Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Enough Scare Tactics,Voices of Reason Needed (Uranium Mining in Virginia)

Comment: Please read the email sent to someone and telling the Nuke bunch to write letters to counter all of our great truths about the problems with uranium mining. Keep writting the great letters about the problems of uranium mining!



EMAIL FROM:



Enough Scare Tactics—Voices of Reason Needed


Dear VEIA Member:

You are receiving this message because you indicated your willingness to sign a Letter to the Editor.

Please take a few moments to review the scare propaganda being submitted to papers in Virginia regarding the uranium deposit at Coles Hill—a major potential source for domestic nuclear energy.

The National Academy of Sciences—a highly reputable entity—has been engaged by the Virginia General Assembly (after VUI paid for the study, they forgot to add this to the letter) with a request to study the safety of uranium mining in Virginia.

We need voices of reason to sign Letters to the Editor to speak up for the National Academy, the study, and to interject reason into papers full of too much heightened rhetoric. If you are willing to sign a letter, e-mail info@virginiaenergy.org. (Uranium fighters, keep the letters coming!)

URANIUM MINING IS REPLETE WITH DANGER

THE RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
August 31, 2009

Editor, Times-Dispatch: In response to Reed F. Goode’s letter, “Virginia Has the Right Stuff to Lead in Nuclear Energy”:

Sure, we can have nuclear power, and uranium mining too, if we want them. And we surely will if people sit back and do nothing. Nuclear power has so many problems that I will only address the uranium mining issue and urge people to educate themselves on the dangers involved therein.

Please consider the following uranium mining issues:

There are uranium mining deposits all along the eastern slopes of our mountains so uranium mining will affect all Virginians.
Uranium mining is the dirty end of the nuclear power cycle, with the greatest danger coming from ingestion: breathing the dust, drinking the water, or eating affected meat or crops.
Uranium is radioactive and has a life of millions of years.
Radiation is a killer and contaminated stream beds cannot be cleaned up.
Only 14 percent of uranium is recoverable. The tailings contain 86 percent in a finely ground powdery form that leaches into streams and groundwater.
More and better jobs will be lost in the surrounding area than will be gained.
Jack Dunavant,

Halifax

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URANIUM MINING WILL LEAVE DESTRUCTION IN ITS WAKE

CHATHAM STAR TRIBUNE
September 9, 2009
Letter to the Editor

Please no uranium mining in Virginia.

In the Washington Post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted:

"Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day - the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly - to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams.

"On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodland survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra.

"King coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not - obliterating the hemispheres oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forest." (July 2009).

As quoted by email to me from Matt Wasson from ilovemountains.org.

Just recently this was stopped by Congress.

So, why do we give them a back door to have new areas to explore for minerals and have their destruction here in their wake for a way to benefit a few?

Where are the area educators' outcry?

Chemistry and biology teachers surely know that mass destruction must come from mining and milling of ore that is not in the metallic state when extracted from the soil.

It does not come in a sealed cylinder when taken from the ground.

Please read about mountain-top removal at ilovemountains.org.

John David Lewis,
1955 graduate
Spring Garden High School

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‘UNBIASED’ URANIUM STUDY ALREADY TAINTED

CHATHAM STAR TRIBUNE
September 9, 2009
Letter to the Editor

Today I read that, regarding uranium mining, "Del. Terry Kilgore, chairman of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy, said Virginia Uranium Inc. will pay for the study by the National Academy of Sciences."

So, a man backed by a foreign interest with unlimited pockets deeper than even his own, and supported by family and friends in our government from Chatham to Richmond to Washington, can pay for an "unbiased" opinion on the financial lucrativeness of uranium mining in our community (reportedly worth billions of dollars), and expect that we will accept its validity?

However, "Kilgore said Virginia Uranium will fund the scientific study, but not an in-depth look at the socioeconomic impact of uranium mining."

