Class: Understanding Nuclear Radiation hosted by American Nuclear Society

Comment: This blog usually does not carry ProNuke Stuff but what the author failed to inform us are the sponsors of the class (just details from the paper) and they own a lot a land around Coles Hill! Now, just guess the groups that would sponsor this class, now just guess! Maybe the Nuke Bunch, well you would be correct, American Nuclear Society ! Really, what else is the Nuke Bunch going to say, duh, I love Radiation! Some Info about the class:


2009 Multi-Day Science Teacher Workshop

FROM 4:00 PM TUESDAY JULY 14, 2009
TO 5:00 PM SATURDAY JULY 18, 2009

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND (Gottwald Science Center)

For information
Contact Pascal Brocheny
(434) 832-4862

$75 Registration Fee includes
CONTINUING EDUCATION UNITS, ALL MEALS,
ACCOMMODATIONS ON CAMPUS, AND TEACHING MATERIALS

Topics to be discussed:
Radiation: Basics, Biological Effects, Beneficial Uses
Nuclear Energy & Technology, Nuclear Power Plant Basics & Safety
Visit of North Anna Power Station
Hands-on Lab using Geiger-Muller Counters
Visit of VCU's Nuclear Medicine Facilities in Richmond
Dozens of applicable Virginia SoLs will be covered
Ideas of class activities and projects

β SPONSORS
AREVA NP INC

WESTINGHOUSE

γ SPONSORS
VIRGINIA URANIUM

Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding

Surry Professional Society

Mission Statement

The Virginia Section of the American Nuclear Society was chartered on September 26th, 1956.

Its mission was, and still is, to promote the advancement of nuclear technology and professions in the Virginia and surrounding areas.

Our Members

The Virginia Local Section of the American Nuclear Society has over 100 members representing Richmond, Lynchburg, the Tidewater area, Charlottesville, and the Dominion nuclear stations (North Anna and Surry). The Surry Plant Branch was restarted in 2009.

Links
Local Societies
Richmond Joint Engineers Council (RJEC)
Virginia Section of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear
DC Section of the American Nuclear Society
DC Section of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear
Calvert Cliffs Section of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear

National Societies
American Nuclear Society
Health Physics Society
North American Young Generation in Nuclear

Our Employers
AREVA NP
The Babcock and Wilcox Company
Central Virginia Community College
Cumberland Consulting
Dominion
Jefferson Lab
Mega-Tech Services
nHance Technologies, Inc.
Northrop Grumman Newport News
NovaTech
The Mitre Corporation
University of Richmond
University of Virginia
Virginia Military Institute
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Tech
http://local.ans.org/virginia/index.html




By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: August 16, 2009

By Carol S. East

My husband’s and my families have lived and farmed in eastern Pittsylvania County for more generations than I can easily count.

We live less than four miles from the Coles Hill uranium site and were here during the controversy of the early 1980s. We have no financial connection with Virginia Uranium Inc., although we consider the company’s principals to be responsible friends and neighbors.

Twenty-five years ago, when our children were small and I was very busy, I never learned enough about the uranium project to know whether I thought it was risky or actually a wonderful opportunity for the community and the region. But one thing was certain: The people who claimed to know the most about it were clearly driven by agendas that had little regard for factual information. The folks who talked the most seemed to know the least.

This time around, I decided to find out the truth for myself.

I decided against using the Internet for my research and, instead, headed to the classroom to find out what I needed to know for the sake of our children and grandchildren — and all those who might follow.

A good place to start seemed to be radiation, since the root of most concerns seems to lie in the radioactive nature of uranium.

I signed up for a course called “Understanding Nuclear Radiation” at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg. While there, I heard about a week-long workshop on the subject at the University of Richmond, so I signed up for that also.

What I learned is that radiation has been a life-sustaining force since the formation of the Earth. It is essential to our lives. I learned that we always have been exposed to radiation in the air, from outer space and from the water and food we consume. Without radiation, the Earth would be a cold and barren place.

The common measure used for exposure to radiation is the millirem. On average, each person in the United States is exposed to 360 millirem of radiation each year. How you reach that average exposure level for the year depends upon factors such as the elevation of your hometown, the construction materials in your house, how much time you spend in the sun and many other circumstances.

Some people receive less than 360 millirem per year — and some receive more. But 360 millirem is the average amount received by each of us across the United States.

We pick up radiation from watching television and additional radiation from flying cross country on an airliner. Life-saving medical procedures increase our dosage of radiation. A routine chest X-ray delivers six millirems, while the much more serious CAT-scan delivers 110 millirems.

What I learned is that under normal conditions, radiation causes no harm to our bodies. Intense exposure to radiation can be harmful, and that is why you see medical and dental technicians taking precautions as they go about their work on a day-after-day basis.

Nothing I learned supported the wild claims of radiation ruining the air and water in a modern, properly managed uranium mining and milling operation. For what it’s worth, if you live within 50 miles of a coal-fired power plant, you get more exposure to radiation than if you live the same distance from a nuclear power plant.

If you’ve noticed, nearly everything being thrown around about uranium mining — things like death zones, deformed babies, destroyed rivers — all are rooted in unregulated mining activities that occurred 30 to 50 years ago.

Has anyone noticed that all those activities are illegal today? Has anyone noticed that we are living in a time of powerful government oversight regulating everything from where we can smoke to whether a child can ride in the back of a pick-up truck?

What this knowledge means to me is that if the Coles Hill project goes forward with all the safeguards we can expect from federal and state authorities, our region will see a multi-billion-dollar expansion of economic opportunity that will benefit all of us in countless ways. It also means that we will contribute to our nation’s energy independence — which is a vital factor in our national security.

One of the most peculiar arguments I hear against this project is that the uranium has always been in the ground and man has no business removing it — that we should leave it alone. But water also is in the ground — as well as oil and gas and all the marvelous minerals man has mined and used to build our civilization.

After taking the classes and learning the truth about radiation exposure, I see this local uranium resource as yet another gift to be extracted from the Earth and used intelligently for the good of mankind, as well as the Dan River Region.

* East is a resident of Pittsylvania County. She wrote this commentary for the Register & Bee.

http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/community_voices/article/educate_yourself_about_radiation/13223/

Plan to Pay Sick Nuclear Workers Unfairly Rejects Many, Doctor Says

by Laura Frank, Special to ProPublica - July 31, 2009 11:00 am EDT

Dr. Eugene Schwartz (Andrew Greto/ProPublica)Carla McCabe spent a decade building nuclear bombs at the sprawling Rocky Flats complex near Denver. When she developed a brain tumor and asked for help, federal officials told her that none of the toxic substances used at the top-secret bomb factory could have caused her cancer.

Now, on the eighth anniversary of the federal program created to help sick nuclear weapons workers, the man who until recently was the program's top doctor says that McCabe, now 55, and many others like her are being improperly rejected.

The doctor, Eugene Schwartz, recently resigned [1] (PDF) and in his first interview since quitting, he said many of the complaints that workers, advocates and lawmakers have leveled at the controversial program are valid. For instance, Schwartz said he repeatedly warned the U.S. Department of Labor that it is ignoring established medical knowledge about the dangers of bomb work.

"I was muzzled," said Schwartz, a Harvard-trained doctor with a master's degree in nuclear engineering, whose job was overseeing medical decisions at the federal compensation program.

The Labor Department took charge of the program, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, at its creation on July 31, 2001. Today, it boasts that it has paid $5 billion in compensation and medical costs to more than 52,600 former workers or their survivors. That averages to $95,000 each.

