Colorado Experience: Uranium Mania
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- Опубліковано 1 лис 2017
- America's explosive successes in peace and war were fueled by the radioactive wealth from the Colorado Plateau. The mineral carnotite was a "Pandora's rock" of scientific, medical, industrial and military power for 20th Century America with its unleashed resources of radium, vanadium and uranium. Even though the energetic and frenetic mining and refining of uranium ore in Western Colorado has mostly ceased, its remaining trace elements of memory and controversy still radiate from Uravan and Grand Junction throughout the state, the nation and the world.
My grandpa worked these mines, he is in one of those pictures. He died in 1985 from Lung cancer from those mines.
I can watch this stuff all day!
I lived in Uravan from 1977 until 1983, and worked in the instrument shop in the mill. It was the greatest place I've ever lived.
My grandparents, their children, my great uncle and his family and my great grandparents lived in Uravan. The men of course worked in the mine and the kids played in the tailings. Every man has had cancer and most of the male children have too.
My grandpa worked there as well and died of cancer in 1985.
WOW! I took my sophomore geology courses at the colorado Mesa university and took historical geology from dr. Rex Cole. He is a human encyclopedia on the colorado plateau geology. Honor to have learned from him
I live on the Western Slope and have driven through there numerous times. Thank you for this episode.
It's neat to see people I recognize in here and knowing they were a part of Colorado history. My family is directly linked to this area and were some of those who worked and lived in Urivan.
As a kid growing up in the San Luis Valley, we'd always have other kids from Los Alamos come to summer church camp. We always kidded them about glowing in the dark...
Still, nuclear power is one of the best solutions for our base power needs. Although now burning thorium makes more sense than much more expensive uranium.
Heck no. Geothermal is much safer
Oh, goody! More Colorado history for me!
Fascinating history
Very recommendable! The naive optimism of the 1950s became tragic
Hi Thomas Bingel.
Greenlandic government is about to do the same thing now, they've just give a permission just pick up the Uranium in South Greenland.
We are going to loose South Greenland.
@@nukaotto thanks for your comment! However, perhaps you are missing something! What I was trying to say is that many, sometimes very naive and grave, mistakes were made in the beginning of the atomic age. However, the sometimes tragic lessons were learnt in the following decades. Nuclear power generation is safe. Mining is manageable.
What is there to loose in South Greenland? Greenland is a huge island (half the size of the European Union) with a very tiny population! Most likely this Uranium mining will bring lots of good, high paying jobs!
Maria Salomea Skłodowska, Curie, known simply as Marie Curie, born in Warsaw Poland.
See “URANIUM DRIVE-IN” and the “ATOMIC STATES OF AMERICA” and John Pilger’s “THE COMING WAR WITH CHINA”. Also “RADIOACTIVE: THE WOMEN OF THREE MILE ISLAND”.
Interesting that they mention three mile island, but fail to mention the largest radioactive material spill in US history in 1979 at Church Rock in neighboring New Mexico
Yes, gotta beware of future manias
Nuclear energy is by far the safest most reliable energy source now available with no greenhouse gases produced. One should think through the materials required, reliability, efficiencies, and waste stream produced with renewable energy sources to better understand the folly of thinking we could go renewable given currently available technology.
All I think of is the Fallout games. lol
I earned my 'school clothes' money by detasseling corn. Not quite the same thing l suppose, but......l don't glow in the dark or have lung cancer.
I went to School sixth grade through graduation of high school in Nebraska. As high school students we could get detassel corn jobs jobs during the summer. My parents wouldn't allow me to work detasseling. In their minds it was beneath our status as a family. They did me a great disservice for the experience fun and money I missed out on.
Here in Oregon they say Uranium mining in the Eastern side of our state begins again soon. DUMB
Shame on you PBS how about you report on the damage caused to the residents and the fact Colorado State considered all of us collateral damage! They refused to give us downwinder designation yet some of us are suffering untold medical problems that as my hematologist stated ... I have the same health issues as a survivor of heroshima! How about you report that truth!!!
Yellow cake.
Birth defects, sterilization, and cancer are more than double the rates of the rest of the united states in grand junction Colorado. Should of buried this town to and they tried. All the top soil have to be removed when the buried the other town.
Chernobyl and Fukushima......ugh
You realize that fossil fuel pollution kills millions of people per year, right?