Town Ceases to Exist After Superfund Cleanup

Notice the names of these former uranium mining/milling towns: Naturita...Nucla...Uravan. Don't they sound happy? Patriotic? Owned by the uranium industry?

Uravan no longer exists. Exxcept for one building, the entire town was declared part of the Uravan SuperFund site and destroyed.

Could this happen in Virignia?

Uravan once vital to security of United States

by Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau

URAVAN - The sign outside Naturita reads "Uravan 15."

The town still appears on official Colorado maps. But 15 miles north of Naturita, there's no sign on the road and few clues this once was a hopping town with a community center, a soda fountain and a swimming pool. The childhood memories of many residents of Nucla and Naturita were made here.

All that's left now is a flat spot on the ground surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, overflown by sparrows and serenaded by crickets.

The only clue to the labors of the men and women who used to live here is the barbed wire that surrounds the whole site and the metal signs with the universal symbol for radiation, reading: "ANY AREA OR CONTAINER ON THIS PROPERTY MAY CONTAIN RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS."

Other than one office building across the San Miguel River, the rest is gone.

Uravan once was vital to national security. Standard Chemical founded the town as the Joe Jr. Camp, a center of radium mining and milling.

In World War II, the military moved in to scour the tailings piles for uranium to build the first atomic bombs.

The camp was so secret that a young man from Nucla, just 20 miles away, was stationed there, but he wasn't allowed to tell his family until after the war, said Marie Templeton of the Rimrocker Historical Society.

After the war, Uravan boomed until the 1980s as a company town run by United States Vanadium and later by Union Carbide.

Production ended in 1984, and Umetco - a local subsidiary of Union Carbide - began a government-supervised cleanup. The whole town became a federal Superfund site. (emphases mine...SB)

The cleanup formally ended last year, although monitoring continues.

What It Took...

To clean up the former town of Uravan, the following work was done, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Demolition and removal of about 50 major mill facility structures and buildings, including the process systems and circuits, and removal of more than 260 buildings.

Removal and cleanup of dispersed materials and contaminated soil from approximately 400 acres.

Relocation of more than 3 million cubic yards of mill wastes and contaminated materials.

Construction of waste and tailing repository covers, liquid evaporation and retention ponds, and permanent runoff control structures – using more than 1.7 million cubic yards of earthen materials.

Construction of five double-lined ponds (totaling 40 acres) for the evaporation of hillside seepage, tailing-pile seepage and extracted groundwater.

Construction and use of a new repository capable of disposing more than 1.8 million cubic yards of evaporative pond demolition debris and radioactive waste.

Collection of more than 70 million gallons of hillside and tailing seepage, containing approximately 6,000 tons of contaminated inorganic compounds.

Extraction of about 245 million gallons of contaminated liquids from the groundwater with the removal of about 14,500 tons of contaminated inorganic compounds.

Removal of contaminated materials from the dumps.

http://durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/08/09/Town_ceases_to_exist_after_Superfund_cleanup/

(This article, and a few above and below it, are parts of a current series by Joe Hanel, Durango Herald.)

Who will protect Virginia from uranium mining?

A cogent argument against mining Virginia uranium and an invitation to every Virginian to help stop it.

The Virginian-Pilot

August 2, 2009

Sunday Forum

by Shireen Parsons

URANIUM MINING has never been done safely anywhere in the world. It cannot be done safely. Logically, that should end this discussion, but it will not, because a few individuals, shielded from liability behind Virginia Uranium Inc. — a U.S. corporation wholly owned by Canadian corporations — would reap huge profits from mining and milling uranium on more than 2,000 acres in rural Pittsylvania County .

The Coles Hill mine would be merely the first mine in eastern Virginia, as our entire Piedmont is strewn with uranium deposits, and Virginia Uranium’s corporate mandate is to explore and develop them. If, as it surely will, the legislature lifts the moratorium, the Piedmont would become a uranium mining corridor, just as Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia are coal mining corridors.

As planned, the Coles Hill uranium mine would cover an area equal to 55 square city blocks and would be 800 feet deep. Through the blasting, extracting and crushing of uranium-bearing rock, all open-pit mines and their waste piles release into the environment heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and mercury, and radioactive materials.

The radioactive contaminants persist in the environment anywhere from hundreds of thousands of years to 4 billion years. They are taken up and retained by plants and animals, and they become part of the food chain forever. In animals and humans, the radioactive toxins cause lung, kidney and liver damage, cancers, leukemias and genetic mutations. In mammals, these contaminants are passed on to future generations in utero and via breast milk.

Once released into the environment, the heavy metals and radioactive contaminants travel great distances. Leached into ground and surface water in Pittsylvania County , they would contaminate the Roanoke River watershed to Virginia Beach , North Carolina ’s Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean . The wind-borne particulates would travel thousands of miles — every way the wind blows — in a few days.

Virginia Uranium’s public relations team tells us that, this time, uranium mining would be done safely, because the mining and milling of uranium in Virginia would be according to a regulatory program developed by the Virginia Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy (DMME).

But monitoring and oversight by our regulatory agencies are inadequate to nonexistent. Since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970, one-third of Americans live in areas with unhealthy ozone levels. Forty percent of our rivers, lakes and tributaries aren’t safe for swimming or fishing. Deforestation, excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers — and a 60 percent increase in the amount of refuse generated in the past 25 years — have further contaminated the soil and water.

Virginia's DMME presides over one of the most devastating mineral extraction processes in the world — mountaintop- removal coal mining, which, in the Appalachian coal states, has razed hundreds of thousands of acres of once-forested mountains, buried thousands of miles of streams under the rubble and destroyed hundreds of coalfield communities. This is a legal activity permitted by the EPA and DMME. Can we rationally expect regulatory agencies to protect us from the catastrophic effects of uranium mining in Virginia?

Those who would profit from uranium mining in Virginia say it would be an economic boon, with jobs and money pouring into the economically depressed Piedmont region. Virginia Uranium says miners would make $68,000 a year in a county where the 2000 median household income was $35,000, the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent and 12 percent of the population lived below the poverty line.

What the corporate spin fails to mention, however, is that hard-rock mining requires skilled labor, and that experienced miners would be imported from other states to earn those salaries and risk their health and lives. And that, wherever hard-rock mining occurs, surrounding communities become ghost towns and regional economies implode. The economic rewards are enjoyed only by the corporate owners and officers.

In Virginia ’s Piedmont , as in all regions cursed with hard-rock mining, the blasting, heavy truck traffic, environmental contamination and impacts to human health would cause real property values to evaporate. Local businesses would shut down, and the regional economy would collapse outward in every direction. The Banister River , a source of Virginia Beach ’s water, is less than a mile from the Coles Hill mine site, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Banister would be contaminated.

The relevant question, then, is who decides what Virginia communities look like, how safe they are, what quality of life they enjoy? Who decides whether the Virginia Piedmont and beyond will be sacrificed for a uranium mining corporation’s profits? Is it We, the People, or is it a handful of corporate executives, aided and abetted by the state legislature and regulatory agencies?

