Uranium Mining

Victory! Virginia keeps the ban on uranium mining!

2013-02-01T19:51:04Z

A proposal to end Virginia’s 31-year ban on uranium mining suffered a major defeat on January 31 before a state Senate panel. Lacking the votes to win, Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, withdrew his bill in the Agriculture Committee. That killed the measure for the 2013 session. Mining opponents claimed victory, saying any effort to lift the mining ban is probably dead this year — and maybe well beyond. The Keep the Ban movement brought together environmental organizations, the Virginia Farm Bureau, the Virginia chapter of the NAACP and, most recently, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors. Virginia has a 30-year ban on uranium mining. The uranium industry made making a well-financed push to repeal the ban in order to mine and process uranium, starting in Southside Virginia. Drinking water, human health, farmland, property values, wildlife and tourism across Virginia were at risk. Virginia Uranium, the company that planned to mine the Coles Hill site, will not likely go quietly, but the proposal is once again stymied for the time being.

Utah uranium mining operations suspended

2013-01-31T15:22:22Z

Reports Uranium Watch: It has taken only 5 years for the most recent uranium mining boom in Utah to hit bottom. In 2012, Energy Fuels Inc. acquired the Denison Mines Corporation’s United States uranium interests through a buyout/merger process. These interest include the White Mesa Mill, the operating La Sal Mines Complex and Daneros Mine in San Juan County and other mines and mining claims in Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. Subsequently, Energy Fuels announced they would place their operating Utah mines on standby and would concentrate on operating their mines on the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon. Energy Fuels’ US subsidiary, Energy Fuels Resources Inc. (EFR), has suspended operations at the La Sal/Beaver Shaft and Daneros Mine. Originally EFR announced that they would reclaim the Pandora Mine, but later stated they would also temporarily suspend the Pandora Mine operations.

The Moab office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is still reviewing the Plan of Operations Amendment (POA) for the La Sal Mines Complex and completing the Environmental Assessment. The POA includes the updated provisions for the reclamation of the La Sal, Snowball, Beaver Shaft, and Pandora Mines. These must be approved by the BLM.

Energy Fuels will now have 9 uranium mines in Utah that are permitted but not operating: Beaver Shaft/La Sal/Snowball, Daneros, Energy Queen, Pandora, Pine Ridge, Redd Block No. 4, Rim, Sage, and Tony M Mines. The BLM and the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining have specific regulations that apply to the long-term suspension of mining operations. The regulations are inadequate and have not been fully implemented and enforced.

The decisions to suspend mining operations in Utah are decisions based on the economic viability of the Energy Fuels. It is not know when, or if, these mines will resume operation. Some of these mines have been kept on standby for over 10 years without the required approval of the Oil, Gas, and Mining Board.

Uranium Watch is following the recent suspension uranium mine operations and the status of other mines that are non-operational but have not been remediated.

INVITATION to CELEBRATE: The Nuclear Age in Quebec is Over! Gentilly-2 is SHUT DOWN! But uranium mining must still be banned!

2012-12-27T17:28:21Z

"Rest in Peace, Gentilly-2". Image compliments of CentricoisES et mauricienNEs pour le déclassement nucléaireThis tremendous good news just came in from Dr. Gordon Edwards, chair of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and co-chair of the Great Lakes United Nuclear-Free/Green Energy Task Force:

28 December: The Nuclear Age in Quebec is Over!

Join us, in Montréal, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon

On this occasion, Sonomi and her two children-- refugees from Fukushima, Japan -- will be our special guests.

P.S. Québec will be truly out of the nuclear age only when we achieve a permanent moratorium on uranium mining, as has been done in two other provinces -- Nova Scotia and British Columbia!

(Nuclear utility Hydro-Quebec announced Gentilly-2's permanent shutdown, to occur tomorrow, last October. Gentilly-2 is a CANDU atomic reactor which has operated since 1982. The Quebec public will now avoid the wate, and risk, of billions in refurbishment costs, which Hydro-Quebec had hoped to foist upon them, in a bid to operate Gentilly-2 for 20 more years. However, decommissioning costs will now begin.)

Researchers plan to study effects of Navajo Reservation uranium exposure on pregnancy and child birth

2012-12-03T14:49:44Z

Three decades after the end of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation, researchers plan to conduct a study in response to community concerns about the effects of exposure to uranium waste on pregnancies and child development on the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Birth Cohort Study is a three-year study on the Navajo reservation. It will provide early assessment and education on environmental and prenatal risks from exposure to environmental contaminants.

In 2009, Congress mandated and awarded money for the Navajo Birth Cohort Study. The money will support the University of New Mexico Community Environmental Health Program as it designs and conducts the study in collaboration with the Navajo Area Indian Health Services, the Navajo Division of Health, Southwest Research and Information Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Johnnye Lewis, Ph.D., director of the Community Environmental Health Program, Health Sciences Center, at the University of New Mexico, is the principal investigator in the project. She coordinates the professional research team drawn from the five agencies responsible for implementing the project.

"This particular set of funding is for Navajo, but this is not just a Navajo problem," said Lewis. "There are 10,400 abandoned uranium mine waste sites in the western U.S., many of those on tribal lands. So I think the information we gain from this study will have impacts much further reaching than just Navajo."

