Colorado Commissioner Joins Fight Against Mine

Wow! Here's a County Commissioner that gets it! Hope some of the local supervisors see this and follow suit!

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

Larimer County Commissioner Randy Eubanks has thrown down the gauntlet in the uranium-mining controversy, challenging his fellow commissioners to sign a resolution against uranium mining in northern Colorado.

At an informational hearing hosted by the commissioners Feb. 25, Eubanks said he plans to write letters of opposition to all permitting authorities involved with the proposed Centennial mine in Weld County.

"There's no safe level of radiation," said Eubanks, who worked in the nuclear power field for 13 years.

The Centennial Project between Nunn and Wellington is proposed by Powertech Inc., a Canadian company that wants to mine uranium using the in-situ leach method. With this method, wells are drilled into the aquifer containing the uranium deposits. A leaching solution is injected into the site and then piped back to the surface, where the uranium is removed from the water.

A report by the county's environmental advisory board stated that "a number of risks are identified with ISL operations," but that too little information is available to know for sure what the probabilities of contamination are.

Open-pit uranium mining presents higher risks to the environment than an ISL operation, the EAB noted. However, the report added, uranium mining could cause economic damages in the region regardless of actual risks, because of the power of perceptions.

Local commissioners do not have decision-making authority over the proposed mine, but they may provide input to Weld County, Colorado and the federal government, all of whom must issue permits before any mining can begin.

Jeff Parsons of Loveland, a mining attorney who spoke at the hearing, said the county's input "will be taken seriously at the state level."

Other speakers noted that Fort Collins, Timnath, Front Range Cancer Specialists and the Larimer County and Colorado Medical Societies have already passed resolutions against uranium mining.

Terence Walsh, project manager for Powertech's Centennial project, told the commissioners there's a large demand for uranium in the nuclear power industry. Twenty percent of electrical power in the United States is currently generated by nuclear power, he said, and the industry requires 55 million pounds of uranium per year. Most of that is imported, he said.

In-situ leach mining, according to Walsh, is "a safe and benign method of mining," but he acknowledged that groundwater restoration is a necessary part of the process.

He said monitoring wells would measure any vertical or horizontal migration of water, a primary concern with in-situ mining. If such a migration occurred, it could contaminate other aquifers used for domestic water or irrigation. In Colorado, Walsh noted, compliance wells are also required. Walsh said it takes about three years to restore groundwater to previous quality levels.

Lilias Jarding, a member of Coloradoans Against Resource Destruction which is actively opposing the Centennial project, said water contamination from the mine could occur from pipe failures, failures in the wastewater retention ponds or heavy rains. Another concern for Jarding is the use of large quantities of water for the in-situ process. Powertech officials, she said, estimate that about a million gallons of water per month would be consumed at Centennial.

Jarding said the price of uranium has "skyrocketed" in recent years, creating a worldwide uranium-mining boom.

Most speakers at the hearing were concerned about possible ill effects on health and the environment from the proposed mining operation. Possible water contamination was cited, along with contamination caused by high winds that could carry pollutants long distances.

There was also concern about livestock grazing on contaminated pastureland and about property values in the vicinity that are already falling. Some worried that Powertech would eventually file for permits on open-pit mining as well.

The Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area has banned uranium mining. "The people there were affected very badly by open-pit uranium mining," said Dian Sparling of Fort Collins, a nurse-midwife who worked on the reservation in 1982. One of her jobs was to collect statistics on the number of miscarriages and birth defects experienced by tribal members.

"Uranium mining so close to 275,000 people is a very risky business," said John Dixon of Fort Collins. "We will be playing Russian roulette with the lives of our children and future generations. What is the health of our children worth?"

http://www.northfortynews.com/Archive/A200803-01N_CommissionerFightMine.htm

For Harry Springer [of Entergy] and anyone who thinks nuclear power should be part of our energy solution

This is from the blog "Wake the Hell Up" posted on July 30, 2009. http://wakethehellup.wordpress.com/

The link above the picture is to a pictorial essay of children affected by the nuclear meltdown of Chernobyl. It's heartbreaking...simply heartbreaking. As the narrator says, everyone in favor of nuclear power says everything has been made safe...there's nothing that can go wrong. And then something breaks.

Many of these children's parents were/are in Belarus which is where the wind blew massive amounts of radiation following the Chernobyl incident. Even 23 yrs after Chernobyl, children are suffering birth defects at an alarming rate and the radiational damage transmitted from parent to child is not expected to abate for thousands of years, so great are the chromosomal anomalies.

