Virginia's scenic, rolling Piedmont is rich in presidential history — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe all made their homes there. The land is also rich in uranium. But the state has had a moratorium on mining the nuclear fuel since 1982. Now, a group of landowners in rural Pittsylvania County is looking to make a fortune by digging up the ore, and, with talk of nuclear energy making a comeback following last summer's sky-high gas prices, the state is thinking about giving its blessing. The Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy is preparing to undertake a study on whether uranium can be extracted without contaminating the air or polluting the water.
The stakes are huge. The 30 or so landowners who formed Virginia Uranium Inc. say the two deposits they want to mine contain up to 120 million pounds of ore, enough to mine for decades. With uranium spot prices hovering around $47 a pound, the ore in Pittsylvania, never mind the rest of the state, is worth billions of dollars.
Only the moratorium stands in the way. The history of the ban begins in 1977, when the Marline Uranium Corp., a subsidiary of the Marline Oil Co., began looking for the ore around the state. (The U.S. Geological Survey has concluded that vast swaths of the Piedmont, between the low-lying Tidewater to the east and the Blue Ridge to the west, potentially hold uranium.) In two years Marline had found the monster deposits in Pittsylvania. The discovery touched off a hunt for uranium statewide, alarming communities along the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge that didn't want to see horse pastures turned into mining pits. In 1982, the state acted to ease nerves by declaring the moratorium. Then the price of uranium tanked, dropping to $9 a pound at one point. Mining companies had little incentive to challenge the moratorium, so didn't.
Read the rest of this article and see photos of Chernobyl, 20 years after the meltdown, here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1880695,00.html
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