An ever-increasing number of citizens in Pittsylvania County and beyond, understanding the catastrophic effects uranium mining would wreak upon their communities and future generations, declare that they will not consent to this corporate assault, and that they will exercise their inherent local governing authority to enact binding local laws that will protect and preserve the health, safety and well-being of their communities and the ecosystem upon which all life depends.

Like Virginia Beach , the Town of Halifax is downstream from the planned uranium mine in Pittsylvania County . In February 2008, the Halifax Town Council voted unanimously to enact the Halifax Corporate Mining, Bodily Trespass and Community Self-Government Ordinance, drafted at the council’s request by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania- based nonprofit law firm. The ordinance asserts the town’s inherent local governing authority bans

mining within the town and criminalizes chemical and radioactive bodily trespass.

Halifax Town Council member Jack Dunavant said of the decision, “This is an historic vote. We, the people, intend to protect our health and environment from corporate assault. It’s time to invoke the Constitution and acknowledge the power of the people to protect our own destiny and end this era of corporate greed and pollution.”

Citizens and elected officials of every community downstream and/or downwind from the planned Pittsylvania County mine site would do well to follow Halifax ’s lead and exert their inherent governing authority to protect themselves.

Shireen Parsons is the Virginia organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Christiansburg.

We regret that the Virginian Pilot does not publish all of its Opinion online. We have no link to the VP as source. The editorial was circulated by the author; we are privileged to publish it here.

Radiation spill in Church Rock still haunts 30 years later

This is one chilling story. It's close to "worst case scenario" but certainly not something that can't or won't happen again. Surely VA doesn't really take this kind of risk...does it?

— By Brendan Giusti — The Daily Times

Posted: 07/16/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT

Click photo to enlarge

An aerial photo, taken in 1979, of the berm built to contain the spill at United... (Courtesy photo)

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CHURCH ROCK — Thirty years ago today on July 16, 1979, a dam at the United Nuclear Corporation's Church Rock Uranium Mill broke, spilling 90 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Rio Puerco.

It was the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history, releasing more radiation than the Three Mile Island accident, which happened in March of the same year. The spill in Church Rock is the second largest in the world, only surpassed by the 1986 Chernobyl reactor meltdown in Ukraine.

The contaminated water from the Church Rock spill traveled downstream, reaching as far as Chambers, Ariz.

Thirty years later, fallout from the disaster still lingers on the Navajo Nation.

"Just being in the community and talking to people, you begin to realize the huge health effect," said Nadine Padilla, coordinator of Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a coalition of grassroots groups in the fight to end uranium mining.

It affected the miners as well as others in the community.

Teddy Nez remembers that day in 1979.

The now 65-year-old lived less than a mile from the Northeast Church Rock Mine.

At about 6 a.m. on a Friday morning, the dam broke and waste rushed out of a previously contained waste pond.

"I just heard a big roar," Nez said.

It sounded like heavy rains running through the nearby ditches, he said. But July 16, 1979, was a dry day with no clouds in sight.

The area flooded with nearly 100 million gallons of wastewater, but residents near the spill didn't know the extent of the damage the contaminated water would cause.

"At the time it was kind of like a rain storm. We didn't know the content of the water," Nez said.

Church Rock residents waded through the flood with bare feet. That's when concern started.

"People started complaining about their feet getting hot," Nez said.

Some residents went to the hospital but were released with a diagnosis of simple heat stroke, Nez said.

Three decades after the spill, not much has changed for Church Rock residents, some of them say.

"We're living in the waste," Nez said.

Hundreds of mines in the area were abandoned and never reclaimed. The ground water in the area was contaminated and people today are still seeing the mining's health effects, which include high rates of cancers and rare forms of cancers.

Entire herds of cattle and sheep died in the wake of the disaster, Padilla said.

"After the spill we started to hear a lot of stories of cattle being born with two heads," she said.

The stories continue.

The liquid and solid waste coated and soaked into the nearby river and stream beds, said Paul Robinson, research director at the Southwest Research and Information Center. Only about 3,400 barrels of waste materials were cleaned up and very little of the spilled liquid was pumped out of the water supply.

"Those contaminants are still there, so it is still affecting the area," Robinson said.

Contaminants from the other mines in the area also polluted the air, water and ground, he said.

There are enough contaminants to still pose a significant risk to people, Robinson said. But there is no evidence to confirm that commonly held belief. There were no health studies conducted in the area and no available data.

Yet, residents say they have seen the effects first hand.

In 2000, Nez was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Many others in the area have died from cancer, Nez said.

Hydro Resources, Inc., in recent years has tried to re-open the old Church Rock mine.

This worries the people who remember the disaster 30 years ago.

"There's very serious problems of several kinds," Robinson said.

Cleanup of the original mines in the area are still a long way off, he said.

At the time of the disaster, the company thought it was operating a state-of-the-art facility and the government thought it was exercising proper oversight, he said.

"Everyone thought they were doing a good job," Robinson said.

Then disaster struck.

"The spill resulted from poor oversight, poor siting and poor construction and is an example of the types of problems that occur at uranium mines and mills," Robinson said.

Now the mines sit abandoned, some uncovered, while the industry pushes to re-open mining operations with new technology.

"There is quite a bit at stake in the Church Rock area," said Robert Tohe, environmental justice organizer with the Sierra Club.

The community is concerned with the quality of ground water, which for many serves as the only drinking supply for both community members and livestock. Navajo Nation officials are concerned with making sure its ban on uranium mining remains in effect.

And three decades after the disaster, the disdain for uranium mining companies continues.

"They left without cleaning up their mess," Padilla said.

http://www.daily-times.com/ci_12848333

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Another story about the Church Rock disaster:

http://newmexicoindependent.com/31989/31989

Uranium: Wealth or Woe

World Sikh News continues its journey of the unexplored while adhering to the philosophy of Guru Nanak’s Sarbat da Bhala. WSN is a forum for the weak, the underprivileged and the unrepresented. We publish this article received from the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation highlighting the plight of the Topnaar Nama people in Namibia.

Debates rage over whether energy generated by uranium induced nuclear fission is beneficial or harmful. The debate often settles into familiar bipartite arguments of nuclear power plants versus nuclear bombs. However, this article demonstrates that this approach is too narrow; the threats to land and livelihoods generated purely from the extraction process are substantial but unknown or ignored, as the Topnaar Nama people in Namibia are discovering.

Whilst tragic results of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well documented, the environmental and health problems that are a consequence of uranium exploration are less well known by the general global public.

During the development of the atomic bomb, thousands of mines were built in the Southwest of the United States and Northern Canada. The radioactive waste, known as tailings, that builds up in huge piles of rocks and slush outside the mines continues to threaten the wellbeing of local populations and contaminates the environment.

The sad truth is that Governments are fully aware of the dangers but still refuse to implement adequate protection measures.

”Suffering” from natural wealth

Uranium is not only radioactive but chemically toxic too. 80% of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore is left behind in highly acidic ‘tailings’. It remains radioactive for hundreds-of-thousands of years and should be kept safely isolated from the environment.

Uranium can cause a wide variety of health problems. Miners and local communities drink contaminated water, eat contaminated food and breathe in radon gas and dust from the tailings. In addition to this, the extraction and processing of uranium ore uses huge amounts of highly sought-after water that cannot be recycled.