We cannot urge you strongly enough to watch the slide-show and decide if this is what you want to risk for your grandchildren...and their grandchildren...for eons to come. Everyone needs to see this pictorial essay and hear the narration.

From "Wake The Hell Up":

The comparison of nuclear power to any other energy source currently utilized in the United States is a case of apples and oranges. NO OTHER energy source has close to the need for high-level security over waste storage, nor nearly the length of time required to render that waste non-toxic. Is there another energy source that produces waste that gets MORE volatile and less stable over time?

I have not seen a single comparison of options for America’s energy solution that includes these integral costs.

But that is just the financial logic.

Far more insidious and far greater justification for why nuclear power is not a viable solution is the ongoing effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

I beg you, especially if you believe that nuclear power should be part of our energy equation, to take a few minutes and view a short slideshow of the work of photographer Paul Fusco, who visited Chernobyl and the surrounding region in 2006, twenty years after the nuclear accident:

http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl

Paul Fusco at MagnumInMotion.com

There is no other argument necessary. View these images and then tell me you are willing to risk this fate for your grandchildren and their grandchildren. How could you?

Ionizing Radiation and Childhood Leukemia

by Abel Russ

(of the George Perkins Marsh Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts
E-mail: abelruss@riseup.net

The author declares he has no competing financial interests.)

I read with interest the recent review by Belson et al. (2007) on childhood leukemia, particularly the sections dealing with radiation exposure. Like the authors, I believe that ionizing radiation is strongly associated with childhood acute leukemia. I would like to point out that several critical pieces of information were overlooked; these support stronger and more meaningful conclusions.

Although atomic bomb survivors offer the clearest evidence of leukemia risk after childhood exposures to ionizing radiation, studies of children exposed to fallout in other contexts should not be downplayed. Belson et al. (2007) stated that “radiation exposure secondary to the Chernobyl accident has not been shown to increase the risk of leukemia in children who were exposed after birth …,” but they failed to mention the case–control study of Noshchenko et al. (2002), which found significant increases in childhood and acute leukemias in association with estimated childhood exposures. Children living downwind of the Nevada Test Site have also shown a significant increase in leukemia related to estimated fallout exposure (Stevens et al. 1990).

In utero exposure to ionizing radiation has been a known causal factor for childhood cancer for > 50 years. Although Belson et al. (2007) stated that the lack of evidence for a childhood leukemia risk among atomic bomb survivors constitutes the “most notable reason for doubt of a true association,” they overlooked the reviews of Wakeford and Little (2002, 2003); these authors demonstrated that the highly uncertain atomic bomb survivor data are statistically compatible with the robust set of data found in the Oxford Survey of Childhood Cancers and related X-ray exposure cohorts. There is no valid reason to doubt this association at present.

Read the rest of this article, and see footnotes and credits, here:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1940092#b1-ehp0115-a0395b

Punjab Child Disability Has 'Uranium Link'

By Asit Jolly
BBC News, Chandigarh

Tests on children with cerebral palsy or mental disabilities in the Indian state of Punjab have revealed high levels of uranium.

A charity based in Faridkot city said chemical analyses of hair specimens collected from 149 children in its care showed "unexpected amounts" of toxins.

The children included in the study were all under 13, it said.

The result has baffled the authorities as there are no known sources of uranium in Punjab.

'Startling'

The chemical tests were conducted on the suggestion of Dr Carin Smit, a South African metal toxicologist associated with the UK-based non-governmental organisation Defeat Autism Now.

Samples of hair collected from the 149 children, then resident at the Faridkot-based charity, Baba Farid Centre for Special Children, were tested at Trace Mineral, a laboratory in Germany.

The results were startling, Prithpal Singh, head of Baba Farid, said.

"Around 80% of the samples, including those from children with cerebral palsy, revealed the presence of uranium in levels that the experts have described as pathological," Mr Singh said.

"We are informed that there is a fairly well established correlation between exposure to uranium and birth defects, renal damage and several forms of cancer.

"This could well be among the causes of the conditions afflicting our children."

The "unexpected" results have drawn Dr Smit and her colleague Vera Dirr back to Faridkot, where they have now collected urine samples from the children to get more specific evidence of uranium exposure.

No-one seems to have any idea as to the source of the uranium.

Some experts say the problem may be more widespread.

No-one apart from the children at the Faridkot centre has been examined for the presence of toxic metals.

Mr Singh said experts had clarified that the results did not imply any exposure to radioactivity.

Health officials in Punjab said they were unaware of the problem.

"This is not a health subject. We don't know how children are showing such high concentrations of uranium," Punjab health minister Lakshmi Kanta Chawla said.

"It is for the central government in Delhi to deal with the problem."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7979022.stm