; Uralbekov, Bolat; Rosseland, Bjørn Olav

doi:10.1016/j.jenvrad.2012.05.001

Cited by 53 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In the present study, the values of the annual effective dose in the mining sites and settlements varied from 0.29 to 1.60 mSv y −1 and from 0.13 to 0.29 mSv y −1 , respectively. The contribution of external gamma radiation in the mining sites is quite significant, and is in the same order of magnitude as reported in the Kurday uranium mining site, Kazakhstan (0.9 mSv y −1 ) (Salbu et al, 2013). It should be mentioned that the estimated annual effective dose in mining sites might be overestimated, because it suggested that people spend their entire outdoor time at the mining sites.…”

Section: Screening For Risk Assessmentsupporting

confidence: 53%

Screening for risk assessment around closed uranium mining sites

et al. 2016

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The aim of this study is to present the environmental impact and health risk 20 years after the closing of the uranium mining industry. The areas under observation are 31 former classical underground uranium mining and exploratory sites in Bulgaria. The geometric mean value of the gamma dose rate (0.33 μSv h −1 ), measured 1 m above ground in the mining sites, was three times higher than the mean of the gamma dose in the nearby settlements (0.11 μSv h −1 ). The geometric mean of specific activities for 238 U, 226 Ra, 232 Th, 40 K and 210 Pb in mining site soil was found to be: 437 Bq kg −1 , 291 Bq kg −1 , 65 Bq kg −1 , 835 Bq kg −1 and 318 Bq kg −1 , respectively. Analysis of variance and correlation were applied. The external dose and offsite external hazard index, as health risk indicators, were estimated based on the results. After twenty years there is still environmental contamination in some locations that may cause a health risk, so remediation and monitoring should continue and be maintained.

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Section: Screening For Risk Assessmentsupporting

confidence: 53%

Screening for risk assessment around closed uranium mining sites

et al. 2016

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“…These methods aim at identifying all the parameters that contribute to the preservation and protection of the natural environment or have other impacts such as human health, labour accidents (Daniel, Tsoulfas, Pappis, & Rachaniotis, 2004). EIA, one of the most popular tools for environmental risk assessment, has been broadly employed as proactive decision support tool to diminish or mitigate the potential impact connected with any developmental activity (Collins et al, 2013;Deng, Hu, Deng, & Mahadevan, 2014;Garraín & Lechó, 2014;Haichao, Wenling, Lahdelma, Pinghua, & Shuhui, 2013;Kim, Choi, Mha, & Joung, 2013;Liu, Sheu, & Tseng, 2013;Momtaz & Kabir, 2013;Phillips, 2013;Salbu et al, 2013;Salomons & Hoberg, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impact assessment based on group decision-making methods in mining projects

Rikhtegar

Mansouri

Oroumieh

et al. 2014

Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja

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Mining operations usually comprise a spread spectrum of environmental challenges, which are often unique to each mine site. This is due to the fact that mining activities, directly or indirectly, have an adverse impact on environment and ecology. For this reason, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process has been developed for evaluation of the possible impact of mine development and operations on the environment, including the natural, social and economic aspects. In this article, an EIA methodology based on analytic network process and fuzzy simple additive weight (SAW) is proposed to formulate the environmental risks pertaining to mining projects. In the system of the proposed model, the importance weights are calculated by an ANP process. Then, fuzzy SAW is employed to evaluate the preference ratings of the alternatives. The merit of using fuzzy logic is to handle the inherent uncertainty in modelling an EIA problem by simplifying the sophisticated structure of the problem under consideration. The proposed model is utilised to assess the environmental impact generated by zinc and lead mining projects located in Zanjan, Iran to shape the future industrial and mining structure of the region. Finally, the environmental impacts are ranked from the most to the least risky.

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“…Another perspective of the physico-chemical characteristics of pit-lake systems tackled in this paper is their radiological environment, which is determined by means of radiometric assays. These techniques/assays are mainly reserved to U mining sites, where we can find pit lakes with 238 U activity concentrations in the range of 15 to 40 Bq/L in Kazakhstan 14 , Tajikistan 15 or Brazil 16 . However, in a former copper mine pit lake 10.5 Bq/L of 238 U was measured, which is close to the typical ranges of U mining pit lakes 17 .…”

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Pit lakes from Southern Sweden: natural radioactivity and elementary characterization

Mantero

Thomas

Holm

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Natural radioactivity in the environment is a field gaining more attention in last decades. This work is focused on the study of natural radioactivity complemented with elementary characterization at former non-uraniferous mining areas in Sweden. This aim is addressed through the study of mining lakes, called pit lakes, which are water bodies generated after opencast mining. Environmental matrices (water, sediments and rocks) from 32 Swedish pit lakes, commonly used for recreational purposes were radiometrically characterized via alpha (238 U, 234 U, 232 Th, 230 Th, 210 Po isotopes) and gamma spectrometry (238 U and 232 Th series radionuclides). Additionally, ambient dose rate equivalent in the immediate surrounding of each pit lake was quantified. Physico-chemical parameters (pH, specific conductivity, dissolved oxygen, oxidation-reduction potential) and elemental composition (major and trace elements by ICP-MS) were analysed in water samples and elementary composition of sediments/rocks was measured by XRF and SEM-EDX in some specific cases. A non-negligible number of pit lakes (26%) with enhanced U levels in water was found. At some sites, rocks contained up to 4% of U in areas with high degree of interaction with local population. Concerning the elementary perspective, another popular site (due to its turquoise water) was found to have elevated dissolved heavy metal levels. Results obtained in this work prove that measurement of natural radioactivity is another component that should be included in routine analysis of characterization in mining areas, especially if restauration of post-mining sites is intended for human recreational. Mining activities in Sweden, the major metal mining country in the European Union, involving 63% of iron ore production, Zn (22%), Pb (20%) and Ag (17%) in 2014 1 , imply the generation of enormous quantities of mining wastes. Historically, more than 2,700 mines gather around 30,000 sites that have been minor mines and quarries according to the Geological Survey of Sweden (only 15 active mines in 2015) 2. Many of these sites were opencast mines to exploit sulfide, limestone, clay, etc. It is noteworthy that open-pit mining has increased substantially over the past two decades due to improvement of metallurgical techniques that enable metal extraction from low-grade ores 3. During exploitation by open-pit mining, the water table is suppressed to avoid the flooding of active mines. However, when mining activity ceases, the water table recovers its original position, flooding the open pits, and giving rise to mine pit lakes. The geochemistry of pit lake waters can vary enormously, depending on several factors such as local geology, hydrology or climate 4-7. A significant example is the case of sulfide mine pit lakes, where high/very high concentration of heavy metals in waters can be found due to the generation of acid mine drainage (AMD) processes 7. An important feature of AMD is that the sources of pollution can be active for years or even centuries after mine closure 8. However, ...

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Environmental impact assessment of radionuclides and trace elements at the Kurday U mining site, Kazakhstan

Cited by 53 publications

References 18 publications

Screening for risk assessment around closed uranium mining sites

Screening for risk assessment around closed uranium mining sites

Environmental impact assessment based on group decision-making methods in mining projects

Pit lakes from Southern Sweden: natural radioactivity and elementary characterization

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