It has been argued by mining companies that uranium extraction brings jobs to local populations, thus creating better living conditions, and for a few this was true. However the companies also quietly ignore the health and environmental effects of the process.

After 30 years living alongside uranium mines, the Tuareg of Niger refer to uranium as a ‘curse’ rather than a blessing. They say the North of Niger “suffer[s] from its wealth’, rather than reap supposed rich rewards.

In many cases there have been no safety precautions, no radiation protection and no information about the hazards of the mining process. Regulations are non-existent or faulty to such an extent that they would never be accepted in industrialized states.

The problems associated with uranium mining are set to continue with its rising price as demand from nuclear power plant companies increases. Africa is especially at risk because companies are attracted by the lack of strict regulations.

”There was always water”

One community that is particularly at risk from uranium extraction is the Topnaar Nama, one of fourteen groups of Nama people. These groups traditionally lived in the southern parts of the Namib, which today is part of Namibia and adjacent to South Africa. This nomadic group breed their own livestock such as goats and cows, which, along with !Nara fruits make-up their main food staples. They now live their traditional way of life in the area of the Kuiseb River and canyon, south of Walvisbay and Svakopmund.

Water is obviously the most important source of life, as Fanuel Abraham Haoseb, the Councilor of the Nama King acknowledges:

‘Water is life. In the older days people knew where to find water, where the water level is near, where it is easy to get water. There was always water’.

There are currently two mines operating in the Topnaar territory with the Namibian Government recently issuing more uranium exploration licenses to various international companies. The Topnaar people now fear for their lives and existence. Uranium mining poses a considerable threat to general health, and lifestyle because of effects on underground and surface water resources.

As a result of these mines Fanuel Abraham Haoseb resents the fact that ‘…water [now] belongs to Nam Water”. He continued, saying that:

“Even we have to pay for the water to Nam Water - every community - which is difficult to pay because we have not enough animals, not enough income. So NamWater puts up pumps and the water belongs to Nam Water which was first our water. And this is going not only to Walvisbay, it is going up to Swakop and Arandis.’

The lack of water, and other environmental issues related to uranium mining have other impacts on the Topnaar. As Captain Samuel Khaxab from the Royal House of the Topnaar Nama states:

‘We do not accept the uranium mines. One day I want to show my children, my small children, this flower and that bock - which is called springbock and that one [which] is an Oryx. But if that mine is coming, the animals cannot be there anymore. The thing is so strong, dangerous; the people who are working in the mine become sick. The Roessing mine is far from us, but now it comes near at us. And it is dangerous for us. We cannot give permission for that thing.’

It has been recognized that the demand for water is much too high for the Namib to supply. In an attempt to combat this problem a water desalination plant is presently under construction at Wlozkasbaken as a joint venture between the uranium mining company UraMin and Nam Water.

It has been reported that workers of the Roessing mine, amongst them Topnaar people, are becoming ill and are dying. One Topnaar reported that his friend, a miner, had died a few weeks ago because of what the doctor referred to as ‘old mans illness’. He was only 60, and those within the Topnaar villages that have never worked in the mines live beyond 80 without any ‘old mans illness.’

A profiteering Government?

It is clear from the issuing of uranium exploration licenses that the Namibian Government is less than supportive towards the Topnaar peoples’ situation. This is despite the fact that the Namibian constitution states that traditional chiefs (captains or kings) of different tribes be included in parliament.

It appears that financial institutions within the country, such as the Bank of Namibia, have found the potential income that mining may bring too attractive to reject. This is despite studies in other African countries that demonstrates only a small percentage of the worth of the resources extracted actually stay in the country.

Indeed it is clear that the Topnaar people are not benefitting from the mining taking place within their territory. Ephraim Peterson, also from the Royal House of the Topnaar-Nam said:

‘In the harvest time we collect the !Narra fruit. We eat it, the goats and donkeys also eat it. But the fruit is in danger because of the Uranium mines. If those mines are coming they can contaminate our plants, the !Narra. We also have the fish but we never benefit from it. Even from the Naukluft Park also. The tourists are coming in. Thousands of tourists are coming in, but we never got something from it. Our ancestors were hunting here before it became a Park. They were eating springbock, Oryx, the ostrich. But today we cannot hunt anymore. It is not allowed, the Government took it over.’

Captain Samuel Khaxab agrees, arguing that the ‘Government has forgotten the customary law, the old law of Namibia. Customary law says that if someone comes from the royal house, he is entitled to the captainship and the chieftainship. The law says the mountains belong to us; the birds belong to us, the Oryx, the ostrich, all the animals, everything in that area is belonging to me and my people. That is what customary law says. Even the minerals are ours and the ground belongs to us’.

It is apparent to the Topnaar, in the words of Ephraim Peterson, that the Government ‘does not care’, no money has ever been received from the mines; instead they must pay the water company in order to get water. He claims that the ‘people who govern now do what they want. They do not care about us. And that is very painful for us!’

Fearing for the future

The Topnaar Nama people fear for their lives and for their existence. Uranium mining poses considerable health hazards to the people, and the side effects of uranium mining, such as the depletion of the underground and surface water resources make their traditional lifestyles impossible to maintain.

Fanuel Abraham Haoseb describes how the natural water systems have come under strain in recent years:

‘In the past elephants, giraffes, rhinos they used to come down the river during the rainy season. They were grazing just 5 kilometers from Walvisbay town. But today these animals are not coming down anymore. Our water is now supplying too many things like factories or the mines in our area. Mines use a lot of water and new mines can use more water and this will have an effect on us because Nam Water will have to pump more water out of the river so that they can give more water to other people, to other things. This will also have an effect on our community itself. The river, the trees and the whole lifestyle of us will be afflicted by this system.’

Less or no water means no food for the animals, and it also means fewer !Nara fruits. It all adds up to no food for the people and is compounded by a government that is unwilling or unable to assist its people. It appears that the quest for alternative energy sources that has invigorated so many has left the Topnaar Nama people desolate in light of their drained lands.

http://worldsikhnews.com/25%20March%202009/Uranium%20Wealth%20or%20Woe.htm?1=YES

Commemoration set for uranium spill site

Published Monday, July 6, 2009 4:27 PM MDT

The Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a coalition of community groups affected by uranium mining and committed to renewable energy development, announces the 30th anniversary commemoration of the Church Rock uranium tailings spill on July 16.

The purposes of the event are to remember and honor the Dine communities that were affected by the largest release of radioactive waste in U.S. history, and to reaffirm the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining and processing, as set forth in the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005.

A prayer walk will be held on State Route 566 from Red Water Pond Road next to the Northeast Church Rock Mine to the site of the spill across from the United Nuclear Corp. mill site and ending at the King Family Ranch on Old Churchrock Mine Road at SR 566 - a distance of about five miles. Prayers for healing will offered at the start of the walk and at the spill site. The walk will end at the King Ranch with a press conference where Navajo Nation elected officials will reaffirm the Navajo Nation ban on uranium mining.

