How does one mine for Plutonium, Uranium without being exposed to harmful radiation?

[Taverner]

It seems as if mining it, and in turn processing it would be fairly dangerous.

[Sonicwall]

1. Very carefully

:shrug:

[thewiseguy]

2. Mine for Plutonium? Are you serious?

You think there are such things as Plutonium mines?

[Junkdrawer]

4. Well...

a few thousand years from now, the North East Coast of Japan will be full of such mines.

[Taverner]

5. No - I have absolutely NO KNOWLEGE of how Plutonium is found/produced/mined

Hey - instead of being such an ass, why not use the opportunity to explain how we get plutonium?

[thewiseguy]

6. Instead of being such an ass?

Why do not you use google or wikipedia.

[jobendorfer]

9. plutonium is an element that is manufactured

It can't be mined, because it doesn't exist in any natural form on earth.
It's made, using other radioactive elements like Uranium, in a reactor.
That said, yes, it's incredibly dangerous stuff, and requires very careful and skillful handling.

Uranium mining has all of the hazards of regular mining, plus the fact that it is a toxic heavy metal.
One of the seldom-discussed facets of nuclear power is that fissile uranium ( the stuff that's useful
for making nuclear reactors and bombs ) is < 1% of the uranium mined. That means for every 1 pound
of useful isotope, you get 100 lbs of (non-fissile yet still toxic) uranium waste.

Hope this helps, and please, don't be afraid to ask questions.
It's how all of us learn --

J.

[PoliticAverse]

11. Small amounts of Plutonium can be found naturally...

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium

Trace amounts of at least two plutonium isotopes (plutonium-239 and 244) can be found in nature. Small traces of plutonium-239, a few parts per trillion, and its decay products are naturally found in some concentrated ores of uranium,<41> such as the natural nuclear fission reactor in Oklo, Gabon.<42> The ratio of plutonium-239 to uranium at the Cigar Lake Mine uranium deposit ranges from 2.4 × 10−12 to 44 × 10−12.<43> Even smaller amounts of primordial plutonium-244 occur naturally due to its relatively long half-life of about 80 million years.<44> These trace amounts of Pu-239 originate in the following fashion: On rare occasions, U-238 undergoes spontaneous fission, and in the process, the nucleus emits one or two free neutrons with some kinetic energy. When one of these neutrons strikes the nucleus of another U-238 atom, it is absorbed and the atom, which becomes U-239. With quite-short half-lives, U-239 decays to neptunium-239 (Np-239), and then Np-239 decays into Pu-239.

Since the relatively long-lived isotope plutonium-240 occurs in the decay chain of plutonium-244 it should also be present, albeit 10,000 times rarer still. Finally, exceedingly small amounts of plutonium-238, attributed to the incredibly rare double beta decay of uranium-238, have been found in natural uranium samples.<45>

[WatsonT]

10. Plutonium is artificial

made in a lab from uranium bombarded with neutrons (I think).

Uranium mining isn't entirely safe but it isn't as bad as you'd think due to the very low concentrations present even in rich mines.

[PoliticAverse]

12. It is made at places like this...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,752944,00.html

[FourScore]

14. It must be your effervescent personality, wiseguy, that people love and admire about you...

:shrug:

[tridim]

3. It's dangerous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Health_risks_of_uranium_mining

[drm604]

7. Plutonium is not mined. It's bred from uranium in reactors.

Uranium occurs naturally in low concentrations in the ore pitchblende. Pitchblende is not very radioactive but, at least historically, those who mined it did have elevated cancer rates.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. Uranium ore is a fraction as radioactive, becuse most of it is other non-radioactive material.

It isn't a safe occupation, but processing ore and removing impurities (enriching) uranium is where it becomes highly radioactive.

Uranium is actually one of the more common substances 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold.

[hayu_lol]

13. Plutonium is a product of fission ...

as fission occurs in the fuel rod, one of the byproducts produced is Plutonium. Life of a fuel rod is roughly 3 years. Toward the end of the useful life, the plutonium and other similar products reduce the energy of the individual rod. Upon refueling, the spent rods are pulled, cooled in a pool, and then reprocessed and the fuel is good for a later refueling, less the plutonium/other byproducts of fission.

[Ozymanithrax]

15. Exactly...very well put.

[hunter]

16. We've already mined all the uranium we need for a long, long time...

... in our mad rush to build bombs and very inefficient nuclear power plants.

This uranium is sitting around in leaky barrels or made into explosive projectiles that we shoot at Libyans.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

The used, incompletely fissioned, nuclear fuel sits around in swimming pools or cans. Going nowhere. Doing nothing.





Well, unless there is a tsunami...

Plutonium is made in nuclear reactors from uranium. We made a whole lot of plutonium to build bombs with. Thousands and thousands and thousands of bombs. Many tons of the stuff.

We've also dug a whole lot of thorium out of the ground, another nuclear fuel. Most of it sits around in mine tailings. A whole lot of it, already refined, was reburied at Hanford because uranium was cheap.

Plus we've got all that "nuclear waste" produced by inefficient reactors that's still mostly fuel.

With the right technology this could all be turned into electricity. And within a few hundred years the waste remaining would be less radioactive than the ores we originally dug out of the ground.

But I suppose we're going to be so upset that our Space Shuttle era nuclear power plants exploded, well, just like two Space Shuttles, that we will sit around wringing our hands about all this waste that's already been dug out of the ground as we continue to burn more coal and turn our environment into an unrecognizable heap of steaming toxic waste swarming with starving climate refugees.

Beam me up, Mr. Scott.