The production of nuclear weapons is intimately bound up with the production of nuclear power, and the processing of uranium, which is the raw material for both nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel. This involves some very dangerous, and ecologically damaging processes.
The "nuclear chain" starts with uranium mining and ends with the final storage of the nuclear waste. In between are the conversion and enrichment of the uranium, the production of fuel rods, the fission of radioactive material in the nuclear reactor, exchanging, reprocessing and interim storage of the spent fuel. The immense amounts of radioactive waste that arises at every single process, presents an as yet unsolved problem. Each point in the nuclear chain creates a high risk to health and to the environment. Dr. Katsumi Furitsu, a doctor who investigated the health effects of nuclear weapons stated: "If Hiroshima and Nagasaki on one side and Chernobyl on the other side have their specificity there's nevertheless a great similarity in the health injuries caused by nuclear radiation".
There are also clear links to nuclear weapons at every step of this chain, whether through design, or the theft or misuse of radioactive materials.

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Uranium mining

Uranium is the heaviest element in nature. Natural uranium consists of three different isotopes - more than 99% is U-238; 0,01% is U-234; 0,71% is U-235. The chemical properties of these isotopes are identical, but their atomic weight is slightly different. U-235 is the only isotope of uranium which can be used for nuclear fission (splitting the atom to produce energy) and is used in nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons.
Uranium is naturally radioactive. This means that as the element decays, it emits radiation. One of the most dangerous products created as Uranium decays is the gas Radon-222 which easily spreads during the mining and the further processing of uranium. As well as being dangerous due to its radioactivity, uranium is chemically toxic.

A 1300 megawatt reactor consumes around 33 tons of uranium a year. To produce this amount of uranium, 440.000 tons of uranium ore (stone containing the uranium) have to be mined. This mining uses a huge amount of land, which are radioactively polluted and become uninhabitable. Lots of overburden, and less useful ore, is also mined and dumped next to the mines.
No matter how uranium is mined, there will be radioactive contamination of the environment as well as impacts from noise, dust, sulphur dioxide fumes, etc. However, every mining method has its particular environmental and health risks:

Open pit mining is used to mine shallow deposits. It causes large amounts of dust, and the release of radon gas. Due to the low grade of the uranium ore, economically viable open pit mines tend to have enormous dimensions (such as the Rössing mine in Namibia).

In deep mines, miners have to face risks associated with the release of radon gas, and dust, as well as the effects of radiation. Improved ventilation reduces the miners doses but increase the contamination around the ventilation shafts. To keep the groundwater out of the mine, large amounts of water contaminated with radioactivity and toxic metals are pumped out and released to rivers and lakes.

In "In-situ Leaching", a leaching liquid solution is forced through the underground ore body itself to dissolve the uranium. The liquid (ammonium-carbonate, sodium-carbonate, or sulphuric acid) is injected by drill-holes and the uranium bearing solution is pumped back to the surface. The environmental problems are obvious, with the ever-present possibility that the solution of sulphuric acid, oxidant, and uranium contaminate the groundwater.

Once mined, the ore is milled to extract the uranium, in the form of "yellowcake". Mills are usually located near the mines. While half of the radon gas contained in the ore is released during mining, the other half is released during the milling process. The remaining rocks (known as tailings) are simply left in large pools next to the mill.

Much of the uranium used in nuclear weapons was mined and milled on land owned inhabited by indigenous people- causing massive health, social and environmental problems in already marginalized communities.

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Enrichment and depleted uranium

Before the uranium can be used in the nuclear power plant or in nuclear reactors, it has to be enriched, which means that the small amount of the isotope Uranium 235 in the rock has to be increased.
The yellowcake is transported (often over huge distances) to enrichment plants in Japan, France, the UK, Russia or the USA for processing. The processing involves converting the yellowcake into uranium hexaflouride (UF6), a dangerous radioactive gas. The gas is then either centrifuged of diffused through fine screens to be enriched in the "fissile" U235 which itself can start chain reactions; in this form of enrichment, the uranium gains military value: depending on the enrichment the uranium can then be used as fuel for power, research or military reactors, or for nuclear weapons.

