Julianna Photopoulos reports that arsenic has been found to lock up uranium in a mineral lattice. Arsenic has prevented uranium from leaching into waterways at the South Terras mine in the United Kingdom. This surprising discovery is the first time the toxic element Arsenic has been found to inhibit uranium contamination in water and could help in the clean-up of sites around the world.
The now abandoned South Terras Mine near St Austell in Cornwall was the UK’s only and most important uranium mine, and operated between 1873 and 1930. Marie Curie obtained her early samples of radium, a byproduct of uranium mining, whiles later samples were obtained from uranium mines in the western U.S. But there are numerous abandoned uranium mines worldwide [Doesn't mean that they are contributing contamination], as well as nuclear weapons testing sites and nuclear accident sites [Where?], that are contaminated by radioactive elements such as uranium [more likely selenium, molybdenum, arsenic, radium, radon, and/or other elements known to occur with uranium mineralization].
‘80 years since [South Terras’] abandonment, we wanted to investigate the chemical form of the uranium to understand whether it was mobile, that is, moving with the groundwater to the rivers, or immobilized somehow in the soil,’ says lead author Claire Corkhill from the University of Sheffield. ‘Understanding how radioactive elements can be immobilized before reaching groundwater, drinking water or being mobilized as aerosols in the air is of utmost importance to public safety.’[All these processes are well known and depend on the hydrochemical conditions present within the areas of the "uranium" deposits.].
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