But sick workers, who have banded together in multiple advocacy groups across the nation, point out that the Labor Department has denied nearly three out of four claims — 127,000 filed on behalf of sick nuclear weapons workers or their survivors in the past eight years.

The sick workers and their advocates say they feel vindicated that Schwartz confirms many of the complaints they've raised previously about waste, bias and bad science within the program.

"He is saying what we've been saying is true," said Harry Williams, a sick worker from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who helped found the national Alliance for Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups and has spent more than a decade trying to help others. "With his credentials, the people in power will definitely have to pay attention."

Schwartz said Labor continues to incorrectly tell weapons workers with multiple diseases — including cancers of the brain, breast or bones — that radiation and other toxic substances that permeated the bomb factories could not have made them sick.

"That's madness," said Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum, a nationally recognized toxicologist who helped review cases when the federal government began compensating its sick nuclear weapons workers in 2001. In addition to working for the government, Teitlebaum also has testified on behalf of sick workers in other industries.

Teitelbaum and Schwartz said that multiple studies have found links between brain, breast and bone cancers and exposure to toxic substances such as plutonium, PCBs, and mixtures of chemicals and radiation — all key bomb ingredients.

Those studies were subjected to scrutiny by other experts, what is known as "peer review," before they were published in scientific journals.

But it has not been enough for the Labor Department.

When an official punched McCabe's diagnosis into the Labor Department's $11 million database of nuclear-related illnesses, nothing came back, her records show.

A Labor Department document regarding her case reads: "The research did not identify any toxic substances at the Rocky Flats Plant which are linked to ... any form of brain tumor."

The database did not include several peer-reviewed studies that have linked glial brain tumors like McCabe's to radiation and chemicals known to have been used at Rocky Flats. At least one of those studies, Teitelbaum said, was done on workers at the now-demolished Rocky Flats site itself. McCabe said she knows of at least eight coworkers who suffered similar brain tumors.

Program officials said they would send her case to another agency for analysis of her radiation exposures. But she's not holding her breath. That process takes on average two years, and none of her coworkers with brain tumors — most of whom are now dead — have been compensated through that process either.

The Labor Department declined to answer questions about its database or make public the grounds on which it includes some diseases and excludes others. It could not be learned how much consideration the peer-reviewed studies of brain cancers received.

"Somebody needs to do something about this," Teitelbaum said.

Schwartz said he tried but failed.

The McCabe case, he said, illustrates the flaws he tried to address. Schwartz said he began documenting his concerns shortly after he began work as medical director at the compensation program in March 2008.

A former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, the physician and nuclear engineer from South Hadley, Mass., spent more than 30 years working in his field, which assesses the effects of industrial processes on workers. His research has focused on the causes and prevention of cancer and occupational diseases.

But Schwartz said his bosses at the Labor Department largely ignored the issues he raised, and then tried to silence him.

"The program needs scientific oversight," Schwartz said. "I was told they're not going to do that — repeatedly."

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., answers a reporter's question during a news conference. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, helped push for the program as a congressman in 2000. This year, he introduced legislation to reform it. He said Schwartz's statements confirm what he and others have long believed.

"It is what I've suspected all along — an attempt by the agencies to delay and deny benefits to workers of nuclear facilities," Udall said.

The most serious allegations Schwartz raised involve what are arguably the two most important steps on the path to compensation and medical care.

One involves the very first step: Determining whether a worker was exposed to toxic substances that could have caused the disease in question. The other involves what is often the last step: Seeing whether a government-hired doctor agrees that the worker's exposures did, in fact, cause his or her disease.

In the first step, the Labor Department is supposed to use its database of diseases and exposures to screen which cases deserve further investigation. That initial screening is performed by a Labor Department employee, not a doctor.

Sick workers have previously complained that some cases are wrongly rejected for compensation because the database, created in 2006, is missing information about both exposures and their links to disease.

Schwartz said they have a point.

"Claims are being denied because of these problems," Schwartz said.

Labor Department rules say the database should be used for guidance and that the claims examiners should dig deeper if they suspect an illness arose from work at a bomb factory.

Schwartz, however, said some claims examiners told him they had used the database to decide cases without further review.

"The issue is how it is used — or misused," Schwartz said.

According to Schwartz, the disease-exposure links in the database were decided by one doctor: Jay Brown, an occupational medicine physician from Tacoma, Wash., who has a background in family medicine.

While the database has "this aura of scientific validity," Schwartz said, it has never been peer reviewed and does not take into account the combined effects of low-level radiation and toxic chemicals.

When asked about Schwartz's concerns, Brown replied via e-mail: "I don't work on SEM," the Labor Department's acronym for the database, called the Site Exposure Matrix. He referred all further questions to the Labor Department.

Labor Department officials would comment only through a spokeswoman, who said in an e-mail that Schwartz's concerns "were reviewed, discussed, and addressed appropriately."

The agency spokeswoman added that Labor pays Brown to conduct "independent research to identify established chemical-disease links specifically focused on materials used in the Department of Energy complex." Brown puts the links into a database he developed, called Haz-Map. He began compiling Haz-Map in 1991 as a way to identify and prevent occupational disease, according to his Web site. Haz-Map is published there and on the National Library of Medicine Web site.

The Labor Department says Haz-Map automatically feeds its information into the Labor database. Beyond that, Labor has released very little information about it. Officials there declined to release Brown's contract or give details about it.

Schwartz said that, before he resigned, he learned that the Labor Department was poised to remove from the database more than 100 toxic exposures it previously considered linked to disease.

"I asked about a half-dozen times to see the more than 100 links being removed," Schwartz said. "I was rebuffed." He added, sardonically: "Talk about scientific validity and transparency. Based on what science?"

More than half a million people have worked to build the nation's nuclear arsenal since World War II. Less than 15 percent of them have filed claims for aid, but that's still more than 180,000 former nuclear weapons workers — or their survivors — and they are from every state in the nation.

The compensation program was created after the federal government admitted that nuclear weapons workers had been exposed to dangerous levels of toxic substances at more than 300 weapons sites across the country.

But only 29 percent of those who applied have been approved for aid, and many of those received aid only after years of appealing.

The Labor Department, citing national security, has declined to provide the entire database to sick workers who've asked for it.

As for the government-contracted doctors who help decide who gets compensation, Schwartz said he examined the cases handled by doctors who review claims and found a pattern in the denials from some high-volume doctors. But he says Labor never investigated potential bias among these so-called "district medical consultants."

Labor has never checked the credentials of these 80 or so medical consultants, Schwartz said. He also says Labor was overstating the expertise of some doctors.

"This is no small issue," Schwartz said. "If a doctor were being hired by a hospital, his name would be checked through the National Practitioner Data Bank, state licensure and board certification would be checked, and he'd be asked to provide information on malpractice claims and Medicare sanctions.

"This program hasn't done that."

The compensation program divides sick workers into two groups. Scientists assess whether workers were exposed to high enough doses of radiation so that it was "at least as likely as not" the cause of their cancer.

The cases of workers who believe their cancer or other diseases were caused by chemical exposure — or a combination of chemicals and radiation — are weighed separately.

Schwartz said this second category is where he found most of the problems. According to Schwartz, the Labor Department has decided on its own that radiation exposures can be ignored if they weren't high enough to be the sole cause of a cancer.

Labor's rule book says "DOL has not found scientific evidence to date establishing a synergistic or additive effect" between exposure to radiation and other toxic chemicals.

Schwartz says this flies in the face of known science about how toxic chemicals and radiation can work together.

"It is generally accepted that the effect of combined exposure will likely be greater than either exposure separately," he said.

