Consider impact first

Dr. Brugge is an expert in the field. He was a featured speaker in Danville, VA last fall re: dangers of uranium mining.


September 27, 2009

THERE ARE at least five strong arguments against nuclear power being more than a minor part of the response to climate change (“Nuclear must be part of energy equation,’’ Op-ed):

There is no current or imminent plan for permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste in the United States.

Addressing climate change through nuclear power means spreading nuclear technology worldwide. We already see how this leads to nuclear proliferation in places such as Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. This also may heighten the risk of nuclear terrorism.

Unintended releases of radiation from nuclear power plants, while rare, can be catastrophic (witness Chernobyl), and may be more likely as nuclear spreads to countries with less experience with the technology than the United States.

Nuclear is not really carbon neutral. The mining and processing of uranium, the building of power plants, and their decommissioning release carbon. A full accounting must consider the complete life cycle.

Finally, but not least important, mining and processing uranium ore has had devastating consequences for workers and nearby communities, often indigenous peoples.

Before we jump on the nuclear bandwagon, we need to appraise all the impacts and consider other alternatives, such as solar and wind, that have substantially less downside.

Doug Brugge
Cambridge

The writer was co-editor of the book “The Navajo People and Uranium Mining.’’

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2009/09/27/consider_impact_first/

The Face of Things to Come?

From our friends at "Wake the Hell Up!" comes this chilling set of photographs. I can't do them justice here...you need to see them yourself.

http://www.chernobylvermont.com/

http://wakethehellup.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/syfy-video-ghosts-of-chernobyl/

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?

Auditor: TVA Lawyers Limited Ash Spill Report in Kingston, TN Coal Sludge Catastrophe

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD (AP)

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Valley Authority failed for more than 20 years to heed warnings that might have prevented a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, then allowed its lawyers to stifle a $3 million study into the disaster's cause to limit its legal liability, an inspector general's report said Tuesday. (emphasis mine...SB)

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and chairman of the TVA congressional caucus, said the report "raises major concerns which must be taken seriously ... to ensure that such a coal ash spill never happens again."

The 111-page report from TVA Inspector General Richard Moore came as officials from the nation's largest public utility made a third appearance before a congressional panel since the spill last Dec. 22.

TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore was among those scheduled to testify Tuesday before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure's subcommittee on water resources and environment.

The breach of 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic-laden coal ash from the earthen dams and holding ponds at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant into the Emory River and lakeside homes has raised questions about the risks and lack of regulation of hundreds of similar sites around the country.

In the wake of the disaster, an estimated $1 billion cleanup and several pending lawsuits from residents, Knoxville-based TVA hired consulting firms to analyze what happened at Kingston and offer recommendations for handling coal byproducts there and at 10 other TVA coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky.

"TVA had a clear but difficult choice to make in the aftermath of the Kingston spill," Moore's report said.

"One choice was to conduct a diligent review of TVA management practices as well as to conduct a technical physical examination of the failed structure and then to publish whatever was discovered to the world.

"The second choice was to 'circle the wagons,' carefully craft press releases to project TVA in the most favorable light and to tightly control any reports done by TVA of the failure to minimize legal liability."

The inspector general said management's decision to allow TVA's lawyers, the Office of General Counsel, to hire the consultant and narrow his focus for a critical "root cause" study of the disaster "predetermined the choice that would be made between accountability and litigation strategy."

"The OGC did what good lawyers do; they defend their client," Moore's report said.

Moore's report praises subsequent actions by TVA's Board of Directors on July 21 to publicly acknowledge "that mistakes were made" and to accept a study more critical of management by McKenna Long and Aldridge.

But Moore, using his own engineering consultant, Marshall Miller & Associates, ripped a 6,000-page, 10-volume, $3 million study by AECOM USA Inc. on the cause of the disaster released June 25.

Moore criticized the report for failing to consider management practices and for giving too much weight to a hard-to-find "slime layer" of watery ash deep below the ash pile as the trigger for the collapse. The slime layer explanation tended to lessen the "culpability" and "legal liability" of TVA management, he wrote.

The Marshall Miller study said the spill "could have possibly been prevented" if TVA had heeded concerns about the stability of the Kingston ash pond raised by TVA employees and consultants as early as 1985 and again in 2004.

Barry Thacker, an independent engineering expert in Knoxville, has said leaks in 2003 and 2006 also were signs of growing problems from water pressure deep within the facility. Thacker has discounted the slimes, though the inspector general's study suggested they are plausible.

The main problem, Moore suggested, is a long-held view among those running TVA's coal-fired power plants that "ash was relegated to the status of garbage at a landfill rather than treating it as a potential hazard to the public and the environment."

