Editorial: Wisdom Over Speed (Roanoke Times)

Virginia needs alternative energy sources. But the House is right to see that need shouldn't translate into speed when dealing with uranium.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

A House committee Monday effectively killed for the year a controversial study on whether uranium can be mined safely in Virginia.

Proponents bewailed the move as useless foot-dragging -- government inaction when the country needs bold action to develop alternative energy sources. But nothing about uranium, the radioactive material used to produce nuclear energy, should be hurried.

Any mistake in mining uranium or handling and storing the waste can have devastating effects on the environment for a millennium.

Yet the state Senate seemed to be in a hurry, indeed, this year.

Senators voted 36 to 4 last month to set up a commission that would oversee a corporate-sponsored National Academy of Sciences study on the safety of such an undertaking. A vote for a study would seem to be a simple vote against ignorance. But opponents fear the study's conclusion is preordained and would be used as leverage to end Virginia's moratorium on uranium mining. They have some reason to worry. Consider:

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Frank Wagner of Virginia Beach, is a nuclear energy proponent.

The study would be paid for by a company sitting on a Pittsylvania County uranium deposit that could be worth as much as $10 billion.

And the Senate wrote into its budget plan a directive to the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to assess "the feasibility of establishing, implementing and overseeing a state program for the regulation of uranium mining."

Yet Virginia has banned uranium mining for 25 years. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission says uranium is mined in dry, sparsely populated parts of the West, and has never been mined on the East Coast.

Del. Watkins Abbitt of Appomattax made the successful motion that the House Rules Committee table the Senate bill, killing it until next year. Abbitt said he sat on the House panel that studied the Pittsylvania site 25 years ago and found that mining it probably would be safe. It's what's left after the mining -- the tailings -- that concerned lawmakers then and concerns many of them still.

Wagner denounced as absurd an alternative proposal to study what a uranium mining study should cover. Not so, if lawmakers think questions about post-mining operations would go unaddressed.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith of Salem, who lined up on the side of delay, noted, "I do think we ought to study it. I just don't think something that can affect the climate and quality of life for 2,000 years has to be done immediately."

Make haste slowly, Poor Richard advised. Ben Franklin's wisdom has never sounded more apt.

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Also in the Roanoke Times March 6, 2008 (from SCC affiliate Annette Ayres):

Raising red flags about uranium mining

While uranium mining may fall nicely into Gov. Tim Kaine's energy plan, unearthing radioactive ore and milling it within walking distance of creeks and homes reliant on private wells wasn't in the plan of most residents who have lived on nearby land for generations.

It's no surprise many elected officials and industry executives have focused solely on the economics, because looking at the risks of placing a mining and milling operation in a populated area with a record of severe weather is too dirty and unsettling when one fully considers the ramifications.

There's enough current documentation from across the globe to raise red flags about the dangers this presents.

Virginia's medical community needs to become involved in this issue and be a voice for future generations.

ANNETTE AYRES