Schwartz showed ProPublica a document he says Labor sent to a medical contractor who was reviewing the case of a worker with skin cancer that could not be traced to radiation exposure alone.

The Feb. 19, 2009, letter [2] (PDF) said that in such an instance: "Radiation should not be considered a toxic substance for any cancer and should not be a part of the medical opinion that is being requested of you."

Advocates for the sick workers say that instruction is illegal because the law requires the contribution of all toxic substances be considered — and that includes radiation.

"It is against the law," said Terrie Barrie, who leads the national Alliance for Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups, from her home in Craig, Colo. "Congress has told them that. But it's like talking to a brick wall."

The Obama administration's new Labor secretary, Hilda Solis, received a detailed letter recently from Barrie's group complaining about what they see as "woefully inaccurate" information being used to wrongly deny claims.

One such case was that of Melissa Webb, whose job at the Mound nuclear facility near Dayton, Ohio, involved taking samples from 55-gallon drums of nuclear weapons waste at a top-secret facility five stories underground.

Webb was 33 when she learned she had Parkinson's disease. When she filed for compensation in 2007, she listed exposure to the solvent carbon disulfide as a possible cause. The Labor Department sent her a letter saying its records showed she was indeed exposed to carbon disulfide at her Ohio nuclear weapons site, but that there were no known links between the poisonous substance and Parkinson's.

However, the Labor Department's own Occupational Safety and Health Administration recognizes carbon disulfide's link to Parkinson's. And a bulletin issued by the same program that denied Webb's claim lists carbon disulfide at the top of its list of toxic links to Parkinson's.

"You'd think mine would be an open and shut case," said Webb, now 48, who first filed for compensation in 2004.

On Jan. 9 of this year, the same day the Labor Department sent Webb a letter saying it could find no toxic link to Parkinson's, Schwartz penned a memo [3] (PDF) to his bosses at the Labor Department. One of his top concerns was the "scientific integrity and validity" of the database because it failed to find well-known links between toxic exposure and multiple diseases.

In the memo, Schwartz also called for the Labor Department to submit the program to outside peer review, in which independent experts would validate the conclusions in the database.

Schwartz said none of his bosses, all longtime program employees, ever responded.

But after he sent the memo, Labor Department officials put new demands on his work schedule and, records show, planned to have a manager accompany Schwartz on training trips to make sure he didn't raise issues about the scientific validity of the program.

Then, on April 16, Schwartz gave testimony about his allegations to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which has a continuing probe into problems with the compensation program.

The day after his GAO testimony, Schwartz got a memo from one of his bosses, policy chief Mike Chance, who had listened in on the GAO call. Chance told Schwartz that Labor was changing his previous work agreement, which had guaranteed he would not be sent on the road more than three times a month. The change was "non-negotiable," Schwartz said he was told.

"My current situation is the response" to his memo, Schwartz said. "I believe I was forced out."

When asked for a response, Rachel Leiton, director of the compensation program, sent this statement through a spokeswoman:

"While it is not our policy to discuss personnel matters, in this case we can emphatically state that Dr. Schwartz was not forced to resign. Rather, he submitted his letter of resignation on a completely voluntary basis."

When asked for elaboration, the same spokeswoman did not reply. But she did send out a press release on the amount of money collected so far by claimants in Colorado, where a bipartisan group of Congress members has introduced legislation to reform the national program.

The payments — some $400 million — are a lot of money, said Carla McCabe, the former bomb builder from Rocky Flats suffering from a brain tumor she believes is linked to her work.

"But they're denying people like crazy," she said. "I don't know how they keep denying us. I hope finally a whistleblower can help us get some answers."


http://www.propublica.org/feature/plan-to-pay-sick-nuclear-workers-unfairly-rejects-many-doctor-says-731

Uranium mining and Indian country

Comment: Is this Virginia's future, we cannot fish, we cannot drink our water, we are warned not to go near the mining, and uranium will cause cancer? How can the local owners of the uranium mine live with themselves knowing they will poison and kill their neighbors? Just tell me! GREED! THE LUST OF MONEY AND POWER! PURE EVIL!

Uranium Mining and Indian Country Native America Discovered and Conquered ,
Robert J. Miller,
6 July 09

For some “strange” reason, over 50% of the uranium mined in the U.S. has been taken from Indian lands.

This has led to numerous problems and claims of cancers and deaths, most notably on the Navajo Nation Reservation.

A recent story shows that this problem extends to many other reservations.

“A report from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry warns members of the Spokane Tribe of Washington not to hunt, fish or gather medicinal plants near a defunct uranium mine.

The report also said tribal members shouldn’t use water from the Blue Creek due to contamination from the old Midnite Mine.

People who go near the site shouldn’t stay more than an hour in order to limit exposure to radiation, the agency said.

http://nuclear-news.net/2009/07/14/uranium-mining-and-indian-country/

U.S. to jump-start domestic isotope production

Comment: Look out Virginia!

WASHINGTON — A Senate committee on Friday approved $20 million U.S. in spending to allow the United States to begin domestic production of medical isotopes, a response to global supply shortages being caused by the shutdown of Canada's nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont.

The money is included in a $34-billion Senate appropriations bill for fiscal year 2010. It marks the first proposed commitment of U.S. government funds to meet American demand for Molybdenum-99, the radioisotope used in medical imaging and cancer diagnosis.

"The committee recognizes the shortfall in supplies of isotope Molybdenum-99 for the use in medical treatments, and provides $20,000,000 to advance the creation of a domestic supply of this isotope," the legislation says.

The effort by U.S. lawmakers to jump-start U.S. production follows signals from the Obama administration earlier this week that it will need up to $120 million over four years to fund the project.

"It's certainly gratifying, because it is exactly the kind of action we were asking for," said Alan Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas in Austin.

Kuperman was among a group of American medical and non-proliferation experts who last month wrote Congress. urging them to speed ahead with U.S. production of medical isotopes in response to the May 15 shutdown of the aging NRU reactor at Chalk River, which is the world's largest isotope producer.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in June it's likely Canada will "get out of the business" of supplying isotopes by 2016 — and U.S. production could make that plan a certainty.

Even before a leak of heavy water forced the Chalk River reactor shutdown, the U.S. government had been eyeing the possibility of developing its own isotope production, using low-enriched uranium. Isotopes are produced from bomb-grade uranium at Chalk River.

The likeliest candidates for U.S. production facilities include one at the University of Missouri, and another proposed in Virginia by the private firm, Babcock & Wilcox.

"The recent supply interruptions (in Canada) have really accelerated that process and given it the political momentum," Kuperman said.

In a presentation to the National Academies this week, an official from the National Nuclear Security Administration said the U.S. — which gets about 60 per cent of its isotopes from Canada — was facing a "supply crisis" because of the Chalk River closure.

It was initially estimated that the NRU reactor would be closed only for three months, but Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. this week said repairs could take until late 2009.

Separate from the funding proposed by the U.S. Senate, a House of Representatives committee is reportedly recommending $12 million in first-year funding for isotope production. The two pieces of legislation will need to be reconciled before final approval of the isotope production funding.

"Regardless of what the amount ends up being, the most important thing is that the House, Senate and the Obama administration have expressed support for this," Kuperman said.

While the U.S. is spending cash to figure out a solution to the isotope-supply crisis, the Canadian government is waiting to hear from a three-person expert panel. That panel, appointed last month, will report to Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt this fall, and has been asked by the government to suggest what paths Ottawa could take to secure a reliable, long-term supply of medical isotopes.

The federal government did give Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. an additional $351 million in this year's budget, some of which was to be used to upgrade the facilities at its Chalk River Laboratories.