"For TVA to be successful in avoiding another Kingston spill," Moore wrote, "... employees must be educated to think differently about ash management than they have over several generations."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h-f_GmtTyvPi4DPV7Y9IrZkxc8wwD99NGNA84

UNLV prof to Congress: Mining contaminates Colorado River

By Mary Manning (contact)

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 4:13 p.m.

AP Photo/Center for Biological Diversity

This April 2008 photo provided by the Center for Biological Diversity shows a mining claim staked north of the Grand Canyon in the area that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has withdrawn for protection from new claims. The Interior Department announced Monday it is temporarily barring the filing of new mining claims, including for uranium, on nearly 1 million acres near the Grand Canyon.

Restarting uranium mining near the Grand Canyon poses a contamination risk to the Colorado River, serving more than 25 million people in western states, a UNLV hydrology professor told a congressional committee today.

David Kreamer, a UNLV professor, said that assuming renewed uranium mining would have little or no effect on the river and surrounding springs is "unreasonable" and cannot be supported by past investigations and research.

Kreamer and his students have been conducting studies on springs in the Grand Canyon for 25 years and he told the House Natural Resources Committee's parks subcommittee that past mining activities have polluted a spring that feeds the Colorado River and that pollution is expected to continue if more mining occurs.

The committee is hearing a bill by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., that would permanently bar new claims filed on 1.1 million acres of federal lands north and south of the canyon. Renewed interest in building nuclear power plants as alternative energy sources has spurred a surge in uranium mining claims in the area, Grijalva said.

As many as 10,000 mining claims exist on neighboring federal lands for all hard-rock exploration and some 1,100 uranium mining claims exist within five miles of the canyon.

Neither the proposed bill nor Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's announcement Monday that he is barring new claims on public lands for two years while a study is conducted would stop mining on existing claims.

Kreamer said his research found uranium levels three times above the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limit on water supplies in Horn Creek, a canyon creek that runs into the Colorado. He said that the uranium polluted the creek's water from mining that stopped more than 10 years ago.

The potential for uranium reaching the Colorado River poses a risk for water consumers in California, Nevada and Arizona, said Kay Brothers, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Las Vegas draws 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River, she said.

Two scientists said modern mining has improved environmental protection and new mining development shouldn't stop because of old practices.

Most of the uranium claims have been staked in the Arizona Strip, an area just north of the Grand Canyon National Park notable for its superior uranium ore.

Uranium mining stopped 20 years ago as the price of uranium for nuclear energy, weapons and medicine went into freefall. The nuclear industry believes mining should be restarted as the price of uranium has climbed to about $55 a pound.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jul/21/unlv-professor-congress-uranium-mining-contaminate/

The history of uranium mining: doomed to repeat itself

To the nuke-advocate who, several months ago, accused me of relying on Greenpeace articles for this blog, here it is...the first Greenpeace article.

Nuclear fuel production – the mining, milling and enriching of uranium – is one of the nuclear industry’s dirty secrets. Very little attention is paid to it by industry propagandists and pro-nuclear politicians and for very good reason. It’s dirty, dangerous, incredibly damaging to the environment and endangers the health of those people unfortunate enough to live close to uranium mines.

To hear some supporters of nuclear energy talk, you’d think the whole process of generating electricity begins with the throwing of a reactor’s ‘on’ switch. But there’s a long story before we even get that far. It’s also a long, sad story that often goes untold in the wider media. Pick any uranium mine around the world and it will invariably be surrounded by stories of pollution, contamination and the exploitation of local communities. Niger, Namibia, Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan. And Australia.

The country’s ‘Environment Minister Peter Garrett has formally approved the new Four Mile uranium mine in South Australia, saying it poses no environmental risks’. The premier of South Australian, Mike Rann, welcomed the decision saying operations at the state’s nearby Beverley mine ‘show that uranium can be mined without damaging the surrounding environment’.

Which means neither man can have read the South Australian governments own figures into spills at the Beverley mine. Here are just a few…

Apr. 22, 2006: spill of 14,400 litres of solution containing approx. 0.5% uranium

Oct. 31, 2005: spill of 23,700 litres of mining solution, containing approx. 0.06% uranium
Aug. 8, 2005: spill of 13,500 litres of extraction fluid containing approx. 0.01% uranium

Mar. 7, 2005: spill of 50,000 - 60,000 litres of injection fluid

Dec. 8, 2004: spill of approx. 2,300 litres of mining solution, containing 0.028% uranium

June 13, 2002: spill of 1,750 litres of brine solution

June 7, 2002: spill of 1,500 litres of injection fluid in the well field

May 5, 2002: spill of 14,900 litres of water containing 0.0018% uranium

May 1, 2002: spill of almost 7,000 litres of brine solution containing some uranium

January 11, 2002: spill of 60,000 liters of groundwater containing acid and uranium, after pipe rupture

Fancy the premier of South Australia being so ignorant of such worrying safety violations going on in his own state. Scandalous.

