COMMENTARY
Published Tuesday April 22nd, 2008
The price of uranium is skyrocketing, and we're a have-not province with aspirations of self-sufficiency and a government apparently willing to make major changes to achieve that goal. This gives New Brunswickers two big problems to consider.
The first problem with the speculation about uranium mining in New Brunswick is environmental. It's no good to start exporting uranium if there's a risk you'd have to start importing water, environment contaminant clean-up service providers, and oncologists. No provincial government should be so blinded by a quick buck as to sell out a crucial parcel of the province permanently. (For all practical considerations, one should never consider a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years as anything less than permanent.)
We have enough environmental problems on the horizon with the planned energy hub and climate change without adding a couple of uranium mines to the picture.
Some have congratulated the Moncton City Council for taking a stand last month in calling for a ban on uranium mining in New Brunswick. Nova Scotia has had a ban on exploration since 1982, a ban reaffirmed by all parties last week, because of concerns for the environment.
This isn't about idealism. For the residents of Moncton and their councillors, the appeal to the province to ban uranium mining has nothing to do with sentiments of the anti-corporate, fantasy-oriented, tree-hugging, environmentalist fringe. It has to do with a legitimate fear that they won't be able to have water for the rest of the millennium.
The environmental concerns break down three ways. First, uranium exploration can put radioactive elements into the air and water. Exploration itself, in other words, is damaging to the environment.
Second, big international mining companies haven't ever given us many reasons to have confidence in their environmental efforts. The Canadian company operating the largest uranium mine in the United States, for example, is behind schedule on its clean up plan and has had 80 spills. The company maintains the spills cause no "lasting" environmental damage, but statements from the state Department of Environmental Quality indicate they aren't so sure.
Third, all mines eventually close and require clean up. This is bad enough when the material isn't radioactive. There are plenty of problems with this. For example, in the United States, many mining companies have avoided clean up costs simply by declaring bankruptcy. In one example detailed by Jared Diamond in Collapse, the clean up of a mine in Colorado cost $180 million, only $28 million of which the state government was able to extract from the bankrupt mining company.
In 2005, when Diamond published that book, U.S. taxpayers faced a $12 billion bill to clean up mines. How much of a guarantee can Shawn Graham get from the mining companies? And Shawn, please read "guarantee" as "money up front for clean up," not as "vague promise to do no harm."
After the environment, the second big problem is economic. Assuming environmental concerns can be addressed properly, and that's a big assumption, we're still stuck with our post-colonial, distinctly Canadian approach to letting others get their hands on our natural resources. We've been all too happy to sell off our natural resources so long as we can skim a little bit of money off the top.
Alberta's assistant deputy minister of economic development, Drury Mason, as quoted in Andrea Mandel-Cambell's book Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson, put it this way: "The Americans phone us and say 'we need wood' and we sell it to them, and they sell it back to us as a cabinet... And we're happy to do it because we made money on the wood."
Tell us how much wood to hew, and we'll hew it. Tell us how much water to haul, and we'll haul it. Tell us how much uranium to mine, and we'll mine it. It's like we never got over being a colony. Many Canadians are proud of this country's heritage as a British colony, but did anyone think we'd become a uranium colony for Brazil? Vale Inco might sound like it's from Sudbury, but the buck stops in Rio.
Specific criticisms are starting to emerge of the Alberta government in this regard, as in CBC's documentary last month, Tar Sands: The Selling of Alberta. Premier Ralph Klein quickly sold off rights to a big natural resource, the Athabaska oil sands, usually to foreign companies, and Albertan taxpayers are left with pressing environmental (and social) concerns. Everyone was so happy about the boom that no one thought to manage the resource and its exploitation more carefully. Shawn Graham would do well to learn from his western colleague's mistakes.
Uranium mining is one of those places where the angels fear to tread. We shouldn't be too quick to rush in.
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/274530
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