The Church Rock Spill occurred when an earthen tailings dam at the UNC Church Rock Uranium Mill spilled on the morning of July 16, 1979. The mill's radioactive fluids spilled into the Puerco River in New Mexico and traveled downstream to Chambers, Ariz. According to MASE, more radiation was released in the spill than in the Three Mile Island reactor accident, which occurred in March of that same year, and the spill ranks second only to the 1986 Chernobyl reactor meltdown in the amount of radiation released. The spill, combined with more than 20 years of discharges of untreated and poorly treated uranium mine water, has contributed to long-term contamination of the Puerco River in New Mexico and Arizona.

Commemorating the Church Rock spill is a reminder that the burden of the uranium legacy is still being carried by the Dine people and communities throughout the Grants Mineral Belt. A formal cleanup plan for the Northeast Church Rock Mine was issued in June, 27 years after the mine closed. Red Water Pond Road residents living next to the mine will have to move temporarily this later this year as more work is done to remove contamination from their community. Full reclamation of the Old Church Rock Mine across from the King Ranch remains to be done. MASE groups from Laguna Pueblo to Milan to Church Rock continue to press federal and state agencies for a comprehensive plan to address the uranium legacy.

http://www.cibolabeacon.com/articles/2009/07/06/news/doc4a526ab32b8bf380862945.txt

[CO] Uranium Mill Issue Will Set National Precedent

MONTROSE – Deep divisions in the Paradox Valley community may well remain after the Montrose Planning Commission’s vote Wednesday night on whether to recommend a special use permit for a uranium mill in Paradox Valley.

Friendships have been severed, with some on the side of agriculture in the valley and some who want to hearken back to the good old days of uranium mining their parents and grandparents enjoyed decades ago.

Whatever the decision of the planning commission, Energy Fuels’ request to build a huge mill on 800 acres will be the first built in the United States in almost 30 years, and will have national implications, some say.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said recently that nuclear energy is “the wave of the future” and is encouraging nuclear energy development.

The proposed mill would set a precedent for the rest of the country, said Travis Stills of the Energy Minerals Law Center in Durango, but for the wrong reasons.

“They’re trying to claim it’s the resurgence of the uranium industry and trying to tie it into the nuclear equation,” he said. “It could be a national story because it could be the place where all the stuff goes. It could be looked at as a disposal facility.”

As originally proposed, the mill would only process raw uranium ore from nearby mines. But at a public hearing in Nucla last month, Energy Fuels CEO George Glasier said the mill could also extract uranium from radioactive groundwater.

After Glasier spoke, Stills went to the podium and expressed his displeasure with what he called “a major shift” in policy on what would be processed at the mill.

Only two uranium mills are operating in the U.S. at this time, the White Mesa and Shootaring Canyon mills in Utah, Stills said, both process radioactive wastes.

“A major source of income (for the mills) is waste disposal fees from various folks who have radioactive waste to get rid of,” he said.

The proposed Paradox Valley mill also wants to take in mine waste, not just tailings, he said.

“They should send that to a low level facility, not to a mill tailings cell, which is hazardous enough,” he said.

But Glasier and his many associates have decried health risks of exposure to radioactive materials in the air and water that opponents say could occur because of the mill. Glasier says the industry has made enormous safety advances since the near meltdown of a reactor core at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Glasier said he never had plans for the mill to become a waste disposal facility for nuclear and other radioactive wastes, but was only trying to help the state because of tighter laws on uranium content in drinking water.

New state laws require a new limit on the amount of uranium in drinking water, but in western Colorado, naturally occurring water has higher than those limits, Glasier said.

The mill could have treated municipal water by supplies by loading resin beads with uranium extracted from the water, sending the beads to a disposal facility, after which the beads could be reused.

Without the mill, the water treatment plants will have to install their own resin extraction columns, which is expensive, he said.

“They’ll have no place to dispose of it so they’ll have to ship it to a waste disposal site and they can’t reuse the beads,” he said. “The state wants us to do it, and it would save all these municipalities a great deal of money.”

But Glasier said he dropped the idea of extracting water from uranium because of objections raised at the public hearings.

“Some people were objecting to what would have been a real benefit,” he said. “But those environmental kooks come up with this stuff…They’re saying we’ll process waste, but we have no plans to process anything else but raw uranium ore and the water that comes right out of our mines.”

Other objections to the mill have come from the agricultural community. On to their Web site for Paradox Valley Community Supported Agriculture, William and Vernie Lynn DeMille wrote about how they moved to the valley from Missouri after farming there for 35 years.

“We love farming and we were thrilled when we discovered the Paradox Valley,” DeMille wrote. “Because of its outstanding soil, great climate and protected valley, it is the perfect place to grow excellent crops, both vegetable and fruit.”

Food grown in the valley will be packed with nutrition because of high mineral content of the soil, DeMille said.

During public forums, farmers in the valley objected to the mill, saying they will lose their organic agriculture status because the mill has the potential to pollute the air and water.

Paradox Valley proponents of the mill, most from families who remember the heyday of mining in the area decades ago, scoffed at farmers’ concerns, even displaying a sign at the last public meeting that read, “Uranium dust helps your organics grow” along with “We need jobs on the West End.”

However the planning commission votes, which occurred after the Watch printing deadline, the divisions in the Paradox Valley will apparently not soon heal.

http://www.telluridewatch.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Uranium+Mill+Issue+Will+Set+National+Precedent%20&id=2867706-Uranium+Mill+Issue+Will+Set+National+Precedent&instance=secondary_stories_left_column

EPA rates 10 Duke coal-ash ponds 'high-hazard potential'

And one of these disasters-waiting-to-happen is 10 miles from my home.

by John Downey, Senior Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Ten Duke Energy Carolinas coal-ash retention ponds are on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of 44 potentially high-hazard sites across the nation.

The rating in based on the potential danger to people and property from ash slurry ponds. They do not involve any finding that the retention dams are in danger of failing.

The EPA has inspected all but one of the dams already, says Duke spokesman Jason Walls. The EPA has not inspected the dam at Belews Creek Steam Station north of Winston-Salem.

The agency has not said whether it intends to inspect that dam. Inspection information from Duke and from the state is already available to the agency.

Response to TVA spill

Walls says that in the on-site inspections at the Duke plants, EPA noted no problems that needed to be addressed. But he said the EPA has made no final report as yet. That report on all 44 sites is due later this summer.

Utilities establish the ponds to hold ash from burning the coal that turns the steam turbines at coal-fired plants.

“We are confident based on our monitoring, maintenance and inspections, that each of our ash basin dams have the structural integrity necessary to protect the public and environment,” Walls says.

The list and the subsequent inspections come in response to the failure of a Tennessee Valley Authority dam in December. That released a torrent of coal ash sludge from a 40-acre pond, flooding 15 homes in Harriman, Tenn., west of Knoxville.

Allen, Marshall and Riverbend make list

While some people had to be rescued from their homes, no serious injuries were reported. But the dam failure clearly caused significant damage and created a hazard for local residents.

“The (high-hazard) rating is not an indication of the structural integrity of the unit or the possibility that a failure will occur in the future,” the EPA says in its prepared release. “It merely allows dam safety and other officials to determine where significant damage or loss of life may occur if there is a structural failure of the unit.”