In fact, that’s the word to sum up the whole Four Mile story: scandalous. Peter Garrett is a former campaigning rock star who fought doggedly against nuclear power before entering politics (‘Why would Australians support an industry that produces radioactive waste, toxic waste?’ he said just three years ago), And with the local Aboriginal communities being (yet again) left out of the negotiations and decision-making over Four Mile, this all has a horribly familiar ring to it.

http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2009/07/the_history_of_uranium_mining.html

Church Rock Contemplations: Uranium Mine Disaster Anniversary

Today, the Church Rock accident is acknowledged as likely the largest single release of radioactive contamination ever to take place in U.S. history (outside of the atomic bomb tests). A few weeks after it occurred, the mine and mill operator, United Nuclear Corporation, was back in business at Church Rock as if nothing had happened.

by Stuart Heady
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Daily Kos

On the morning of July 16, 1979, Church Rock (just east of Gallup, NM and north of I-40) was a small sun baked community of mainly Navajo (Dine') people, herding sheep or growing a little corn amidst red dirt and sagebrush. Clusters of traditional hogans (eight sided cabins) and mobile homes can be seen from the roads throughout the region, marking family land allotments.

Behind an earthen pond dam, ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes were sitting in a pond waiting for evaporation to leave behind solids. Suddenly, the dam gave way and the waters burst through, flowing out across the red land, and down the washes to permanently contaminate the Rio Puerco, known to traditional Dine' as To' Nizhoni (beautiful water.)

Today, the Church Rock accident is acknowledged as likely the largest single release of radioactive contamination ever to take place in U.S. history (outside of the atomic bomb tests). A few weeks after it occurred, the mine and mill operator, United Nuclear Corporation, was back in business at Church Rock as if nothing had happened.

• Stuart Heady's diary :: ::

I lived on the Navajo Nation for several years, at Tsaile, near Lukachukai - over the mountains to the north and west of Church Rock by maybe 80 miles as the crow flies. I came to know several families that had been affected by uranium mining.

The reason that the Navajo Nation banned uranium mining a couple of years ago was primarily because of the complete and utter disregard for Navajo people that mining has brought with it. That doesn't seem to have changed, as companies with recent proposals seem to think that just ghastly after-effects will be much more tolerated among Navajos than anywhere else.

Recently, there have been proposals to use volumes of water and settling ponds as a way of getting uranium out of the ground. Local meetings are held and the company dismisses concern that this will contaminate the water supply - in an area where water is terribly precious. If they proposed this with a straight face in any large urban community in the country they would get laughed out of there. Rural areas are in a terrible bind, due to lack of jobs and lack of information resources. There is also a dearth of effective advocacy on the part of elected officials, who are also from the same financially desperate environment and who may depend on mining companies for information.

One of the more amazing things I learned from being in the neighborhood was that children of the original "dog hole" miners from the 1960s and before believe that they experience second generation health impacts and worry about passing genetic damage on. The health care provider in the area is the Indian Health Service. I checked with the IHS and discovered that the federal government never did any studies assessing this.

Consistently, Indian people are treated to a great amount of disregard. If there are no studies, than the prospect that people can complain about such effects is effectively muted. That is completely consistent with the history of disregard and disrespect that Indian people have suffered at the hands of government, missionies and loads of well meaning others. These are very family oriented people. They remain closely connected with aunts and uncles, cousins, and in-law relations across the region. Experience is shared.

There are some 700 small mines still unclosed. A "dog hole" basically means one man, one shovel. The piles of dirt from these are still right where they were left. Rain causes local water to be contaminated, which is taken up by plants and eaten by sheep and cows. Only recently has cleanup begun to be addressed, since interest in uranium was renewed by 4.00 per gallon gasoline.

These are not people who can move away. The land has been inherited down Dine' family lines since at least the 1868 treaty, and possibly before that, as far back as about 1500 (maybe earlier). A legacy like that cannot be replaced.

I think the Navajo Nation was right to ban uranium mining outright. I can foresee a future in which some mining might be done again, but the problem that needs to be addressed is sufficient respect for the land and the people. What is more likely is mining companies looking for ways to force their way in, through lawsuits, and overpower local concerns just like in the old days.

Mining seems to be accompanied by a psychology that disregards and disrespects local people and the local environment and is dishonest to boot. Indian people are the last ethnic group to be considered when it comes to progress against racial discrimination. It is hard to believe it until you develop friends who are Indian and then see it through their eyes. It is just shameful that this should still be the case in 21st Century America.

That is why Church Rock needs to be remembered.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/15/753791/-Church-Rock-Contemplations-Uranium-Mine-Disaster