That money was allocated before the NRU broke down, and no new money has so far been designated for new isotope production.

McMaster University officials told a House of Commons committee last month that a research reactor at the Hamilton university could be producing all the medical isotopes Canada needs — and then some — in as little as 18 months.

But the reactor's manager, Christopher Heysel, said a speedy transformation of the McMaster reactor from a multi-purpose research machine to a high-volume isotope producer needs co-operation of other "stakeholders," including AECL, the federal government, and the nuclear-safety regulator. The transformation would be relatively cheap, as well, costing the federal government just $30 million over five years, Heysel said.

With files from David Akin

http://www.theprovince.com/health/jump+start+domestic+isotope+production/1779211/story.html

HUMAN HARM FROM LOW-LEVEL EXPOSURE.

Comment: Remember, uranium milling sometimes process "low level" radioactive wastes! Therefore, if the EPA says it is at safe levels, it may not be true! All forms of radiation are dangerous!

The federal government is proposing to allow large quantities of "low level" radioactive wastes to be declared non-radioactive ("below regulatory concern," or BRC, is their phrase for it; see RHWN #183).

These radioactive wastes would then be handled like ordinary household trash; they would be transported, landfilled, incinerated, reused (for example, radioactive tools) or recycled (for example, radioactive metals) along with everything else we discard each day.

Such a change would expose Americans randomly to more ionizing radiation than they are exposed to today.

Government and industry both argue that this is acceptable. Industry uses one justification, government uses another.

Many people in the nuclear industry argue that small increases in ionizing radiation aren't dangerous at all. They argue that there is a threshold dose of radiation, below which no effects occur, and above which people may be harmed (see RHWN #184).

They say the BRC program will not expose anyone to a dose of radiation greater than the threshold dose, and therefore the BRC program will cause no harm.

Government approaches the matter differently. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) argues that any amount of radiation causes some damage to a large population of exposed individuals; they subscribe to the "linear theory" of radiation damage (see RHWN #184).

They have set limits for radiation exposure based on the moral premise that it is acceptable to kill one citizen out of every 100,000 citizens by exposing them to radiation.

Since the BRC program will not cause exposures that would kill more than one in every 100,000 citizens (and the linear theory tells them that, in reality, the program will kill many fewer people than one in every 100,000), the government argues that the BRC program is acceptable because it will save billions of dollars for the nuclear power industry (which must soon dismantle its aging nuclear reactors and put them "away" somewhere) and for the government itself (which must eventually clean up millions of pounds of radioactive contamination lying around near weapons factories).

Unfortunately, there is now very substantial evidence, from studies of human beings exposed to radiation, that both industry and the government have misunderstood (intentionally or not) the dangers of low levels of ionizing radiation. (By "low levels" we mean within the range 0 to 5 rem [centi-Sievert].)

The most compelling evidence comes from studies of 91,231 people who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945. Contrary to popular belief, most of these survivors received only very low exposures to ionizing radiation. Their health has been continuously monitored by international scientific organizations, so they represent the best available information on the effects of low levels of ionizing radiation on humans.

The bomb survivor data now shows without doubt that there is no safe dose of radiation and, furthermore, that the lowest doses have caused the greatest cancer increases per unit of radiation. (In other words, the shape of the dose-response curve is supra-linear; see RHWN #184.)

This means that both the industry assumption (threshold theory) and the EPA's assumption (linear theory) seriously underestimate the dangers from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation.

Furthermore, the Japanese data reveal another important fact about low-level radiation: young humans (children and infants) are more sensitive to the effects of low levels of ionizing radiation than are older humans. We will discuss the Japanese data in detail at another time.

Here we will discuss more recent human data provided by accidents that released large amounts of ionizing radiation at Chernobyl (Soviet Union, 1986), Three-Mile Island (Pennsylvania, U.S.A., 1979), and Savannah River (Georgia, U.S.A., 1970).

These accidents are the subject of a shocking new book: Jay Gould and Ben Goldman, DEADLY DECEIT, cited in our last paragraph. Page numbers inside parentheses in our text refer to this book.

Like the Japanese bomb survivor data, these three accidents indicate that the lowest doses of ionizing radiation cause the greatest human damage per unit of radiation. This provides confirmation that the government's estimate of the hazards of low-level radiation is low; that is to say, today's allowable limits for human exposure to ionizing radiation will allow more deaths than our government officially admits. How many more is the question. Bomb survivor data indicate 30 times more, but even this may be low, according to Gould and Goldman.

The three accidental releases of large quantities of radiation also confirm what the bomb survivor data are showing: that infants and children are the most sensitive to damage from low levels of ionizing radiation. Consider these facts:

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up on April 26, 1986; nine days later, radioactivity monitoring stations in Washington state (9,000 miles from Chernobyl) detected radioactivity in rainfall.

By May 16th, 50 EPA monitoring stations detected radioactive iodine-131 in cow's milk all across the U.S. Our government said "no problem."

Now government data, analyzed by Gould and Goldman, show that in May, 1986, there was a 5.3% increase in the U.S. death rate, compared to the previous year; the chances are less than one in a thousand that this increase occurred by chance. During June, 1986, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was 12.3% higher than it had been in June, 1985, and in some parts of the country it was much higher; for example, in the south Atlantic states, the infant mortality rate in June, 1986, was 28% higher than it had been the previous year. Based on this, and on much additional evidence that we haven't space to review, Gould and Goldman suggest that current EPA limits on exposures to low level radiation may need to be tightened by as much as a factor of 1000 (pg. 21).

In November and again in December, 1970, two nuclear rod meltdowns occurred at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in Georgia.

The plant was operated for the government by DuPont, who never told the public anything about these accidents until Senator John Glenn grilled Dupont officials in public hearings in late 1988.

To this day, DuPont claims that no radiation escaped outside the plant, but official government measurements of radioactivity in rain throughout the southeastern U.S. reveal highly suspicious increases immediately after the accidents. In South Carolina in December, 1970, rain carried six times as much radioactivity as it had carried in December, 1969.

Radioactivity was also measurable in local fish; fish in the Savannah river contained radiation levels 100,000 times higher than fish sold in New York City in 1971.

A child who ate 1/4 pound of catfish from the Savannah River in 1971 would have received a radiation dose equivalent to 20 chest xrays. Infant mortality in South Carolina in January, 1971, was 24% higher than it had been a year earlier; in contrast, infant mortality declined that month over the entire U.S. and over the southeastern states taken as a whole. During the following summer (May through September) infant mortality in South Carolina was 15% higher than it had been the previous year. Again, we are omitting a wealth of detail.

March 28, 1979, a meltdown at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant spewed more than 10 million Curies of radioactivity into the environment, most of it into the air. Because the radiation dispersed quickly, most people received only low levels of exposure. Government and industry spokespeople have repeatedly assured the public than no one was harmed.

However, the government's own health data tell quite a different story. Comparing the period three months prior to the accident against the period four months after the accident, Pennsylvania's infant mortality rate increased 16% and the state of Maryland's increased 41%. All together, Gould and Goldman calculate that perhaps as many as 50,000 deaths occurred during 1980-1982 as a result of the TMI accident (pg. 63).

This is an important book. Any individual fact in the book may be disputed, but the cumulative weight of the evidence is persuasive. And though we generally do not give much credence to conspiracy theories, if you read this book from cover to cover, you will have difficulty believing that your government is telling the full truth about the effects of low-level radiation. We suggest that you act prudently to protect yourself and your family: do whatever it takes to keep BRC wastes out of your community.