Duke’s 10 sites are one pond at the Allen Steam Plant in Belmont, one at Marshall Steam Station in Terrell, two at Riverbend Steam Station in Mount Holly, three at Buck Steam Station in Spencer, two at Dan River Steam Station in Eden and one at Belews Creek.

Cliffside not rated

Two Progress Energy ponds, at the Asheville Station in Arden, are also on the list. No ponds in South Carolina made the list.

The high-risk designation relates to proximity to populated areas. And the EPA considered state designations of potential hazards in the list. Because N.C. regulators have rated coal-plant retention ponds and designate high-risk ponds near population centers, their listing was automatic.

Duke’s only N.C. pond not on the list is at the Cliffside Steam Station on the Cleveland-Rutherford county line.

Duke operates two retention ponds in South Carolina, one in Kentucky, 16 in Indiana and seven in Ohio. None of those ponds made the EPA list.

American Electric Power, which operates in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia, had 11 ponds on the high-hazard potential list.

http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/power_city/2009/06/epa_rates_10_duke_coal-ash_ponds_high-hazard_potential.html

Water and Energy BHA Report - 1979

A comprehensive look at how aquifers are formed, the toxic state of water and the implications to humans and animals of Uranium mining.

http://www.republicoflakotah.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/water_and_energy_bha_1979.pdf

–Excerpts–
-Uranium tailings move easily in wind or water because they are fine particles like sand. But they are very different from most sand, because they retain 85% of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore.

-The radiation is measured in “picocuries” per liter of water; a “picocurie” isn’t much, but the U.S. Public Health Service limit for safe water is only 3 picocuries per liter of water.
About 60 water samples taken in the Southwest had from 0.5 to 65 picocuries of radium per liter. Several streams have been declared unfit for irrigation and for drinking by stock and humans. Unfortunately, animals can’t read, and they continue to drink (and die) from dangerous streams.
Another pollutant, selenium, was present in wells near the United Nuclear/Homestake mill at levels 340 times the recommended maximum for drinking water. Studies show that water from mill activities move from streams to aquifers, and that effects on groundwater are “marked.”

-To make things worse, tailings are often stored mixed with water, so they move unexpectedly in a flood or if the dam used to hold them breaks. there have been over a dozen tailings-dam breaks in the U.S., none of which has been cleaned up. The biggest was a spill at the United Nuclear mill in Church Rock, N.M. in July 1979.

The dam break spread 100 million gallons of tailings and water for 50 miles down a river, despite the fact that the dam was “of the newest and safest type approved by federal and state agencies.” Radioactive readings were more than 6,000 times the drinking water standard.

-In 1962, the problem was aggravated by spilling 200 tons of tailings, much of which washed 25 miles then sank into the Angostura Reservoir. Current plans for moving the tailigs will reduce the release of radiation into the air and the Cheyenne, but will not stop seepage through the ground — only slow it down.

http://www.republicoflakotah.com/?p=1678

Crescent Junction Site Quietly Taking the 'Pile'

This is just such a mind-blowing story! One city getting rid of its radioactive waste after years of contamination (see http://sccagainsturanium.blogspot.com/2009/05/tons-of-tainted-tailings-are-on-move.html and another city taking possession of the nasty stuff. The process itself sounds pretty intense too...imagine either process taking place in Southside. Amazing...and scary.

By Amy Joi O'Donoghue

Deseret News

MOAB — Motorists whipping past along I-70 see only the turnoff for Moab at the sign that says Crescent Junction. But a little to the north, a train sits on the railroad tracks, and oversize trucks unload rail cars.

From there containers of the radioactive waste that are the legacy of a bankrupt uranium mine are unloaded one after the other, filling up a disposal cell that will trap the tailings for years to come.

Much was celebrated Monday to the south on the outskirts of Moab at the former Atlas mine site, where full-time operations to remove the waste have been under way since mid-April.

Long feared for its potential to contaminate the Colorado River, groundwater and other ecologically sensitive areas, the "Pile" is slowly being chewed away and taken to its new resting spot.

The 16 million tons of tailings look actually like little more than mounds upon mounds of red dirt.

"But it has to be managed right because of its radioactivity," said Mark Walker, spokesman for EnergySolutions.

The Utah-based company won the $98.7 million contract to begin the initial disposal process at the Crescent Junction site.

The material is loaded onto the railroad cars and taken along an active Union Pacific rail line to the "cell" — a gaping hole 25 feet deep and 1,700 feet wide by 1,800 feet long.

Truckloads of the waste are dumped, allowed to dry and settle for a bit before a front-end loader makes monotonous swipes over the material to compact it even more.

A GPS-aided process ensures it is compacted in 1-foot layers upon layers to maximize the space available.

More than 50,000 gallons of water conveyed in a 22-mile pipeline to the site are used daily for dust control and to spray the containers free of any radioactive material.

Between 14 and 17 employees work seven days a week at the site, beginning their shift with a safety meeting and ending by 5:30 p.m.

The area where the mining waste has been deposited so far is roped off and marked with signs warning of radioactive material, but the workers themselves do not don any outrageous spacesuit style gear. They do wear protective clothing and carry monitors to measure potential radioactivity, as well as gloves, booties and hard hats.

As this site begins to fill up years from now, it will expand to the east because of the $108 million in Department of Energy stimulus funding directed to the project to accelerate cleanup.

That money moved the timeline up for removal of the waste by 2019.

Even Walker, a Moab native who experienced the heydays of Moab during the boom of mining, says it's easy to think the cleanup shouldn't take that long.

It's only after people see the monstrous "Pile" that they begin to understand how long the process will take.

"It's pretty incredible," Walker said.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705301384/Crescent-Junction-site-quietly-taking-the-Pile.html

Uranium Mill On Superfund Site Plans New Venture

May 3, 2009 4:15 pm US/Mountain

CANON CITY, Colo. (AP) ―

Owners of an idled Canon City uranium mill where contamination remains a problem are planning to reopen for business.

The Cotter Corp. has told state officials they plan to process uranium from a New Mexico mine as early as 2014. The company would ship 12.5 million tons of ore by train to its site along the Arkansas River.

But some local leaders oppose the plan and federal authorities haven't finished investigating whether contamination could be causing cancer and other health problems.

The mill operated from 1958 to 1979, then intermittently until 2006. It was declared a federal Superfund site in 1984 because radioactive materials had contaminated the soil and groundwater.

"That mill is just in the wrong place. I'd rather see them decommission and go away," Fremont County Commissioner Mike Stiehl said.

The mill is one of four in the nation licensed to convert uranium ore into yellowcake, fuel for nuclear power plants. It sits above the Arkansas River on the south side of Canon City, about 100 miles southwest of Denver.

Cleanup has lagged with repeated violations. State officials have allowed the mill to stay open on a "stand-down" basis, allowing Cotter to retain an operating license.

Cotter plans to refurbish the mill and hire up to 80 workers to process uranium ore from a mine on Mount Taylor in northern New Mexico, said John Hamrick, Cotter's vice president of milling.

The project depends on Cotter's sister company, Rio Grande Resources, draining the flooded uranium mine at 8,000 feet on Mount Taylor.

