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URANIUM MINE LOCATION DATABASE
Impact/Purpose:
To provide a single spatial inventory of uranium locations in the United States that can be used for understanding health impacts to nearby populations and the environment. The Uranium Location Database (ULD) is an ArcView shape file of uranium activity locations primarily for the States of Arizona, California, Texas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Washington, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Uranium mine records from the US Geological Survey for the rest of the United States have also been included.
Description:
EPA's Radiation Protection Division works to address hazards posed by technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM). As one part of EPA's efforts to characterize risk from TENORM sources and to identify where TENORM problems exist, we have been investigating the potential environmental hazards of abandoned uranium mines in the western United States. Between the 1940s and 1990s, thousands of uranium mines operated in the continental United States, mostly in the western U.S., leaving a potential legacy of radiological and chemical hazards. EPA has developed a uranium location database that contains location information and a range of other information on ~15,000 known and suspected uranium mines (e.g., from US Geological and State databases) and other locations with uranium (e.g., U. S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Database System).