SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY
THE BATTALION
Page 5
in Texas
i&M researchers investigate coastal uranium pollution
- ■««
BY LINDA WANG
Special to the Battalion
Jie population of Kames County, located on the south-
Kulf coast of Texas, north of Corpus Christi, is projected
) increase by more than 87 percent over the next 30 years,
lording to data from the Texas State Data Center.
PHOTfTvTiDTc... ^—f®/ith such rapid growth, the uncertainty of whether ura-
, mm and other toxic elements arc polluting citizens soil and
odiiig tlovice in r^ water ' eaves t* 16 door open for serious health risks.
' Hi his is an issue that has not been studied,” said Bruce
1 1 ' ,II1K ' i"aci. Iltmlii lerbcrt, associate professor of environmental geochemistry
bou ihcirsf tl^xasA&M. “Iftheir major drinking wells are in peril, we
:eed to know about it.” Herbert is leading a team of re-
earcliers from Texas A&M and Texas A&M University-Cor-
iusChristi on a two-year, $ 130,000 project to survey the ex-
ent of uranium contamination along the southern gulf coast
iflfexas, where uranium was heavily mined during the ‘60s
md ‘70s.
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A “hot” metal
Unfi
'Hie
atural uranium is a silver-colored metal found in rocks
. 1 l, tnd soil in the earth. During World War II, when scientists
«0Nered uranium s potential as an explosive in nuclear
y.,, oombs, the U.S. Department of Energy hired companies, like
Chevron and Exxon, to set up and operate mines wherever
uranium was found. Most uranium deposits were discovered
. : ‘ ' ! \” . in the Rocky Mountain states, such as Colorado, Wyoming
vsi.L,pca„ft h[ fc lan(1Utah
' |,l// nuni . ' SB But in 1652. uranium was found in Karnes County, Texas,
■lls -| sion •iiidiencen illlfy Mank, a lundowner in Kames County, remembers when
x Sadlv a l5umnulesa|!I''^ lcarncd h|s P ro P ert y was uranium-rich.
c h j n ,aH“We didn t know what uranium was,” Mank said. ‘‘We
.in\ anenmemovie.Mraim.v ’
nc cast member w ho makesa is 11 was a g° od thin ^”
inumli perliirmance—ZaldanaJ Chevron bought 26 of Mank’s 64 acres ot land for $1000
a\ s j va. She is hip. timnyanJ’ m acre and stripped it of its uranium.
\ [vet to see more of this lonsi: Following the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in
hiiic l.ul\. On the oilier hand v 1979, the demise of the nuclear weapons industry was im-
. 1 ut i I i 11 and e.iii dance, hut Ik.' ifnenL Uranium prices plummeted, and mines were aban-
anh hx'k-a-like will have toa::. doned-
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idling act-a-like curse. (Graft
By 1984, the uranium mining industry was dead, but its
aftennath continues to affect us all.
Not a clean process
Less than 1 percent of natural uranium, in the stable but
radioactive form of uranium-235, can be used to fuel nuclear
bombs. The rest is in the unstable, but non-radioactive, form
of uranium-238, which breaks down to radon gas and ra
dioactive particles.
After mining, leftover
uranium-238, called tail
ings, are ground up and
dumped into a tailings pit.
Normally, uranium trapped
in rocks and soil breaks
down slowly, emitting a
small, harmless level of
“back
ground”
radiation.
But grinding
and exposure to
natural conditions
raises the level
100,000-fold.
Long-term exposure to uranium tail
ings has been shown to poison livestock
and cause genetic damage in people living
nearby.
“The history of uranium mining is a litany of
failure to prevent contamination, and neither the
Texas Department of Health nor the Texas Natural Resources
Conservation Commission has as much as surveyed the ex
tent of contamination,” said state Sen. Carlos F. Truan, who
represents Kames County.
Extent of contamination
The A&M research project will be the first to survey the
downstream extent of contamination along the southern gulf
coast of Texas.
Department of Energy researchers
have surveyed and cleaned up areas in
the immediate vicinity of the mines.
Herbert and his group from College
Station will collect, by hand, soil sam
ples in areas they believe have high lev
els of uranium and other toxic elements
found near Texas uranium mines, such as
arsenic, molybdenum, selenium and
vanadium.
Their counterparts in Corpus
Christi, who include Patrick
Michaud, divi
sion di-
4't ~
tor of
the Near
Shore Research di
vision of Texas
A&M University-
Corpus Christi’s Conrad
Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science, and
Patrick Louchouam, associate research scientist at the
Conrad Blucher Institute, will collect sediment samples
from the bottoms of lakes and rivers.
“Sediment is a very interesting system because it accu
mulates every year,” Louchouam said. “It is like a histori
cal record of what happened in the past.”
Layers of sediment will be analyzed to see if there is in
creased uranium concentration in the layers from the ’60s
and ’70s.
Because uranium is highly mobile in sediment, Lou-
chouarn is looking for a more stable element commonly
found with uranium that can be used as a marker. He
hopes to find increased levels of the marker in the layers
from the ’60s and ’70s.
GRAPHIC COURTESY OF RON PARKER, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY/The Baitalion
The Gulf Coast area north of Corpus Christi is the only area in Texas
where uranium mining occurred during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Texas A&M
researchers are now investigating groundwater pollution.
Hexagons represent the sites of former open-pit uranium mines.
Michaud said the soil and sediment data they collect
will be analyzed and put into a Geographic Information
System (GIS), which allows them to map the contami
nants and predict where they are going.
These results will help watershed management strate
gies prevent the release of toxic elements into ground
water.
The project is being funded by the Texas Advanced
Research Program.
Even though the project just started, Herbert already
has some ideas about what they might find.
“I think we’ll find that the concentration of these el
ements are pretty low,” Herbert said. “But in some wa
tersheds, they will be extremely high, higher than al
lowed by law.”
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