The mountain near Grants, N.M., is considered sacred by several Indian tribes.

"What I find perplexing is how Cotter here in Colorado can say they intend to do a deal with their sister company in New Mexico when all these issues are still pending," said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, who represents residents around the mill.

State health officials say the area will have to be cleaned up whether the mill is refurbished or closed.

http://cbs4denver.com/local/Uranium.Mill.canon.2.1000301.html

Tons of tainted tailings are on the move -- finally

Uranium waste » Ceremony launches years of 30-mile trips with truckloads of uranium-processing waste

By Judy Fahys

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated: 05/04/2009 10:16:21 PM MDT

Moab » For Grand County residents who lobbied Washington for years to remove tons of tainted tailings from the banks of the Colorado River, it was a long haul.

But it paid off and now the long hauls have begun.

On Monday, onlookers watched with a mixture of delight and disbelief as a specially built crane lifted a container filled with uranium-processing waste -- the first official shipment of thousands planned for the 30-mile trip from just outside Moab to a permanent disposal site just north of Interstate 70 near Crescent Junction.

Many on hand said the heavy lifting really began almost a decade ago, when community leaders began prodding federal leaders to move the 16-million-ton pile, roughly eight times the rubble left from the World Trade Center collapse.

At Monday's ribbon-cutting, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said the community "went nuclear" through the years, practically haranguing any one in a position to do something about the massive pile.

"That's what it takes to get the wheels of government to move on their own," he said. "It takes people, it takes people who care, who are passionate about their communities to get things going."

Representatives of Utah's three congressional offices attended Monday's ceremony, as did officials of the U.S. Energy Department, the Utah Legislature, the Department of Environmental Quality and the contractors, EnergySolutions Inc., S&K Aerospace and Union Pacific Railroad. So did U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano, a Democrat who represents a Southern California district whose residents are among the 30 million people who rely on Colorado River water.

"I never thought I would see the day," said former Grand County Council member Joette Langianese, one of a series of county lawmakers who dogged politicians to deal with the pile.

Local leaders had to convince Washington that the bankrupt Atlas Corp. would not be able to take care of the tailings, which threatened to slide into the Colorado River along with the toxic chemicals and hazardous heavy metals they contain. They had to persuade the Energy Department to assume responsibility for the 439-acre site.

Then they had to make the case for moving the pile, that it wouldn't remain in place during a large flood even if capped by large rocks. And, as recently as last summer, they had to prove that reviving an old rail spur on the mesa top would be a safer and cheaper way to move the pile to new digs: a 25-foot deep, 40-acre landfill at Crescent Junction.

"As a community," Langianese said, "we just did not want 'no' to be the answer."

A local steering committee even succeeded in getting cottonwood trees to screen the site and requiring brick-red heavy equipment to better blend with the area's famous red rock.

And now the $1 billion project, which got an added $108 million infusion through the recent stimulus package, will bring more jobs to the area.

"What a perfect time for our community," Langianese said.

Grand County Council member Pat Holyoak noted that the pile has been an eyesore at the gateway to Moab, across the highway from the entrance to Arches National Park. Her husband worked at the uranium mill from the year it opened in 1956 to the time it shut down in 1984. Dust would blow off the pile and into the community. And people worried about the pile sloughing into the river.

"It's a big day," she said.

"Yes, it's a big day," agreed Holyoak's daughter, Kammy Wells, director of the Moab Area Chamber of Commerce. "It's been a part of my whole life. And I'm not sad to see it go."

The Energy Department has projected the cleanup will take until 2028. But Michael Moore, the agency's acting director of environmental management, said Monday the timeline probably will be shorter, closer to the 2019 completion date set by Congress. The deciding factor, he said, is money.

"We're hoping it will be before 2022," he said.

Napolitano, now head of the House Water and Power subcommittee, told the group she began working on the problem soon after being elected 12 years ago, when a local water manager explained the importance of the Colorado River to her own community.

"It took a concerted effort of a lot of people," she said, noting that it was a "hard sell" in the beginning. "It really was a haul."

As Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a letter read to the crowd by a representative: "The finish line is visible from here."

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12292230

BHP to 'dump mine tailings on ground'

Gavin Lower | May 01, 2009

BHP BILLITON plans to store radioactive mine tailings from its proposed Olympic Dam expansion on the surface, rather than return the material to the pit as the Northern Territory's Ranger uranium mine is required to do, a key environmental group says.

Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear-free campaigner David Noonan said yesterday the company's plan, coming on the eve of the public release of the 3750-page draft environmental impact statement for the expansion, could see the company create the world's largest radioactive tailings pile over the life of the mine.

"I understand the BHP EIS will set out the company plan to accumulate and store the radioactive mine tailings on the surface and to leave those tailings on the surface in perpetuity," he said.

"BHP have told me that what they intend to do with their tailings is not put it back into the pit."

A company spokesman said yesterday he could not comment on the contents of the EIS.

BHP Billiton proposes to turn its Olympic Dam copper, gold and uranium mine, 560km north of Adelaide, from an underground mine into an open-cut operation.

Mr Noonan said the BHP plan would be in contrast to existing regulations governing the Ranger mine and a Labor Party pledge before the last election to follow world best practice for uranium mining.

He said tailings, the waste product of mining operations, at Ranger are required to be returned to the pit at the end of the mine's life, expected to be 2021, and then steps taken to ensure the tailings did not have a detrimental impact on the environment for at least 10,000 years.

According to figures publicly available, Mr Noonan said the proposed expansion of Olympic Dam would produce 70 million tonnes of radioactive mine tailings each year, significantly more than the 10 million tonnes of radioactive tailings now produced each year.

"If they're simply left at the surface, that material would be prone to erosion and spread into the environment," he said.

BHP Billiton stores its tailings above ground at Olympic Dam.

Mr Noonan said the ACF expected the commonwealth to require BHP Billiton to return the radioactive tailings from the expanded Olympic Dam to the pit.

"We'd expect the commonwealth to set at least the same standard (as the Ranger mine) to isolate tailings from the environment for 10,000 years and expect BHP to say through the EIS how to isolate those tailings for 10,000 years to prevent detrimental environmental impacts," he said.

Mr Noonan said the mine tailings were a cocktail of radioactive elements and heavy metals, which have been processed to the consistency of powder.

"Why should the Big Australian be given a special dispensation to dispose of their radioactive tailings and leave it as a hazard for all future generations," he said.

A BHP Billiton spokesman said: "We have been operating safely for 20 years.

"Tailings contain extremely low levels of radiation and they are stored in accordance with very strict licensing conditions and fully regulated by the Environmental Protection Authority."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25411908-5006790,00.html

Radiation Exposure from 50 Years of Uranium Mining Continues to Affect Spokane Indian Reservation

Tailings pond with its tell-tale, eerie green glow.

