Effects of nuclear waste/dumping on wildlife?

Hi,





I just wanted to know if someone could give me some examples of the effects of Nuclear waste on the environment. I live in an area close to a power plant and this plant is right by the water/protected area.Effects of nuclear waste/dumping on wildlife?
That is actually a harder question than you can imagine to answer. Nuclear waste is highly regulated so it should not have any specific identifiable effects on the environment except very low increases of cancer and even those should be very hard to track. Most nuclear waste in the US is managed so there should not be any effect from radiation, etc. However, there are some historical sites that nuclear waste has been unregulated (a town in Washington State where the original reactors were for the development of the Atomic Bomb in the 40s), although I am unsure if there have been measurable effects on the environment -- other than an increase in radiation --in those areas.





You should aslo check out the environmental and health effects of Chernobyl in Russia. There, after a nuclear accident in 1986 the Russian government evacuated Prypiat a town that had a population of 50,000 people ... which has never been repopulated. The effects on this major accident on human health has not been quantified and even now 20+ years later is questionable... it is estimated that there have been several thousand cases of thyroid cancer, a doubling of the rate of breast cancer, and tens of thousands of cases of non-cancerous illinesses (although some of those may be psychological)





There have been other areas.. where the environment has been effected. I personally know of one area in Canada -- the site of some of the original uranium mines (Elliot Lake, Ontario). There mining companies used deep mines for uranium production brought tons of material to the surface, crushed it to extract the uranium and discarded the mining wastes. They filled valleys, lakes and streams with the tailings.. which was rumored to cause runoff that first mutated the fish in the Serpent River and then acidified the river to kill all the fish.Effects of nuclear waste/dumping on wildlife?
well some are plants dying or never growing and animals can be mutated from an egg if in water
nuclear waste is not just dumped.


So there is no effect.

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