Why Won’t Virginia Allow Uranium Mining?
July 29, 2008 by Cato
Filed under Energy, Environment, Virginia, Virginia Politics
Nuclear power is on the rise. China, Russia and India have plans for a combined 159 new nuclear plants. Nuclear plants don’t run on coal. They need uranium.
Virginia is the home to an estimated $10 billion of uranium. Yet, Virginia’s government prohibits uranium mining in the Commonwealth. Why?
It can’t be that Virginia is anti-nuclear. There are two nuke plants that I know of. I used to live down the James River from one. Virginia gets 38% of its power from nuclear energy. The Navy operates a nuclear fleet out of Norfolk. Newport News Ship is one of two nuclear qualified yards in the country. There is even a uranium processing facility near Lynchburg.
Besides the potential economic boon that uranium mining would bring to the Commonwealth, a steady domestic supply of uranium is vital to our nation’s energy security. It’s time for Virginia bureaucrats and legislators to get off the dime on this one.
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It appears that the ban has been in place for 25 years. This is not something new. Here are some reasons to continue the moratorium.
http://www.vbdems.org/?p=2132
Here are some quick facts about uranium mining from Tidewater CCAN’s Rick Kennerly:
1. with just a slight increase in acidity of the water, uranium deposits are highly water soluble material
2. it takes 1-2 tons of ore to produce 1 lb of yellow cake uranium and of that only 1-2% is reactor quality material, that’s a lot of mine tailings
3. this is a slurry process sure to produce acres of dammed radioactive sludge near our waterways and ground water sources
4. the Pennsylvania county (Danville region) gets 44 inches of rain per year, increasing the likelihood of leeching or a dam break
5. uranium mining has never been attempted in an area with such a large population
6. the water shed from this region feeds both the Richmond (James River) and the Virginia Beach (Lake Gaston) water supplies.
Maybe if you used a source other than heritage.org, whose post only links to other posts on heritage.org, you would provide a more complete picture of the issue. Uranium mining has only been done in sparsely populated desert regions for good reason. Your knee must hurt from all of those knee jerk reactions.
http://www.vcnva.org/news/uranium_lte.html
As recently as November 2007, job deficient Navajo Reservation in Arizona resisted renewed uranium mining interests because of previous experience of cancer rates, livestock deaths and water contamination.
In the semi-arid West (10 to 15 inches of rain a year) radioactivity and associated toxic metals have shown up miles away from the mining site in time.
With all due respect, your sources are the Virginia Beach Dems and the Virginia Tree Huggers? I’ve got almost as much faith in the propaganda of WET.
I have a lot of faith in the material put out by Heritage. If you had read the links, one was just a blog post and the other was an article written by one of their fellows, they state that Uranium mining is ugly, but not dangerous.
The moratorium should be lifted with legislation that requires the miner to restore any property. I don’t advocate strip mining any more than you do.
Not dangerous? Maybe you didn’t see stories such as the one out of Goliad County, Texas, earlier this year when officials announced plans to sue a uranium company in federal court on claims of contaminating drinking water. Or the recent story that Cameco alerted the Canada’s regulators that they may have contaminated Lake Ontario. How many examples do you need? Is that considered tree-hugging, or is it considered being educated about risk-assessment? Do you realize they would likely proceed with open-pit mining, rather than the more “benign” ISL method, and in a rural but populated area dotted with private water wells? And in a climate prone to severe storms, flash flooding, high wind warnings (multiple ones this year), etc. I would caution folks to not blindly follow those who claim to have the solution to the energy crisis, especially when remediation of uranium mines & mills is estimated to run into the millions and millions of dollars. Check out http://www.wise-uranium.org for details (it’s a world-driven Web site about the issue).
That’s what regulation is for. Don’t ban it.