Get: Jay M. Gould and Benjamin A. Goldman, DEADLY DECEIT; LOW-LEVEL RADIATION, HIGH-LEVEL COVER-UP (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows Press

And: Keep in touch with Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS), 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036; (202) 328-0002, and the Radioactive Waste Campaign, 625 Broadway, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10012; (212) 473-7390.
--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

http://www.ejnet.org/rachel/rhwn185.htm
RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #185---June 13, 1990---News and resources for environmental justice.------Environmental Research FoundationP.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org==========The Back issues and Index are available here.The official RACHEL archive is here. It's updated constantly.

All Levels of Radiation Confirmed to Cause Cancer.

Comment: Repeatedly people say wait for the Virginia Uranium Study because "The National Academies of Science" are part of the study. So listed below is what the wonderful "The National Academies of Science" said about exposure to uranium will do to the human body!

June 30, 2005
CONTACT: Diane D'Arrigo, NIRS 301-270-6477 16
Cindy Folkers, NIRS 301-270-6477 20

Washington, DC July 30, 2005

The National Academies of Science released an over 700-page report yesterday on the risks from ionizing radiation. The BEIR VII or seventh Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation report on "Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation" reconfirmed the previous knowledge that there is no safe level of exposure to radiation—that even very low doses can cause cancer.

Risks from low dose radiation are equal or greater than previously thought. The committee reviewed some additional ways that radiation causes damage to cells.

Among the reports conclusions are: There is no safe level or threshold of ionizing radiation exposure.

Even exposure to background radiation causes some cancers. Additional exposures cause additional risks.

Radiation causes other health effects such as heart disease and stroke, and further study is needed to predict the doses that result in these non-cancer health effects.

It is possible that children born to parents that have been exposed to radiation could be affected by those exposures.

The "bystander effect" is an additional, newly recognized method by which radiation injures cells that were not directly hit but are in the vicinity of those that were. "Genomic instability" can be caused by exposure to low doses of radiation and according to the report "might contribute significantly to radiation cancer risk." These new mechanisms for radiation damage were not included in the risk estimates reported by the BEIR VII report, but were recommended for further study.

The Linear-No-Threshold model (LNT) for predicting health effects from radiation (dose-response) is retained, meaning that every exposure causes some risk and that risks are generally proportional to dose. The Dose and Dose-Rate Effectiveness Factor or DDREF which had been suggested in the 1990 BEIR V report to be applied at low doses, has been reduced from 2 to 1.5.

That means the projected number of health effects at low doses are greater than previously thought.

RADIATION RISKIER THAN THOUGHT-- RISKS TO PUBLIC and NUCLEAR WORKERS

The BEIR VII risk numbers indicate that about 1 in 100 members of the public would get cancer if exposed to 100 millirads (1milliGray) per year for a 70-year lifetime. [1] This is essentially the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's allowable radiation dose for members of the public.

In addition, 1 in about 5 workers [2] would get cancer if exposed to the legally allowable occupational doses [3] over their 50 years in the workforce. These risks are much higher than permitted for other carcinogens.

Specifically, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows members of the public to get 100 millirems or mr (1 milliSievert or mSv) per year of radiation in addition to background.

The BEIR VII report (page 500, Table 12-9) estimates that this level will result in approximately 1 (1.142) cancer in every 100 people exposed at 100 mr/yr which includes 1 fatal cancer in every 175 people so exposed (5.7 in 1000).[4]

The risk of getting cancer from radiation (in BEIR VII) is increased by about a third from current government risk figures (FGR13): BEIR VII estimates that 11.42 people will get cancer if 10,000 are each exposed to a rem (1,000 millirems or 10 mSv). The US Environmental Protection Agency Federal Guidance Report 13 estimates that 8.46 people will get cancer if 10,000 are each exposed to a rem.

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service interprets this as further evidence that unnecessary radiation exposures should be avoided.

"This means that the government is not justified in deregulating nuclear power and weapons waste—releasing it to regular trash or "recycling" it into everyday household items as proposed by 5 US federal agencies at the behest of nuclear waste generators hoping to save money," stated Diane D'Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at Nuclear Information and Resource Service Radioactive (NIRS). "This also means that remediation of radioactive sites should be done to cleaner levels and that nuclear transport standards should be strengthened."

Cindy Folkers, NIRS Energy and Health Project Director stated "These findings confirm that all levels of radiation are harmful. Since nuclear power routinely releases long-lasting radiation into the air, water and soil, we must avoid a new generation of nuclear power to prevent unnecessary exposures."

-30-
[1] NAS Report in Brief June 2005 BEIR VII: Health Effects from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation pp 2-3 (for 1 cancer in 100 people exposed to 100mSv or 10 r ).

More detailed calculation: National Academies of Science, Prepublication Copy, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation BEIR VII Phase 2, June 29, 2005 page 500 Table 12-9. Table 12-9 indicates that average risk (cancer incidence for males and females) of getting leukemia or solid cancers is 1142 out of 100,000 exposed to 10 r. Thus a member of the public who lives for 70 years and receives the permitted 100 mr (or 0.1 r)/year could receive 7 r or 7000 mr in his/her lifetime. [US Nuclear Regulatory Commission permits 0.1 r or 100 mr per year above background to members of the public.] Comparing to BEIR VII's risk estimate of 1142 in 100,000 at 10 r, to the 7 r lifetime dose permitted by NRC:(7r/10r= 0.7) we get 0.7 x 1142 = 799 cancers in 100,000 population at 7 r or 799cancers/100,000 exposed = 1 cancer in 125 exposed (to 7 r over lifetime).

[2] At 0.1 Sv (100 mSv or 10 r) the risk is 1 in 100 getting cancer (NAS Report in Brief Jun 2005 pp2-3) At 2.5 Sv (worker legal dose) the dose and risk are 25x higher or 25 in 100 (or 1 in 4) exposed getting cancer...but since workers are exposed later in life than the general public, adjusting for age would correct the risk to about 1 in 5 exposed to the full legal amount for their working lives getting cancer from those exposures.

[3] 10 CFR 20 subpart C, Occupational Dose Limits limit workers to total effective dose equivalent of 5000 millirems or 50 milliSieverts (5 rems or 0.05 Sv) per year. If it is low LET radiation, this is comparable to 5000 millirads or 50 milliGray.

[4] National Academies of Science, Prepublication Copy, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation BEIR VII Phase 2, June 29, 2005 page 500 Table 12-9. There will be 570 fatal cancers in 100,000 exposed at 0.1Gy or 10 r. (100,000/570= 175) Approx 1 in 175 so exposed will get fatal cancer.

http://www.nirs.org/press/06-30-2005/1

New study: Nuclear workers at higher risk for cancer

Comment: Nuclear plants are not clean, green and will make you sick!

By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff
Thursday, July 2

BRATTLEBORO -- Are nuclear power plant workers at higher risk to die of cancer?
A study conducted by a Canadian researcher concluded the risk is substantially higher to them than to the general public.

The document, "Exposure to Radiation and Health Outcomes" was made public last week. It was written by Mark Lemstra, who was formerly a senior research epidemiologist for the Saskatoon, Canada, Health Region.

Lemstra left -- or was relieved of, depending on which source you read -- his job last year after a dispute over a report he authored that documented the health disparities between different socioeconomic categories in Saskatoon.

In the radiation report, in which Lemstra reviewed 1,725 articles related to radiation studies, he concluded that nuclear power plant workers have a "relative excess risk" of getting cancer.

In epidemiology, excess risk is defined as the difference between the proportion of subjects in a population with a particular disease who were exposed to a specific risk factor and the proportion of subjects with that same disease who were not exposed.

