Technique Cleans Up Uranium Contamination.(Brief Article)

Costs of cleaning up U.S. hazardous waste sites, including those at energy facilities and uranium contaminated sites, have been estimated at between $373 billion and $1.694 trillion. An innovative "natural" alternative to cleaning up uranium contaminated sites is being studied by scientists at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories as a way to replace costly and sometimes ineffective traditional techniques. Called natural attenuation, the method relies on a naturally-occurring process that adsorbs soluble uranium and metals onto a mineral surface. As the coatings