The leftover material is composed mostly of the uranium 238 isotope, is known as depleted uranium (DU). This waste, which is produced in large quantities by the enrichment process, is nowadays used for military purposes, as it is a very dense material. The US-army used DU-ammunition and armory during the Gulf War. It it quite likely that varporized and burnt DU contributed to the mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome". The effects on the civilian population in the areas contiminated by DU are very similar to those that result from nuclear fallout.

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Reprocessing

Reprocessing is a military technology for dissolving spent nuclear fuel in nitric acid to extract the plutonium that was created as a result of the fuel being burned. The plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of nuclear power plants can be made into nuclear weapons. This means that any country with a "civilian" nuclear power industry is also a potential nuclear weapon state. In fact, this is the route by which India, Pakistan and Israel were able to acquire their nuclear weapons.
The nuclear powers are now experimenting with mixed-oxide (MOX) reactors that burn blended uranium/plutonium fuel. The reason? To get rid of the excess plutonium created in weapons programmes. The net effect of creating and burning MOX fuel is, infact, larger amounts of plutonium, and larger amounts of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Most of the world's commercial reprocessing (80% or so) is undertaken at Cogema's facilities at La Hague. Most of the rest is done at BNFL's Sellafield plant.

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Tritium

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of Hydrogen, and an essential component of the H-bomb. Like all radioactive materials, it decays naturally, so a constant supply of tritium must be maintained in order to keep a nuclear arsenal functioning.
Tritium has no use in electricity production, and does not occur naturally. But it has to be manufactured by irradiating another element, lithium, in a nuclear reactor. The lithium is then processed to extract the tritium.
The irradiation of lithium can also be done in a "civilian" nuclear power station.

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Nuclear Testing

The primary purpose of nuclear tests is the development of reliable and effective nuclear weapons.
More than 2,000 nuclear tests have been carried out by the nuclear weapon states. They have had direct, serious and long-term adverse health and environment effects. Every human alive now and over the next tens of thousands of years will carry radioactive elements created by nuclear tests, causing an increase in their lifetime cancer risk. Increases in the rates of radiation-related cancers have been documented in military personnel involved in nuclear tests, and also within communities downwind of test sites in Australia, Kazakhstan, the United States and the Micronesian Pacific Islands. It is estimated that due to atmospheric testing alone, 430,000 fatal human cancers were caused up to the year 2000, with an eventual total of 2.4 million.
Governments of nuclear-weapons states have shown an alarming and sometimes wilful disregard of public and environmental health. There has been:

deliberate secrecy and misinformation about the safety of nuclear tests;

non-existent or inadequate identification and monitoring of highly exposed populations;

little study of the effects of dangerous, long-lived radioactive wastes in an underground or submarine environment; and

no significant attempt, in most cases, to clean-up test sites and to deal with the longer-term health and environmental effects of nuclear testing.
Nuclear test sites are in effect unstudied, unlicensed and high-level radioactive waste dumps, without legislative or public scrutiny such as environmental impact assessment. Test sites seldom meet the most basic criteria for a nuclear waste repository such as exclusion of ground water, lack of fractures or fissures, and high absorption of radionuclides. At Moruroa there is already disturbing evidence of the leakage of radionuclides (tritium, iodine-131 and caesium-134) from beneath the coral atoll.
As with the mining of Uranium, the nuclear tests sites have often been located in areas inhabitted by indigenous people. These groups include Aboriginal people in Australia (especially at the former British test site at Maralinga), Micronesian and Polynesian Pacific islanders, Uygur people in China, Western Shoshone people in Nevada and the Kazakh people. The effects have been far broader than those related to radiation and often involve:

displacement from traditional lands and disruption of traditional communities;

economic, social and military domination; and

non-radiation related health problems such as, in the Marshall Islands and French Polynesia, outbreaks of ciguatera fish poisoning.

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Friends of the Earth Flanders & Brussels (formerly For Mother Earth) is a member of Friends of the Earth International