深层不安：原地浸出采铀扩张引发地下水污染担忧

A push to expand mines that use fluids to extract uranium from aquifers is raising concerns about groundwater pollution N ext year, on a swath of rolling South Dakota grassland, engineers plan to start drilling for energy—not oil or gas, but uranium. Thousands of wells will inject spe- cially treated water into a uranium- rich sandstone formation up to 230 meters underground, where the fluid will leach the uranium into the surrounding groundwater. Additional wells will lift the water to the surface, where workers will extract the uranium and convert it to a concentrated form called yellowcake, to be refined into fuel for nuclear power plants or compo- nents of nuclear weapons. Miners will then pump the wastewater deep underground. …