Uranium Tailings at Elliot Lake Ontario
This wall of radioactive sand, 10 metres high, holds back a veritable lake of similar material left over from the defunct Stanrock uranium mining operation. There are 130 million tonnes of this stuff in the Elliot Lake area; it will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The mining companies are seeking permission from the Canadian government to flood the tailings and then to abandon them.
photo by Robert Del Tredici from his book entitled
At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb
(Harper and Row, 1987)