Pros & Cons
Uranium: Students study mining’s impact

Tamara Lopez laughs as she does lab work in her eighth-grade advanced science class. Lopez and her classmates were testing soil pH from the Rio Puerco to see the effects of the 1979 Churchrock uranium spill. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff writer

GALLUP — When the advanced science class at Chief Manuelito Middle School decided to work on a project, they chose an undertaking that would take them the entire semester.

Uranium.

The class of Kelly Niedermeier and Ron Schali have the eighth-graders examining all aspects of uranium: Mining, the splitting of atoms, the use of energy provided by uranium, the problem of what to do with uranium waste, the effect of U-238 on global warming and the community where it is mined and the regulation of uranium use.

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