Comment: Uranium mining will likely destroy more job opportunities than it creates. The few jobs created are short-term and extremely hazardous. Jobs are based on demand for uranium, if the price of uranium falls, workers are laid off, price goes up, back to work - unsteady income. Plus, the people who work in uranium mines will face a serious risk of developing lung cancer and premature aging when their exposure to radiation is within the permissible limits.
By John CranePublished: February 7, 2009
A report on the Coles Hill uranium deposit near Chatham says Southside Virginia has the skilled work force needed for mining and milling uranium.
Local workers’ comfort with farming and heavy equipment provides the attributes necessary for miners, according to the report, titled Technical Report on Coles Hill Uranium Property.
It was conducted by Behre Dolbear & Co. LTD., Marshall Miller and Associates Inc. and PAC Geological Consulting Inc. The report, known as a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report, is required by the Canadian Securities Administrators. It was submitted by Virginia Uranium Inc.’s minority investor, Santoy Resources of Vancouver.
“We are all painfully aware of the unemployment figures in the city of Danville, Pittsylvania, Halifax and Henry counties, where we could expect to draw the bulk of our 400-500 workers, if the Commonwealth of Virginia decides to permit the development of the Coles Hill resource,” Norm Reynolds, president and chief executive officer of VUI, said in a statement.
The report is a reference tool for potential investors wanting to confirm VUI officials’ claims about Coles Hill. VUI wants to mine and mill the uranium deposit at Coles Hill.
“It’s sort of like an auditor auditing your books,” Reynolds said during an interview Friday.
However, Jack Dunavant, the chairman of Southside Concerned Citizens, said he is “highly skeptical” of the report, adding that farm work and mining are not the same. Dunavant, a civil engineer, said there’s a difference between driving a truck on a farm and maneuvering one in a circle around a vertical mine shaft at a steep angle.
“It’s a pretty dangerous type of job,” he said.
Patrick Wales, VUI spokesman and geologist, cited Danville’s double-digit unemployment and called the report good news for the Danville area. The report also states that the engineering and geology departments at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg can “provide high-quality employees.”
The report confirms old report data VUI had purchased from Marline Uranium, as well as data VUI had collected at Coles Hill, Reynolds said. The firms began work on the report in November 2007 and completed it in September 2008. The 81-page report was released Thursday. The report includes analysis of core samples from Coles Hill. Reynolds said VUI drilled nine samples, with some that Marline had drilled about 30 years ago re-drilled by VUI.
It confirms that the uranium ore deposit is 119 million pounds and that there are 1.5 pounds of uranium per ton of rock. The report also states that the deposit is “relatively clean,” and is absent of heavy metals typically found in uranium deposits in the southwestern U.S., Wales said.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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September 16, 2005 The Australian
Uranium is akin to exporting disease, international anti-nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott said.
Dr Caldicott, pediatrician and Nobel Peace prize nominee, today called on the federal government to halt uranium mining, saying the mineral was a medical time bomb.
"The nuclear industry is about cancer and we are talking about nuclear waste that lasts over 25 million years," she told a Federal Parliamentary inquiry in Sydney into the future of Australia's uranium industry.
"We should not be mining uranium because what we are actually doing is exporting a disease ... that is the legacy that this industry will bequeath to future generations."
Australia has about 40 per cent of the world's uranium resources and supplies about 20 per cent of the world stocks.
While Western Australia and Queensland have banned uranium mining, it is still allowed in the Northern Territory and South Australia.
Dr Caldicott today warned against mining the mineral, saying the gamma radiation emitted from mined uranium damaged ordinary body cells.
"All it takes is a single mutation in a single cell," she told the inquiry.
"The incidence of testicular cancer is rising; cancer in general is rising; we spend millions of dollars every year trying to cure cancer and we spend countless hours waiting for people to die."
Because politicians were often scientifically ignorant they underestimated the profound medical ramifications of mining uranium, Dr Caldicott said.
"Decisions made on a purely economic basis are inappropriate," she said.
"We are talking about something that is going to affect people and other species for the rest of time."
Richard Broinowski, a former ambassador to South Korea and a nuclear proliferation expert, told the inquiry that commercial considerations govern Australia's policies towards the extraction and export of uranium, Prof Broinowski said.
"We are looking at the short term, the expedient and the commercial - we are not looking at the long term," he said.
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