Overburden - definition

The term 'overburden' is used for the soil/land/ore that is left over from the mining process. The surface is pushed aside and can contain large amounts of the radioactive material and other byproducts (arsenic, molybdenum etc.) that are found with the Uranium. There are millions of tons of this overburden in the Black Hills of South Dakota and countless tons of it in other areas where Uranium in mined.