I want to share my take on uranium mine waste management in Saskatchewan, based on years of experience in and research of uranium mining. If you agree or disagree, great—join the conversation and let's get this right. Diverse perspectives deepen our understanding.

Remember, the nuclear age was born of war, and that drive has kept it alive. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are the next step, bringing nuclear power to the world under the guise of being "tiny." Frankly, I’m not sure what’s more alarming—this expansion or climate change. If we're exporting this technology, both the exporting and receiving countries must fully understand it to make informed choices. In my view, wind and solar offer a path to sustainable global societies, unlike oil and nuclear. I’ll be reflecting on the big picture here, because being too close can obscure the view.

Uranium deposits form from sedimentary processes: water dissolves uranium in rock layers, moving through fault zones until it re-stabilizes as a deposit. Mining these deposits—often below water tables and in fractured rock—is complex and risky. Saskatchewan's uranium mining began around Uranium City, spurred by the demand for bomb material. Indigenous people worked the mines, often without protection, while waste was left piled up for future generations to contend with. Effluent was piped into lakes. Some reclamation efforts have since taken place, with mills destroyed and waste loosely covered with soil to shield it from wind and water runoff. Waste already in the lakes has been left untouched, supposedly to avoid further contamination. This logic follows the "ALARA" (as low as reasonably achievable) principle, the nuclear industry’s fallback justification for not removing waste that could damage ecosystems if disturbed.

Surface tailings from uranium mining contain 5% unrecovered uranium and 85% other radioactive elements, which remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years. Grinding and chemically treating these tailings in mills makes them even more mobile in groundwater. Leaving them on the surface exposes them to erosion, the same forces that wore down mountain ranges over millennia. Do they really believe a thin soil layer will keep them contained?

For more recent projects, some waste was dumped into lakes with claims that "reducing environments" would neutralize it for 10,000 years. Monitoring allegedly occurred for 10 years before the site was declared decommissioned. It’s standard practice to greenlight mines with a vague promise of a decommissioning plan later. This approach assumes money will be there when it’s needed, but in reality, the end result remains uncertain. The plan is to restore these sites to "reasonably achievable" original states with no access restrictions, but I wonder how realistic that is. For example, Key Lake’s waste was dumped on flat ground and covered with soil, while Rabbit Lake employed a permeable "surround method" to direct runoff. Groundwater levels just a few feet below these pits raise serious questions about containment.

For solution mining, newly proposed in Saskatchewan, uranium will be chemically dissolved underground, with the mineral-rich solution pumped to the surface for processing. This avoids surface tailings but introduces risks to underground water systems. The "liquid effluent" pipes still direct waste into lakes, similar to past practices. Back in 2006, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) found elevated uranium levels in mine discharge, with Rabbit Lake alone releasing 1.7 metric tons annually, plus other contaminants. Cameco has since reduced that to 238 kg annually, a significant decrease, but it still means over 20 metric tons entered the environment over 16 years. There’s a lot of monitoring data collected but not thoroughly analyzed. A mass balance analysis, which examines sediment to check where contaminants end up, would be crucial for understanding long-term impact.

The 1985 Beak study, used to assess the environmental impact of uranium mines, flagged four main issues:

1. Inconsistency in data collection
2. Analysis errors
3. Discarded high readings
4. Poor sampling equipment.

This flawed approach led to the conclusion that no discernible environmental trends were detected—clearing the way for expansion. This study relied on outdated sampling methods, like clamshell grabbers, which often disrupt sediment layers. Improved samplers, now used by Cameco, would likely yield more reliable data, but by 1998, expansion decisions had already been made based on inconclusive data.

When reports declare no discernible trends, what kind of decisions do you think politicians make?