Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts

Sunday, May 31, 2009

More on mining

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: May 30, 2009

To the editor:

Denison Mines Corp., according its first-quarter report for 2009, showed a loss of $1.3 million and a loss of $80.6 million for the year according, to its 2008 annual report.

Why is that of interest to the residents of Danville and Pittsylvania County? Because Denison runs the only operating uranium milling plant in the United States. That mill, White Mesa, has been put on standby for the rest of 2009.

Denison Mines Corp., according to its corporate Web site, is also putting a number of its U.S. uranium mines on standby. The president and chief operating officer of Denison Mines Corp., Ron Hochstein, is quoted on various Web sites as stating the cost of processing conventional uranium ore is higher than the current spot price of uranium.

Hochstein is also chairman of the board of directors of Santoy Resources Ltd. which is the Canadian venture capital company currently in the process of merging with Virginia Uranium.

Some people have commented about the mining expertise the Canadian association would bring to the Coles Hill operation along with financing? A look at the financial reports on the Santoy site showed statements resembling those of Denison. Expertise does not necessarily bring financial rewards.

HILDRED SHELTON
Danville

http://www.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/danville_letters/article/more_on_mining/11351/

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Sixth death linked to radiation scare lab

Comment: not a good place to work: Radiation kills!

April 24, 2009

A SIXTH person who worked in a university building linked with a radiation scare has died from cancer.

Professor Tom Whiston, 70, worked in Manchester University's Rutherford Building and developed terminal cancer.

The building once housed the laboratories used by physicist Ernest Rutherford, who worked with radioactive materials.

Prof Whiston and two of his former colleagues - Dr Hugh Wagner, 62, and Dr Arthur Reader, 69 - all died from pancreatic cancer.

A colleague of Dr Wagner, John Clark died of a brain tumour in the 1990s.

Computer assistant Vanessa Santos-Leitao, 25, also died of a brain tumour in February 2008.

Relatives of Moira Joy Hayward, who died of cancer in 1984, aged 48 and had worked in the Rutherford building when she was younger, also fear her death is linked.

The university has asked Prof David Coggon, an expert in work place disease at Southampton University, to investigate the cluster of deaths. University bosses insist there is no evidence of any risk to staff.

Prof Whiston, a respected expert in science and technology policy, had been based in the former Rutherford rooms for a number of years.

He is thought to have left Manchester University in the 1980s and had been living in Brighton, where he was an honorary professor at the University of Sussex.

Liz Graham, a Manchester solicitor acting on behalf of some of the families of former occupants, said she had spoken with members of Prof Whiston's family following his death. She said: "Prof Whiston died on April 11 at home in Brighton. I met with him earlier in his illness. He was a very well respected and well travelled academic.

"He worked in the same rooms used by Ernest Rutherford, in the rooms used by Dr Reader and Dr Wagner. Pancreatic cancer is quite a rare form of cancer. Questions need to be asked about whether there is a link."

Rutherford famously carried out studies into atomic structure which used highly radioactive substances between 1907 and 1919.



http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1111768_sixth_death_linked_to_radiation_scare_lab