Radioactive sludge seeping from hundreds of Johannesburg mines compared to Chernobyl
Business Times reports thousands of people face evacuation from greater Johannesburg in the Gauteng province – the economic heartland of South Africa – due to toxic sludge from abandoned gold mines laced with high radiation levels.
Acid mine water, the result of groundwater flowing through underground shafts, is decanting from an old uranium mine and rising by half a metre a day beneath the city of 7 million people. Mass evacuation of informal settlements is one of several recommendations in a government-commissioned plan drafted in June to deal with 380 acid mine dumps – many of them radioactive – left over from more than century of underground mining. Uranium is often mined as a byproduct of gold in South Africa.