We speak with Twa-le Abrahamson of the Spokane Indian Reservation, where the only uranium mining in Washington State took place. She helped found the SHAWL (Sovereignty, Health, Air, Water, and Land) Society, which addresses the impact of radiation exposure caused by over fifty years of uranium mining in the area. [includes rush transcript]

Watch the video here or read the transcript.

http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/4/21/radiation_exposure_from_50_years_of

Mill [With History Of Environmental Contamination] Might Again Process Uranium [in CO]

April 8, 2009

by R. SCOTT RAPPOLD

THE GAZETTE

A uranium mill in Cañon City with a history of environmental contamination has asked the state for permission to refurbish and restart its uranium processing plant.

From 1958 to 2006, the Cotter Mill processed uranium into yellowcake, the raw material for nuclear power plant fuel rods. It employed 121 people at its 1970s peak, but the post-Three Mile Island collapse of the uranium market forced its gradual shutdown.

In an era before strong environmental regulations, uranium tailings were simply tossed in unlined pits, which contaminated the water supply of a nearby subdivision.

The mill and surrounding area are a federal Superfund site, a designation for the nation's most severe environmental hazards. Cleanup continues.

In a March 31 letter to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Cotter Corp. officials said they intend to bring the mill back online by 2014, with uranium mined in northwest New Mexico.

The company had been considering the move for more than a year, because of a resurgence in nuclear power, particularly in Asia, that had driven uranium prices up.

"Right now, the price is higher than what our costs are per pound. So yes, we're interested in making a go of it," said John Hamrick, vice president of milling for Denver-based Cotter. It would cost up to $200 million to get the mill running.

The mill would employ 80 people and process up to 1,500 tons of uranium a day, generating an equal amount of waste and tailings, which would be disposed of on-site.

Hamrick said disposal methods have changed from the mill's early days, and storage pits will have multiple layers to prevent leakage.

Most of the contamination occurred before the plant was rebuilt in 1979, though Cotter was cited by the state last summer for radioactive contamination at an adjacent golf course, which was traced to leaking storage tanks from more recent operations. The company last year was also ordered to pay $30,000 in fines for the deaths of 40 geese and ducks harmed by a kerosene spill in 2005, and the year before fought unsuccessfully to try to import radioactive waste from New Jersey.

"Of course we're not happy that an industry that created a Superfund site, that has continued to contaminate over the last 25 years, is now going to be approved to build a new mill and continue for another 25 years," said Sharyn Cunningham, a nearby resident and co-chairwoman of the residents group Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste.

She said the mill is too close to Lincoln Park, the semi-rural subdivision that had its wells contaminated by the plant. Cotter paid to hook up residents - some of whom blame Cotter for their health problems - to municipal water lines.

Before it can resume operations, Cotter must prove it can operate without further contamination.

"That is our challenge, to be able to demonstrate, not only through word but through deed, that we can be responsible operators," Hamrick said. "Hopefully, our recent history can weigh in that we have been doing things that are addressing some of the legacy contamination issues of the past as we prepare for the future."

The company expects to submit an application to modify its license in 2011. Two public hearings will be held, the Fremont County commissioners will weigh in and the state will make a decision in the fall of 2012, said Steve Tarlton, of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's radiation management unit.

http://www.gazette.com/articles/uranium_51440___article.html/mill_seeks.html

Date Set for Uranium Waste Shipment From Moab Mill to Crescent City

This is downright scary.

It’s official – workers will begin relocating the Atlas uranium mill tailings on April 20, said Don Metzler, Department of Energy project manager for the Moab project. And new federal stimulus funding announced Tuesday could mean many more jobs will be available as soon as the end of this year, Metzler said.

DOE representatives and project contractor EnergySolutions told the Moab Tailings Committee last week that the first train will leave the tailings site north of Moab almost a full month ahead of schedule. They also assured the committee that the project will be safe and that both workers and community face very little risk from radiation exposure.

“You will know the same day that we know,” if any air quality reading seriously exceeds the limit, if any worker is exposed to danger, or if something unforeseen happens, Metzler said.

He also sought to assure MTC members that the contractors will take every precaution in dealing with any dangerous materials that may be buried in the 16 million-ton tailings pile.

“If we hit anything we can’t identify we stop work immediately,” Metzler said.

The $108 million in stimulus funding announced Tuesday could enable contractors to increase the capacity of the trains that will transport the tailings by 50 percent as soon as 2010 instead of by 2012 as originally planned, Metzler said.

In order to do that the project will not only have to buy more railroad cars and tailings containers two years ahead of schedule, it will have to start hiring more workers beginning late this year. While the number of additional workers is not clear Metzler said as many as 150 additional jobs could be created.

The Crescent Junction disposal site is almost ready to receive the material, according to Larry Brede of EnergySolutions, and work at the tailings site and on the railroad siding above the site is nearly complete. Union Pacific is installing traffic barriers at major crossings at the road to Dead Horse Point and the Mill Canyon Road. Warning signals are being installed at less busy crossings, Brede said.

Brede said 15,000 railroad ties will be installed to replace the older existing ties. That work will take about seven days, he said.

A large part of the meeting was devoted to a presentation by Metzler on how thoroughly the project is monitoring air quality at the tailings site, the disposal area, and in Moab and Spanish Valley. While there have been some readings at a few points on the site that exceed limits, those readings have been minor and short-lived, even though the pile has been “open” for five weeks, Metzler said.

Metzler assured the committee that readings from monitors set up at the property of the “most exposed individuals” have all been well below the limits. He said that the dust that rose from the site during recent windstorms did not come from the tailings pile, but from the ground around it.

Regarding employment it is not known how many of the project’s current 125 workers are local, but several committee members remarked on seeing familiar faces. Metzler said that local residents have recently been promoted to important managerial positions. New workers will be hired through the Department of Workforce Services.

For the remainder of this year, the project work will be done in four 10-hour shifts, Monday through Thursday. A train with 22 cars hauling four containers each will leave the site about 4 p.m. on those days, Metzler said. Once the project is expanded the train will grow to 34 cars hauling 136 containers. The additional workers will work three 12-hour shifts, Friday through Sunday.

An added benefit from the stimulus package, Metzler said, is that it may pay for building an overpass across the Potash Road so that motorists will not have to stop for the trucks hauling the containers from the site to the railroad siding.

The full report along with a regular posting of air quality readings can be found at www.moabtailings.org.

http://www.moabtimes.com/pages/full_story?page_label=home_top_stories_news&article-Atlas%20tailings%20relocation%20to%20begin%20April%2020-%20officials%20say-%20=&id=2233645-Atlas+tailings+relocation+to+begin+April+20-+officials+say-&widget=push&instance=home_news_1st_left&open=&

AUSTRALIA: Concerns Rise Over Leak at Uranium Mine

By Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Australia, Apr 4 (IPS) - The revelation that a substantial amount of contaminated water is leaking each day from a tailings dam at a uranium mine, located in a World Heritage Site, has sparked protests from environment activists.

About 100 cubic metres per day of contaminated water is coming from the tailings dam, according to official information given at a recent Senate committee hearing by Alan Hughes, the supervising scientist for the Alligator Rivers region in Australia’s Northern Territory, where the Ranger mine is located.

Tailings are the crushed rock that is left over from the mining process. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), these tailings contain some 80 percent of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore.

"We’ve been concerned about the toxic plume that’s been growing from the tailings dam for quite a while now but we were astonished to learn about the extent of that leak," said Justin Tutty, uranium spokesperson at the Environment Centre Northern Territory (ECNT), the peak non-government environmental organisation in Australia’s top end.

