Nuclear fuel cycle workers are exposed to a variety of hazardous materials. Uranium processing is one of the stages of the nuclear fuel cycle and, together with uranium underground mining, employs the largest number of workers, with much smaller groups of workers involved in uranium enrichment and reprocessing and reactor operation. To date, epidemiological studies of uranium underground miners...

Accidental exposure to uranium is a matter of concern, as U(VI) is nephrotoxic in both human and animal models, and its toxicity is associated to chemical toxicity instead of radioactivity. We synthesized different PAMAM G4 and G5 derivatives in order to prove their interaction with uranium and their effect on the viability of red blood cells in vitro. Furthermore, we prove the effectiveness of...

Uranium mining and milling industries are growing rapidly in many countries and this trend is likely to continue with the increasing demand for nuclear fuel. The problems of radiological hazards in this part of the nuclear fuel cycle have received considerable attention in recent years because of the epidenuological evidence of lung cancer among uranium miners, mainly smokers. The hazard is not...

Following exposure to aerosols of depleted uranium (DU), biological samples show the presence of a synthetic mixture of natural uranium and DU. By partitioning the uranium in the 24-h urine sample along the isotopic fractions of natural uranium and DU, one can study the kinetics of these subpopulations independently. A linear model is developed to estimate the lung burden of DU from measurement...

Slabs of natural and depleted uranium are used routinely to calibrate personal dosimeters and radiation survey instruments for beta radiation. However, little information is available on the absorbed dose rate produced by a uranium slab as a function of depth in matter. In this study, an extrapolation chamber was used to measure the dose rate produced by natural uranium at a variety of depths i...

The Navajo People and Uranium Mining, edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally, and Esther YazzieLewis, is an easy and informative read. The book tells an important and heretofore untold story about the experiences of Navajo miners and families in the uranium mining industry. With a stirring foreword written by Stewart L. Udall, former U.S. Representative for Arizona and Secretary of the Interior...

Removal of uranium(VI) by zerovalent iron has been suggested as a feasible pathway to control uranium contaminations in seepage waters. Available information in the literature however presents discrepant evidence on the process responsible for the mitigation effect. On basis of an EH-pH diagram of uranium and iron, it is outlined that these discrepancies may be explained by the aqueous chemistr...

We use a laser high-harmonics-based extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) polarimeter to determine the optical constants of elemental uranium in the wavelength range from 10 to 47 nm. The constants are extracted from the measured ratio of p-polarized to s-polarized reflectance from a thin uranium film deposited in situ. The film thickness is inferred from a spectroscopic ellipsometry measurement of the sam...

The location, nature, and size distribution of uranium-rich grains in sediment layers can be identified by sunbursts of etched particle tracks if each sample is pressed against a track detector, next irradiated with thermal neutrons, and the detectors then chemically etched to reveal fission tracks. The total track abundance from the sample is a measure of the 235U content; hence, if the bulk u...

While thorium dioxide is already used industrially in high temperature applications, more insight is needed about the behaviour of the material as part of a mixed-oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel, incorporating uranium. We have developed a new interatomic potential model, commensurate with a prominent existing UO2 potential, to conduct configurational analyses of uranium-doped ThO2 supercells. Using th...