In the case of nuclear power plant workers, that risk factor is low-dose radiation.

Radiation protection standards are based mainly on risk estimates from studies of atomic bomb survivors in Japan, according to a report called "The 15-Country Collaborative Study of Cancer Risk Among Radiation Workers in the Nuclear Industry."

There has been some controversy over the validity of basing low-dose standards on the results of high-dose exposure.

Of the 1,725 reports reviewed by Lemstra, 22 were cited as references.

Lemstra concluded that not only do nuclear power workers have a higher risk of dying of cancer, they also have a higher risk of dying of other causes not related to cancer, such as heart problems.

Lemstra also quoted a German report that determined that children who live within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant have a higher rate of leukemia than those who live outside that radius.

What Lemstra failed to note in his report however, is that the German researchers said they could not conclusively state that the rates were higher because of the proximity to the nuclear power plants or because of some other environmental factor.

Lemstra's report was briefly reviewed by Bill Irwin, Radiological Health Chief of the Vermont Department of Health, who withheld most comment on the report until he has had a chance to further review it.

Nonetheless, said Irwin, "This kind of literature review is rarely used for policy making, but some people find it useful."

While Lemstra used "highly reputable references" such as the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, said Irwin, "It may be better for people to read the complete reference rather than rely on just those parts of the references cited in the report. A more complete picture is provided in the original documents, and readers may draw different conclusions than those drawn by Dr. Lemstra in his report."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also hesitated to comment on Lemstra's report, stated Neil Sheehan, NRC spokesman, in an e-mail to the Reformer.

"One observation made by a staffer who reviewed it was that the controls apparently were not as rigid as would have been expected," he stated. "We will continue to evaluate new studies to determine if further action on the NRC's part is warranted."

A spokesman for Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant had no comment on the Lemstra report other than plant worker exposure limits are set by the NRC based on recommendations by the National Council on Radiation Protection.

There is no database of cancer deaths for power plant workers at specific plants such as Vermont Yankee because death certificates are filed at the place of death and have no reference to the person's occupation.

In 2004, a study conducted by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health was released, which tracked workers from 15 nuclear utilities in the U.S. for periods of up to 18 years between 1979 and 1997.

More than 53,000 U.S. nuclear power workers were included in the study, which concluded "that employees in the commercial nuclear industry are less likely than the general population to die from cancer or non-cancer diseases due, in large measure, to the so-called 'healthy worker effect,'" according to an executive summary of the report.

The healthy worker effect is based on the premise that nuclear industry workers have to be healthy and are usually required to have annual medical check-ups.

"The researchers did report, however, a strong positive and statistically significant association between radiation dose and death from arteriosclerotic heart disease, including coronary heart disease," stated the executive summary.

However, stated the principal investigator of the Columbia/Mailman study, Geoffrey Howe, "While associations with heart disease have been reported by some other occupational studies, the magnitude of the present association is not consistent with them, and, therefore, needs cautious interpretation and merits further attention."

He suggested that further follow-up studies be conducted to clarify the study's findings.

"The most important results of this study were findings with respect to radiation-related leukemia and radiation-related other cancers," stated the executive summary. "Positive, although non-statistically-significant, associations with radiation were seen for mortality from some forms of leukemia and other cancers as a whole."

While Lemstra refers to two studies conducted following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which concluded there was no increased rates of cancer deaths in nearby residents, he does not cite other studies such as the Columbia/Mailman study.

However, he does cite the 15-Country Study, which found that of 24,158 deaths, 6,734 were from cancer.

"These results suggest that an excess risk of cancer exists, albeit small, even at the low doses and dose rates typically received by nuclear workers in this study," according to the study.

Some researchers have cautioned that it is easy for systemic errors to creep into large epidemiological studies "that originate from different countries with different recording procedures," according to the Journal of Radiological Protection.

Researchers have also been quick to point out that correlation does not imply causation, which means that correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other.

It does mean however, that a correlation discovered in a study should be the subject of further investigation.

Lemstra's report can be found at www.policyalternatives.-ca/reports_studies.

Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311, ext. 273.

http://www.reformer.com/ci_12739001?source=rss_viewed

Families Fight Ohio Uranium Plant Workers' Compensation Ruling

By Terry Kinney
June 8, 2009

Relatives of workers who died of exposure to radiation or toxic materials at a Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant in Ohio are fighting a ruling by state officials that keeps them from receiving workers' compensation death benefits.

They say they should not be penalized for missing a deadline for filing claims because the government withheld information for years and workers did not know they were working in a life-threatening environment.

"There isn't any amount of money on this earth that could replace what we lost," said Anna Fleshman, 77, of Chillicothe. "But I do believe they owe us. If they could see what they go through with that cancer ... they should have told the boys."

Fleshman's husband, Loren Fleshman, worked at the plant in Piketon for more 30 years and died in 1991 with colon cancer.

She was surprised that the application process for $150,000 in federal benefits required only a death certificate and a limited amount of paperwork, nearly 10 years after her husband died.

But the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation turned down her claim because it was not filed within a two-year statute of limitations, and the Industrial Commission of Ohio rejected her appeal.

"I thought it wasn't fair, but I didn't figure there was anything could be done about it," Fleshman said. "I was used to my husband doing the fighting for me."

Columbus lawyer Philip Fulton, who specializes in workers' compensation claims, represents 38 plaintiffs whose relatives worked at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant about 80 miles east of Cincinnati. He's fighting their cases in Pike County Common Pleas Court.

He argued to the Industrial Commission that an executive order signed by President Bill Clinton in December 2000 granted emergency status to the claims to allow payment of benefits by the federal government.

"The commission finds that the executive order does not amount to the declaration of an emergency or a disaster described in the statute," the Ohio board said in a March ruling consolidating the state claims. "The Industrial Commission finds that it is without authority to order equitable relief."

Some workers, like Loren Fleshman, spent their whole careers at the Piketon plant. He worked as a firefighter.

"He was a kid just out of the Navy when he went to work there in 1954," Anna Fleshman said. He retired in 1988 because of health problems, was diagnosed with colon cancer in March 1991 and died six months later, after cancer had spread throughout his body, she said.

In 2001, the government acknowledged that workers had been exposed to toxic substances - radiation, heavy metals, asbestos and harsh solvents and acids - while working at various sites as employees of Energy Department contractors.

Another Piketon plaintiff, Eva Prall, 75, of Waverly, said she, too, was left in the dark when her husband, Harold, died of lymphoma in 1982 after working at the plant for 27 years.

"He said that he sometimes worked on equipment that was 'hot' but he was told not to talk about it," she said. "My family all told me, 'You should do something about this.' I just did not want to get involved in fighting the government."

Widows like Fleshman and Prall say they often didn't know what caused their husbands' deaths until years later.

That's why Congress passed a law in 2000 directing the Energy Department to help workers file claims for lost wages and medical benefits, reversing a decades-old practice in which the government helped contractors fight the claims.

"Congress recognized that a large number of nuclear weapons workers who supplied the Cold War effort were put at risk without their knowledge or consent," alleges a lawsuit filed by Fulton last week in Ohio. "Congress also recognized that many top secret records were now documenting unmonitored exposures."

The government act has the unwieldy name of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, or EEOICP.

A U.S. Department of Labor Web site shows that as of June 4, 3,763 Piketon workers or their survivors had submitted 9,453 claims and had received federal compensation totaling $365.9 million, including $40.9 million in medical bills.

