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Wismut (mining company)
SAG/SDAG Wismut was a uranium mining company in East Germany during the time of the cold war. It produced a total of 230,400 tonnes of uranium between 1947 and 1990 and made East Germany the fourth largest producer of uranium ore in the world at the time. It was the largest single producer of uranium ore in the entire sphere of control of the USSR. In 1991 after German reunification it was transformed into the Wismut GmbH company, owned by the Federal Republic of Germany, which is now responsible for the restoration and environmental cleanup of the former mining and milling areas. The head office of SDAG Wismut / Wismut GmbH is in Chemnitz-Siegmar.
== History ==
The Erzgebirge mountains in southern East Germany at the border with the Czech Republic are closely connected to the history of uranium exploitation. The metal was discovered in a sample from a silver mine in the mountain range, and uranium was produced first as a by-product in the early 19th century and later as a main product from the 1890s on. The chemists Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the elements Radium and Polonium in pitchblende tailings from a Czech uranium mine in these mountains. Radioactive waters were used in several towns for health treatment.〔different authors: ''Uranbergbau im Erzgebirge und Kalter Krieg''. Ausgewählte Beiträge des RADIZ-Workshops vom 10. und 11. Oktober 1997 in Schlema, RADIZ-Information 16/98, RADIZ e. V., Schlema.〕
After World War II, the Soviet Union became interested in this East German uranium deposit as a source for its nuclear weapons program. Significant resources were discovered and mining started in 1946. In 1947 the Soviet stock company Wismut (SAG Wismut) was formed, named after the German word for the metal bismuth, the misleading name being selected for security reasons. In the following years the company became the most important source of uranium for the Soviet Union and it employed several tens of thousands of people. Safety and environmental standards were very low, exposing many thousands of workers to dangerous levels of radon and quartz dust, leading to lung cancer and silicosis. At the end of 1953 the company was liquidated and the Soviet-East German stock company Wismut (SDAG Wismut) was newly founded, with the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic each owning 50%. Working and technological standards improved significantly in the following years. Uranium exploration and mining concentrated in the first years after World War II on the old mining areas of the Erzgebirge and adjacent Vogtland mountains. Many uranium occurrences had long been known there and were accessible using the old adits and shafts from the silver and base metal mining of former centuries. In 1950 the giant ore deposit of Ronneburg and the medium-sized Culmitzsch deposit (both in eastern Thuringia) were discovered and in 1965 the Königstein deposit in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. The peak of uranium production by the Wismut company occurred from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, reaching nearly 7,000 tonnes of uranium per year, after which it declined to 3,500 tonnes in the last normal production year, 1989.〔''Chronik der Wismut''. CD-ROM. Wismut GmbH, 1999.〕
Political and economic changes in East Germany and the subsequent reunification of Germany led to the cessation of uranium mining in December 1990. The Federal Republic of Germany assumed ownership of the East German and Soviet stocks of the company and transformed the company into Wismut GmbH in 1991. This new company is responsible for restoring the former mining and milling sites, for which the government approved a total budget of around 6.4 billion euro, but higher costs are anticipated.〔http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/ostdeutsche-uran-gebiete-fast-saniert-wismut-wird-aber-noch-milliarden-kosten/4590668.html〕 This activity includes securing/filling underground cavities, covering dumps and tailings, treating mine water and removal/decontamination of the buildings at the mine and milling sites. In 2011 the restoration program was extended to the year 2022.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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