Why not? Is it because that part of the equation is the least of VUI's concern?

Of course, that's why we, the rest of us, must make it ours.

Linda Worsley
Chatham

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A COMMENT ON OUTRAGEOUS DOINGS

CHATHAM STAR TRIBUNE
September 9, 2009
Letter to the Editor

With the news that Virginia Uranium will pay for a study to determine the future of uranium mining in Virginia, this very major issue now moves into the realm of the absurd.

The acquiescence of the government of the commonwealth to this situation is stunning in its stupidity and bald-faced corruption.

Our elected officials have shown little judgment and even less common sense in this decision. The fate of their careers as elected officials must be in doubt.

Every state-wide representative who did not stand up to oppose this corrupt bargain has abrogated his responsibility as a guardian of the people's interest. They are unworthy of our votes and have earned our collective disdain.

I am sure the National Academy of Science is indeed a "neutral" organization through which to conduct this study, bought and paid (quiet literally) by our Canadian friends and their cadre of wealthy local and foreign investors.

The scientists at Virginia Tech would never think of the opportunity to use Pittsylvania County as a laboratory and its citizens as guinea pigs in their investigations of the affects of uranium mining on the environment east of the Mississippi.

They are responsible individuals first, and scientists second. In fact, this new relationship could be the beginning of several new National Academy/Virginia Tech studies.

Let's see what else they could do. Here's one: "The Feasibility of Bank Bailouts as a Means of Helping the Economy."

That one would be paid for by Wachovia and Bank of America. I wonder what the National Academy of Science would find?

Here's another: "The Positive or Negative Effects of Socialism in America."

That one would be funded by the American Communist Party. I am sure the folks at Virginia Tech will come up with a fair and balanced conclusion.

Finally, in the area of sports we have, "Steroids: Good or Bad for Baseball?" This one has the financial backing of Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds.

I am on tenterhooks awaiting that conclusion.

Pardon my sarcasm, but I fear the deck is stacked against Pittsylvania County. Is this the sad fate that must play out over the next two decades?

The "study" will conclude that uranium mining is safe "under certain circumstances."

The fine print of the extreme conditional approval will be ignored by the uranium industry and they will embrace the study as definite "scientific" proof that all is well.

Mining regulations will move swiftly through the hapless House of Delegates; mining will begin with a flourish of heady pronouncements about employment and the economic prosperity that is headed our way.

Blasting activity will begin; tailing ponds will be dug; all will move quickly forward. Then, somewhere down the line, there will be an economic (price of uranium falls) or environmental (water ruined) catastrophe.

Government and uranium industry officials will throw up their hands and declare that no one could have foreseen this (remember Katrina?), and they are not to blame.

The mines will close; the investors will go silent and Virginia Uranium will creep back to its Canadian homeland.

By that time, the people of Virginia will be left to tend the mess that Virginia Uranium began: the two 800-foot holes in the ground; the ruined landscape, poisoned water and contaminated air.

Unemployment will rise, now that tobacco and non-mining businesses have long left the area. Taxes will rise; land values will fall.

The National Academy will assert the fine print of its study (i.e. that mining probably could not be done successfully) and the scientists at Virginia Tech will have their laboratory and guinea pigs just down the road from them in Pittsylvania County.

My father used to say that if you can't pay for something, you can't buy it. If the Commonwealth of Virginia cannot pay for a study, they should not have one.

Virginia Uranium is a biased funder; the conflict of interest is so apparent that it is embarrassing for a private citizen to have to point this out to officials who should know better.

If Virginia cannot pay now for a study of this sort, how are they going to pay for the regulation and upkeep of the area once mining begins? Where will that money come from?

Until these basic questions are answered completely, all citizens of good faith must remain opposed to any study of any kind paid for by the very people who profit from its slanted outcome.

We shall and must regard the findings of this tainted study, and the people who support it, with a cynical and suspicious eye.

Richard Dixon
Chatham





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