There is Greater Harm from Non-Catalytic Cars than from Amulsar, Ioannisyan

Daniel Ioannisyan, program coordinator of the "Informed Citizens' Union" NGO, made a post on his Facebook page regarding the Amulsar issue, stating: "Amulsar contains approximately as much uranium as gold. Yes! In terms of uranium quantity, Armenia is estimated to have about 50,000 to 100,000 tons of uranium reserves. Amulsar contains about 0.1 percent of that reserve. For example, not far from Yerevan, in Arzakan (in the basin of the Hrazdan River) and in various mines in Syunik, there is significantly more uranium than in Amulsar! During Soviet times, the uranium mine in Amulsar was not opened not because of the 'concern' for Jermuk, but rather due to the extremely small quantity of uranium present there. For comparison, the smallest uranium mine in Russia contains 3,500 tons of uranium (50 times more than Amulsar). When extracting gold or molybdenum from ore, uranium remains within the stones. Extracting uranium from ore is so costly that it would not be profitable in Amulsar (uranium is 2000 times cheaper than gold). Consequently, in the event of an earthquake or any other (even the worst) scenario, uranium will not 'flow' anywhere (since stones do not flow). Regarding the danger of uranium, in nature, uranium predominantly (99.3%) occurs in the 238 isotope, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and a little (0.7%) in the 235 isotope, with a half-life of 800 million years. This means it decays (radiates) much more passively than the materials produced from nuclear fuel in a nuclear power plant. I, of course, will not say that uranium is beneficial to human health. However, it decays so slowly by itself (neither in a nuclear power plant nor in a nuclear bomb) that people often use uranium for non-radioactive purposes (even to give certain shades to oil paints or glass). The harm caused to public health in Yerevan by non-catalytic cars is much greater than what can be caused by uranium from Amulsar… or possibly even from Amulsar at all. Of course, I have great respect for Hakin Barseghyan and others, but let the issue of uranium be left to physicists!"