On the Net: DOE Office of Health, Safety and Security: www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/fwsp/advocacy

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Find this article at:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2009/06/08/101175.htm

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

Old radioactive mine tailings pose slow-motion threat

Comment: Is this the county' s future, a superfund?

Forest Service seeks comment on still unfunded plan to clean up uranium tailings and seal off mine shafts near Young

February 6, 2009

After decades of delay, the U.S. Forest Service is seeking public comments about a slow-motion contamination risk — the radioactive dirt piles left over from now-abandoned uranium mines in the Young Ranger District along popular Workman Creek in the Sierra Anchas.

During the boom years of uranium mining in the 1950s and 1970s, mining companies dug “dozens” of mine shafts following veins of the naturally occurring, radioactive mineral. Most of the once-sealed mine shafts are now open after vandals pried loose the timbers and tore down the warning signs.

The mine shafts still have radiation levels that could cause cancer and other health problems.

Moreover, the mining companies left faintly radioactive tailings at the entrance to the mine shafts and in several sites along Workman Creek where they dumped the ore waste, including two public campsites, currently closed.

Many of these tailings dump sites lie along Workman Creek, which drains into Roosevelt Lake, which is a drinking water reservoir for Phoenix. Tests show sufficiently high radiation levels in the creek that the Forest Service advises people against eating fish caught in the creek.

However, no dangerous levels of radiation have reached Roosevelt Lake, say Forest Service officials.

David Frew, recreation lands and minerals staff officer for the Young Ranger District, said the Forest Service has opened the public comment period on possible solutions to the problem and in the meantime is struggling to at least post signs at all the potentially hazardous sites and abandoned mines.

“The major message for people is — stay out, stay alive,” said Frew of the numerous open mine tunnels that would still light up a Geiger counter.

“Many of them were boarded up, but people have broken into them over the years. We tried a whole signage program, but people take them down.”

The shafts and the tailings piles contain arsenic, uranium and radium-266.

A Geiger counter taken into one of the mines would register an “evacuation level,” said Frew.
“That means you’d evacuate the area due to the health risk.”

However, the levels outside the mine remain relatively low, he said.

“You get radiation exposure riding in an airplane or in a lot of basements, due to radon. Just being in Arizona exposes you to elevated levels,” due to naturally occurring radiation in many types of rock, said Frew.

The Forest Service commissioned a study of the extent of the problem and now seeks public comments on that study.

A copy of the study is available at www.fs.fed.us/tonto or by calling the Forest Service and arranging a time to go to the offices in Phoenix or Young to review the documents. The Forest Service will continue gathering comments until March 3, before making a decision on a cleanup plan.

Although federal officials have known for years of the contamination along the creek that empties into Roosevelt Lake, they still have no idea how much a cleanup will cost.

“In some places, we could put (the tailings) back into the mine” and seal off the entrance, said Frew.

“In other cases, you’d look at taking the topsoil away and hauling it to a storage site.”
The current study examines various options, although Frew said the Forest Service has no money at present to implement any of the potentially expensive remedies.
“It’s going to be a lot of money — we can’t say for sure,” he said.

The Forest Service also has no idea how many miles of tunnels were dug, following the veins laced with uranium during the boom years in the 1950s. Most of the mining claims have been abandoned and it’s unclear whether the government can require any modern corporations to assist in the cleanup, although Westinghouse was one of the major corporations engaged in the exploratory mining.

Most of the mining sites have perhaps half a dozen shafts, most extending for only several hundred yards — but some potentially boring much deeper into the mountain. The shafts generally follow a layer of dripping quartzite that runs throughout the Sierra Anchas and which is associated with a low-grade of uranium.

“If you think of the mountain as a cake, this layer runs right through it,” said Frew.
The tailings and abandoned mine shafts represent one small, local toll in the rush after the invention of the atom bomb to mine enough of the dense, weakly radioactive material to build thousands of warheads and fuel nuclear power plants.

Other fallout from that boom in exploration locally before doctors understood fully the low-term effects of low-level radiation includes a raft of cancer cases among Navajo miners.

In it’s natural form, uranium is about 70 percent more dense than lead, but less dense than .99999 gold.

The silvery gray element has more neutrons and protons packed into the core than any other naturally occurring element and binds readily to other non-metallic elements.

To become explosive, it must be chemically extracted for the other elements with which it bonds — usually with acids. Once purified and concentrated, it can be readily split apart.

The fragments go flying off and split apart other sufficiently concentrated atoms, leading to a chain reaction fission explosion, which was the basis of the first atomic bomb using uranium 235. Later bombs used more concentrated and refined forms.

Hydrogen bombs use a nuclear fission explosion to create the temperature and pressure necessary to trigger a fusion reaction in a concentrated plutonium fuel, unleashing a much greater explosion through the fusion of hydrogen atoms — the same reaction that powers the sun.

Forget Nuclear

Comment: Another great article against Nuclear Power, cannot post whole article, too long, please look at whole article, nice Graphs

By Amory B. Lovins, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich

Nuclear power, we’re told, is a vibrant industry that’s dramatically reviving because it’s proven, necessary, competitive, reliable, safe, secure, widely used, increasingly popular, and carbon-free—a perfect replacement for carbon-spewing coal power. New nuclear plants thus sound vital for climate protection, energy security, and powering a growing economy.

There’s a catch, though: the private capitalmarket isn’t investing in new nuclear plants, and without financing, capitalist utilities aren’t buying. The few purchases, nearly all in Asia, are all made by central planners with a draw on the public purse. In the United States, even government subsidies approaching or exceeding new nuclear power’s total cost have failed to entice Wall Street.

This non-technical summary article compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market success, deployment speed, and energy contribution of new nuclear power with those of its low- or no-carbon competitors. It explains why soaring taxpayer subsidies aren’t attracting investors. Capitalists instead favor climate-protecting competitors with less cost, construction time, and financial risk. The nuclear industry claims it has no serious rivals, let alone those competitors—which, however, already outproduce nuclear power worldwide and are growing enormously faster.

Most remarkably, comparing all options’ ability to protect the earth’s climate and enhance energy security reveals why nuclear power could never deliver these promised benefits even if it could find free-market buyers—while its carbon-free rivals, which won $71 billion of private investment in 2007 alone, do offer highly effective climate and security solutions, sooner, with greater confidence.

Uncompetitive Costs
The Economist observed in 2001 that “Nuclear power, once claimed to be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to matter”—cheap to run but very expensive to build. Since then, it’s become several-fold costlier to build, and in a few years, as old fuel contracts expire, it is expected to become several-fold costlier to run. Its total cost now markedly exceeds that of other common power plants (coal, gas, big wind farms), let alone the even cheaper competitors described below.

Construction costs worldwide have risen far faster for nuclear than non-nuclear plants, due not just to sharply higher steel, copper, nickel, and cement prices but also to an atrophied global infrastructure for making, building, managing, and operating reactors. The industry’s flagship Finnish project, led by France’s top builder, after 28 months’ construction had gone at least 24 months behind schedule and $2 billion over budget.

Wind, cogeneration, and end-use efficiency already provide electrical services more cheaply than central thermal power plants, whether nuclear- or fossil-fuelled. This cost gap will only widen, since central thermal power plants are largely mature while their competitors continue to improve rapidly. The high costs of conventional fossil-fuelled plants would go even higher if their large carbon emissions had to be captured.

Nuclear power, being the costliest option, delivers less electrical service per dollar than its rivals, so, not surprisingly, it’s also a climate protection loser, surpassing in carbon emissions displaced per dollar only centralized, non-cogenerating combined-cycle power plants burning natural gas8. Firmed windpower and cogeneration are 1.5 times more costeffective than nuclear at displacing CO2. So is efficiency at even an almost unheard-of seven cents per kilowatthour. Efficiency at normally observed costs beats nuclear by a wide margin— for example, by about ten-fold for efficiency costing one cent per kilowatthour.

