Tuesday, December 11, 2007

"Safe" Uranium ???

Reprint from the Danville Register and Bee

Friends and neighbors, listen: “Safe” uranium mining is like “safe” sex - the only 100 percent guarantee you have lies in abstinence.

A handful of folks here will make a lot of money if this comes to pass. The rest of us will wake up wondering every day if “human error” or “inaccurate science” will render our backyards a hazardous wasteland. I imagine the flow of Yanks coming down here to pay top dollar for your beautiful Virginia farmland will dry up to not even a trickle with this next door. How may of you want one of these great jobs that will require you to wear a gauge on your shirt to determine if you’re being poisoned or not?

Yes, we do need a better energy source.Use your energy (and conscience) to contact the king and all his men - tell them we want to do our part. We’ll grow corn, grass or whatever to put life back into the landscape and keep our farms, our beauty and our peace of mind.

Don’t fall for the rhetoric. Don’t sell out. Above all, don’t not pay attention.

LINDA WORSLEY
Chatham

2 comments:

Jahnka said...

You talk about the "gauge on your shirt to determine if you’re being poisoned or not?" It's called a Dosimeter, and it's to see HOW MUCH you're being poisoned, not "if"... because working there you are definitely going to be absorbing radiation and biological damage from radiation is cumulative. Scientists agree - there is no safe level of exposure, just the government's acceptable level.
The people currently living near there need one also - and anyone living there the next 10,000 years - and anyone down stream - and any fish in the ocean that it empties into - and anyone eating any of those fish for the next 10,000 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmospheric_radiation_to_human.jpg

John Chaney said...

Jahnka, thanks for your input! On additional posts or comments, please sign with your full name and residence city or town, just as you would be required to do for a Letter to the Editor in your hometown newspaper. Thanks in advance!