Skilled Workforce Ready For Uranium Mining

I don't suppose we could actually see some of the job descriptions and/or specific "skill sets" and qualifications that have been identified, could we? Also, since all the articles on this topic which have preceded this one have identified the area having the "qualified workforce" as "southwest Virginia", which is coal-mining country, how does that translate to Southside, Virginia? Will Santoy/VUI be importing its workforce from southwest Virginia? That certainly wouldn't help Southside's unemployment problem, assuming it still exists several years from now when the legislature is in the position to even consider lifting the moratorium, assuming (again) that the legislature is ever in that position. Not only is the cart before the horse, they're in the wrong part of the field! Let's not be misled here, folks.

SB

Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:47 AM EST

An independent panel of experts has confirmed that the skilled workforce needed for the development of uranium in Pittsylvania County is ready and waiting in Southside Virginia, according to a report filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators this week.

"Mining personnel can reasonably be recruited from the local area, as the skill sets needed for miners exist already among people and companies who are comfortable with farming and heavy equipment," stated the report.

The technical report was submitted by Virginia Uranium Inc.'s minority investor, Santoy Resources of Vancouver, Canada. (A copy of the full report can be found at http://www.santoy.ca/i/pdf/43-101ColesHill.pdf .)

The report comes as good news to the Danville area, which continues to have, "by far, the highest metropolitan area jobless rate," according to a Virginia Employment Commission report released last week.

According to unemployment statistics, Danville's unemployment rate is 11.5 percent, which is nearly double the unemployment rate of all other metropolitan areas in Virginia.

"This is important news for our company, as well as this region," said Norm W. Reynolds, chairman and chief executive officer of Virginia Uranium.

"We are all painfully aware of the unemployment figures in the city of Danville, Pittsylvania, Halifax and Henry counties where we would expect to draw the bulk of our 400-500 workers, if the Commonwealth of Virginia decides to permit the development of the Coles Hill resource."

The report is the work of Behre Dolbear & Company, LTD., Marshall Miller and Associates Inc. and PAC Geological Consulting Inc.

The report, called a "National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report," is required by the Canadian Securities Administrators, and amounts to a technical and scientific audit of the project.

It also confirmed previous analysis of the mineralization at the Coles Hill site, maintaining that the uranium deposit is "relatively clean" and "does not contain quantities of heavy metals that are typical of some uranium deposits of the southwestern United States."

Virginia Uranium is a Virginia corporation established in 2007 by the Coles and Bowen families to begin preliminary work on the development of one of the largest undeveloped uranium deposits in the United States, which is located at Coles Hill, about six miles northeast of Chatham.

http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/02/11/chatham/news/news66.txt