More information on the Navajo Birth Cohort Study is available by calling toll-free (877) 545-6775 or contacting a Clinical Liaison at the nearest IHS facility. Navaho-Hopi Observer

Leona Morgan of ENDAUM speaks on Democracy Now!

2012-10-11T17:07:00Z

Workers contaminated with uranium dust at Canadian processing plant

2012-08-07T20:44:40Z

Three workers at a Cameco processing facility in Ontario were exposed to airborne uranium dust in an incident at the Saskatchewan company's Blind River refinery last month, federal regulators say.

The exposure happened June 23 when a worker loosened a ring clamp on a 208-litre drum of uranium oxide yellowcake. The lid blew off, injecting about 26 kilograms of the material into the air.

The worker closest to the drum and two others in the area, who were not wearing respirators, were exposed to the dust.

The drum came from the U.S. company Uranium One's Willow Creek facility in Wyoming. More.

Sign petition to block uranium mines in New Mexico!

2012-05-24T18:22:53Z

Former uranium mine worker and Navajo leader, Larry J. King (pictured), has gathered 10,000+ signatures and growing on a petition to stop new uranium mines that will contaminate Navajo drinking water supplies. Hydro Resources requested a permit 23 years ago to mine from an aquifer at four sites in two New Mexico towns: Church Rock and neighboring Crownpoint. It has since received permits from the EPA, the NRC and the state. The Easterm Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining has been fighting the plan since 1994. The site is on private land but within the Navajo community. The Navajo Nation has banned uranium mining on its own lands. Mining from the aquifer for uranium will pollute the water under the two towns and make it undrinkable. Chuch Rock does not use the aquifer currently but views it as a future water source. Read more and please sign the petition to the Environmental Protection Agency which is revisiting its decision to grant Hydro Resources a permit.

The uncalculated cost of "decommissioning" Canada's many uranium mines

2011-11-27T15:48:52Z

Pat McNamara writes in Nuclear Genocide in Canada:

"Taxpayers will have to foot the bill to remediate the abandoned uranium mines in Canada whose owners simply walked away. Many other mines simply dumped their radioactive tailings in the closest lake. These radioactive tailings ponds are contaminating downstream environments. In most cases, the tailings ponds are contained with simple earthen dams. There have been more than 30 breaches of the earthen dams at Elliot Lake since they were first put in place." (excerpt from Part 4, "Nuclear Costs to Date")

"Nuclear genocide" at Serpent River First Nation, Elliot Lake, Ontario

2011-11-26T19:16:58Z

Uranium tailings wall at Elliot Lake, leaking into Serpent River watershed. Photo by Robert Del Tredichi.In Part 1 of his book overviewing the Canadian nuclear establishment's history, Nuclear Genocide, Pat McNamara included an essay on the dozen uranium mines, and associated mills and refinery, located near Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada -- adjacent to the Serpent River First Nation. Much of the essay was taken from the book This Is My Homeland, edited by journalist, Serpent River First Nation Member, and Green Party of Canada indigenous peoples affairs spokesperson Lorraine Rekmans. As documented by Gordon Edwards and Robert Del Tredichi's Nuclear Map of Canada, 145.3 million tonnes of radioactive tailings, out of a national Canadian total of 193.2 million tonnes -- a whopping 75% -- are located at the long-shuttered Elliot Lake uranium mines, on the Serpent River watershed which flows into Lake Huron at Georgian Bay. To this day, the Elliot Lake uranium tailings are still the largest source of radium discharges into the Great Lakes, the drinking water supply for 40 million people in the U.S., Canada, and numerous Native American First Nations.

"We left them to die and hoped they would never ask any questions"

2011-11-25T23:31:06Z

Having not been warned about known hazards, Dene men even slept on burlap bags containing uranium and radiumThese powerful words come from Andy Orkin, an Ontario lawyer who worked on behalf of the Deline First Nations people, among the very first indigenous victims of the Atomic Age. Deline, Northwest Territories, Canada is home to a traditional Dene tribe, the only indigenous people on the mighty Great Bear Lake near the Canadian Arctic. Orkin is quoted in Part 1 of Pat McNamara's Nuclear Genocide in Canada.

The book opens by describing Port Radium, the first uranium mine in Canada, which commenced operations in 1933. Local indigenous men were hired to haul pitchblende, uranium ore containing then-coveted radium, in burlap sacks (see photos at left). Although the Canadian mines department had already alerted the federal government to the hazards, the men of Deline were not warned. They began dying of various cancers -- diseases unknown previously to the tribe -- at an alarming rate, in 1960.

Eventually, the Canadian government admitted the men's exposure to hazardous radioactive materials was to blame, but the "Village of Widows" had long since already figured that out themselves. As nuclear widow Cindy Kenny-Gilday of Deline said:

"This village of young men are the first generation of men in the history of Dene on this lake
to grow up without guidance from their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This cultural, economic,
spiritual, emotional deprivation impact on the community is a threat to the survival of the one and only
tribe on Great Bear Lake. Itʹs the most vicious example of cultural genocide I have ever seen and it's in my own home."

The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility has posted a 1998 "Call for a Federal Response to Uranium Deaths in Deline" by the Dene First Nation People of Great Bear Lake.