He was referring to estimates of the leak given by Hughes, who is responsible for ensuring environmental protection against the potentially adverse impact of uranium mining.

Hughes confirmed that the Ranger mine’s owner, Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), has undertaken several studies into the dam’s leakage rates, and that electrical surveys have been able to indicate where the polluted water has spread. Leading British miner Rio Tinto controls a 68 percent share of ERA.

However, Hughes added that it is hard to estimate the total amount of contaminated water that has escaped the dam so far. "The seepage into the groundwater goes into fractured rock aquifers, so it is quite difficult to know what the actual volume of material is in those fractured rock aquifers," Hughes told the Senate committee in February.

But while Hughes argues that he does "not see any significant reason for concerns" regarding the tailings dam leakages, environmentalists have expressed grave reservations.

"There is a serious environmental management problem at the aging and under-performing Ranger mine," says the ACF’s anti-nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney.

ERA has mined uranium at Ranger, located 260 kilometres east of Darwin, since the early 1980s. The drummed uranium oxide is sold to nuclear power operators in Asia, Europe and North America. The mining firm is said to provide 11 percent of the world’s uranium. Australia holds an estimated 40 percent of the global reserves.

[...]

For its part, ERA insists that the tailings dam leakage has not led to any contamination of Kakadu. "Sub-surface movement of water from the tailings dam has been monitored routinely and reported openly for many years. It is well understood," the company said in a briefing sent to IPS following the outcry, which accompanied the initial reports of the recent leak.

But despite ERA’s assurances that Ranger continues to have no detrimental impact on the environment of Kakadu, activists remain unconvinced.

Tutty told IPS that the waste management system at Ranger is "bursting at the seams" and that the mine is very different from what it was initially approved for. "The miner has successively applied for one variation after another so that the configuration out there and the volumes of contamination that the miner is trying to juggle on-site are just way beyond anything that anyone imagined," he argued.

There have been several major extensions to operations at Ranger since uranium was first mined at the site. In mid-March, ERA formally lodged an application for the construction of a heap leach facility at Ranger to extract uranium ore from millions of tonnes of low-grade material at the site.

But while approval of the project could increase the mine’s output by up to 40 percent from 2012 onwards, Tutty said that the "focus should be on cleaning up the old mess rather than making a new one".

Although ERA says that it "will rehabilitate the site to best practice when operations cease," Tutty describes this latest plan for expansion as "absolutely outrageous".

"I think that it shows that they’re right out of touch with what the community expects in terms of protecting the environment and the people of Kakadu," the ECNT campaigner told IPS

Read the complete article here: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46379

Geologist Supports Uranium Mining [at Coles Hill]

We are simply taken aback by much of what this geologist has to say, particularly regarding radon dangers and water contamination. It flies in the face of everything we've read from many other experts, including Dr. Doug Brugge and Dr. Gordon Edwards. Dr. Brugge has a letter addressing some of these issues just a few page-scrolls below this article. The article on "The Nuclear Goliath" also just a few page-scrolls down tells a different story too. Of course, Dr. Beard does preface many of his comments with "I don't think..." which indicates his lack of certainty about some very important issues. Would it have been less misleading to have said, "Well, yeah, this could happen..."?

We think it's important note that in addition to his being with the Museum of Natural History, Dr. Beard is also an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech and that he's been a part of Virginia Tech's work project at Coles Hill, including the core sampling which was begun several months ago.

It is also important to remember that the Virginia Museum of Natural History has been the recipient of large monetary donations from entities connected to the mining of Coles Hill and the core samples drawn from Coles Hill by Marline in the late 1970's and early 80's have been donated to the Museum. It is unlikely that someone connected to the Museum and to Virginia Tech's Geosciences Department and doing work at Coles Hill, would be too critical of the activities at Coles Hill, including mining.

How the powers that be, including the Study Committee, can state that there will be an unbiased study done is beyond me. It would seem that Virginia Tech and Coles Hill are so used to being in bed together, they don't even fight over the covers anymore.

Dr. James Beard addresses the Rotary Club on Tuesday. (Bulletin photo by Kim Barto)

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

By KIM BARTO - Bulletin Staff Writer

A geologist from the Virginia Museum of Natural History said Tuesday he does not forsee major health or environmental risks from a proposed uranium mining operation in Pittsylvania County.

Dr. Jim Beard told the Martinsville Rotary Club that he hopes a state study will allow mining to proceed at the Coles Hill deposit in Chatham. With 119 million pounds of untapped uranium ore worth about $10 billion, the deposit is believed to be the largest trove in the country and the seventh largest in the world.

The Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy voted in November to study whether uranium can be safely mined there. No uranium can be mined in Virginia unless the General Assembly lifts a 1981 ban.

“Uranium has this aura of horribleness around it, but it’s not that toxic,” Beard said. “I would have no objection to living a mile from that mine myself,” he added. “I think the risks are going to turn out to be small.”

Beard said he thinks the state “is proceeding in a responsible fashion” by doing the study. “If they determine it should be mined, I think it should be mined,” he said. “I hope for the sake of Virginia, and Southside Virginia in particular, that it works out.”

Beard said uranium mining would create an important domestic source of energy for the United States. “The energy potential of that mine is 100 times the total potential of offshore drilling” for oil off Virginia’s coast, he said, adding that the uranium’s potential equates to one-fourth of the country’s oil reserves over the next 15 to 20 years.

“If we’re going to have some energy stability in this country, we have to make some choices,” he said. Nuclear power is “the wave of the future” and already is widely used in Europe, Beard said.

“This is an opportunity for Southside Virginia to move forward in an industry that will be very, very important in the 21st century,” he said.

Beard said there is “certainly a problem with the waste” created from using nuclear energy, “but everything has a cost.” He added that there is “not a huge volume of waste from nuclear power. I think that’s a solvable problem.”

One of the biggest concerns is whether contaminants from the mining will leach into groundwater. “I don’t think it will be a problem,” Beard said, because he said the ore minerals are stable.

Mining opponents have expressed concern that communities downstream of the mine could experience serious water contamination, but “no way is that going to happen,” Beard said. Another concern is whether mining would release radioactive dust into the air.

“Airborne dust is going to be a problem with any mining operation, not just uranium,” Beard said. Radon already is escaping from this deposit, he said. More radon probably will be dispersed if mining begins, he said, “but it’s going to be so dispersed, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”

The mine would be roughly the scale of the quarry in Fieldale and would entail some of the same disruptions, with “trucks and blasting,” Beard said. “You can’t say everything’s going to be rosy and perfect” near the mine site, he said. “But there’s very little disruption for a lot of good.” In uranium mining, ore is taken out of the ground and processed into yellow cake. The substance does not become dangerous until it is enriched, Beard said.

The Martinsville Rotary Club has heard opinions from both sides of the uranium mining issue. Past speakers have included a geologist from Virginia Uranium Inc., the company formed by families whose land sits above the uranium, and the head of Southside Concerned Citizens, an organization that opposes the proposed mining operation.

http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/article.cfm?ID=18313