Uranium, poisoning, and Indigenous communities of the Colorado Plateau, from extraction to disposal (through maps)

(Originally posted elsewhere on 18 May 2020.)

Stage 1: A poisoning.

Stage 2: A poisoning.

Stage 3: A poisoning.

People get hurt at every stage of the process: during the original extraction; during the use of the extracted material; and then during the eventual waste disposal.

1. Navajo, Pueblo, Ute, Hopi, Latine communities, and other local people get poisoned, during the initial extraction and mining of uranium, living in the site worst affected by poisoning of groundwater, radiation, and mining. (Majority of US uranium mines in Four Corners region; radioactive soil; hundreds of unrepaired mines; poisoned streams; largest single radioactive waste disaster in US in 1979 located on Navajo land.)

2. Navajo, Pueblo, Ute, Hopi, Latine communities, and other local people get poisoned during atomic bomb testing, living in the site worst affected by radiation after radioactive materials have been processed and manipulated. (Majority of nuclear weapons testing fallout and iodine-131 poisoning in Four Corners region.)

3. Navajo, Pueblo, Ute, Hopi, Latine communities, and other local people get poisoned, during the disposal of radioactive waste, living in the site worst affect by radiation after the uranium has been processed and profited from and then returned to mills in the Four Corners region. (Majority of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive uranium waste, even when processed or used elsewhere across the continent, is then shipped back and stored in Four Corners region.)

Meanwhile, none of the profit/“wealth” is shared with people living in the region, where access to groceries, drinking water, utilities, etc. is extremely limited.

You can make inferences when seeing it spatially, side-by-side: