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Re:Nuclear Power in France by jacobsenscott on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @01:08PM (#28842222)
> I, too, often randomly stumble on nuclear waste depots 400m deep under the surface. Such a way to waste my Sunday.

When those dumps leak into your groundwater it does indeed ruin your day.

Re:Nuclear Power in France by Manuel_D on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @01:20PM (#28842384)
Not really. We test for uranium contamination of water. There's actually a lot of areas where naturally occurring uranium puts it above safe concentrations and it has to be filtered out. This is the case in much of California, the Rockies that feed into this area's water supply naturally had high uranium concentration [1]. Given that we already test and treat water she to naturally occurring uranium I'm not too concerned over waste sites.

1. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat...

Re:Nuclear Power in France by iforgotpassword on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @02:03PM (#28842952)
So the testing will then also magically clean the water if it gets contaminated? Sure, if Flint MI is our baseline for acceptable living standards this is fine.
Re:Nuclear Power in France by ashtonkem on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @04:37PM (#28844760)
You misunderstand what’s happening in Flint. The water coming from the water treatment plant is perfectly safe, the issue is that it is then delivered to customers in lead pipes. This means cleaning up the water doesn’t involve removing lead at the treatment plant, which is normal, but rather replacing all of the water pipes in the city, which is very very hard. In fact removing various heavy metals from water is a regular thing that water treatment plants do, including metals like uranium and chromium.

The takeaway from Flint is not “we can’t remove uranium from ground water”, but rather “don’t build your water distribution network out of toxic heavy metals like lead”.

Re:Nuclear Power in France by Manuel_D on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @02:09PM (#28843034)
Yes, removing uranium from water supplies is not much different than removing other heavy metals like lead. This isn't particular hard, debacles like Flint are newsworthy because it's something most water services do successfully.