Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir
What I remember from uranium decomposition is that it eventually decays to lead (somehow twice, I think...) so we're kinda talking about lead, which can contaminate an area for a very long time. I didn't even read the article because this is an old argument and one without much merit.
Huh? The half life of U-238 is about 4,5 billion years, (then it will decay 15 times in about 321000 years). So unless we're talking about about billions years into the future, we're talking about uranium and it's daughter nucleids, not lead.

While I agree with you that the radiation probably isn't the cause of the problems (the toxity of uranium is far more likely), the poor defense in that article makes me think of the tobacco industry a few years back...