New nuclear power is so costly that shifting a dollar of spending from nuclear to efficiency protects the climate several-fold more than shifting a dollar of spending from coal to nuclear. Indeed, under plausible assumptions, spending a dollar on new nuclear power instead of on efficient use of electricity has a worse climate effect than spending that dollar on new coal power!

If we’re serious about addressing climate change, we must invest resources wisely to expand
and accelerate climate protection. Because nuclear power is costly and slow to build, buying more of it rather than of its cheaper, swifter rivals will instead reduce and retard climate protection.

All sources of electricity sometimes fail, differing only in why, how often, how much, for how long, and how predictably. Even the most reliable giant power plants are intermittent: they fail unexpectedly in billion-watt chunks, often for long periods. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear plants built (52 percent of the 253 originally ordered), 21 percent were permanently and prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems, while another 27 percent have completely failed for a year or more at least once.

Nuclear plants have an additional disadvantage: for safety, they must instantly shut down in a power failure, but for nuclear-physics reasons, they can’t then be quickly restarted. During the August 2003 Northeast blackout, nine perfectly operating U.S. nuclear units had to shut down.

Twelve days of painfully slow restart later, their average capacity loss had exceeded 50 percent. For the first three days, just when they were most needed, their output was below 3 percent of normal. The big transmission lines that highly concentrated nuclear plants require are also vulnerable to lightning, ice storms, rifle bullets, and other interruptions. The bigger our power plants and power lines get, the more frequent and widespread regional blackouts will become. Because 98–99 percent of power failures start in the grid, it’s more reliable to bypass the grid by shifting to efficiently used, diverse, dispersed resources sited at or near the customer. Also, a portfolio of many smaller units is unlikely to fail all at once: its diversity makes it especially reliable even if its individual units are not.

The sun doesn’t always shine on a given solar panel, nor does the wind always spin a given turbine. Yet if properly firmed, both windpower, whose global potential is 35 times world electricity use, and solar energy, as much of which falls on the earth’s surface every ~70 minutes as humankind uses each year, can deliver reliable power without significant cost for backup or storage. These variable renewable resources become collectively reliable when diversified in type and location and when integrated with three types of resources: steady renewables (geothermal, small hydro, biomass, etc.), existing fuelled plants, and customer demand response.

Such integration uses weather forecasting to predict the output of variable renewable resources, just as utilities now forecast demand patterns and hydropower output. In general, keeping power supplies reliable despite large wind and solar fractions will require less backup or storage capacity than utilities have already bought to manage big thermal stations’ intermittence. The myth of renewable energy’s unreliability has been debunked both by theory and by practical experience. For example, three north German states in 2007 got upwards of 30% of their electricity from windpower-39% in Schleswig-Holstein, whose goal is 100% by 2020

Please review rest of article at: http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php

Uranium Mining in Canada – Past and Present

Uranium Mining in Canada – Past and Present

Background notes for a presentation to the Indigenous World Uranium Summit
November 30-December 1, 2006
Window Rock, Arizona
Jamie Kneen, MiningWatch Canada

Historic Mines – underground mines, tailings unconfined at older mines (dumped on land and/or in lakes) and in dry or underwater dams (natural lakes or valleys) at newer mines (1950s and later):1
 Port Radium (Eldorado mine), Northwest Territories
o Pitchblende was discovered at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories in 1930. In 1943, in order to gain control of all sources of uranium in their respective countries, the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States banned all private exploration for, and development of, radioactive materials. The federal government established a Crown corporation, Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, to oversee Canadian uranium interests.

This company expropriated the uranium mine at Port Radium and was given a monopoly in all uranium prospecting and developing activities.2 The Port Radium site was decommissioned in 1984. Clean-up and reclamation work recently undertaken.

 Rayrock mine, Northwest Territories
o Staked in 1948; development underway by Rayrock Mines Limited in 1955. Production
commenced in 1957 and ceased due to lack of economic reserves in 1959. A small townsite built by the company was in operation during this period. The mine employed 135 men in 1958 and the townsite had 20 families as residents. The Rayrock site was abandoned in 1959.3 Indian and Northern Affairs Canada began the decommissioning and rehabilitation of the Rayrock site including capping of the tailings in 1996. Environmental monitoring of long-term performance of the decommissioned site began in 1998.

 Bancroft, Ontario
1 Details of tailings amounts, disposal, and chemical and radiological characterization are mostly not included here.
2 http://interactive.usask.ca/ski/mining/search/mineral_types/energy/uranium/history_uranium.html 3 Inventory of Radioactive Waste in Canada LLRWMO-GN-TR-99-037. Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office, November 1999 http://www.llrwmo.org/en/programs/ongoing/inventory.pdf

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o Madawaska Mine/Faraday Mine Discovered and originally staked in 1949 by A.H. Shore of Bancroft. Underground development started in 1954 by Faraday Uranium Mines Ltd. Production started 1957 and lasted until 1964 when contracts to sell uranium expired.
Mining operations were resumed in 1975 by Madawaska Mines Ltd.; the 444m shaft was deepened to 473m. Production began in 1976 and lasted until 1982. Other workings underground include a 50m shaft and three adits. 2,544,716 tons of ore were produced, averaging .1074% U3O8.4 AEC West Ltd. has completed decommissioning activities at the Madawaska site.
o Operations at the Dyno and Bicroft sites ceased in the early 1960s. AEC West is completing rehabilitation activities at the Dyno Mine; Barrick Properties has been carrying out decommissioning activities at the Bicroft Mine.

 Agnew Lake (north of Espanola, Ontario)
o The mine was operated by Kerr Addison Mines Ltd. between 1977 and early 1983 and produced a total of 855,000 kg of U3O8 from approximately 2.8 million tonnes of ore. The underground mine was developed to over 980 m in depth.5 The site was turned over to the province in the early 1990s.

 Elliot Lake, Ontario
o Uranium discovered in 1953
o The Lacnor Mine operated from 1957 to 1960, producing 2.7 million tonnes of waste. (Rio Algom)
o The Nordic Mine operated from 1957 to 1968 and produced 12 million tonnes of waste. (Rio Algom)
o The Panel Mine and Mill produced uranium from 1958 to 1961, and then again from 1979 to 1990. It produced 16 million tonnes of waste. (Rio Algom)
o The Pronto Mine and Mill processed 2.1 million tonnes of uranium ore between 1955 and 1960, when the mill was converted to process copper. Copper processing continued until 1970. The Pronto Mill produced 4 million tonnes of waste. (Rio Algom)
o The Quirke Mine (1 and 2) and Mill operated from 1956 to 1961, and then from 1968 to 1990. It produced 46 million tonnes of tailings and waste rock. (Rio Algom)
o The Spanish-American mill operated from 1958 to 1959 and dumped 400,000 tonnes of waste in Oliver Lake. (Rio Algom)
o The Milliken and Stanleigh mines and mills produced 20 million tonnes of waste and tailings. The Milliken mill operated from 1958 to 1964, and the Stanleigh mill operated from 1957 to 1960, and again from 1983 to 1996. (Rio Algom)
o Denison Mines Limited operated in Elliot Lake from 1957 to March 1992, producing about 70 million tonnes of waste at the Stanrock (inactive since 1964), Can-Met, and Denison (inactive since 1992) mines.
o By 1976 all 55 miles of the Serpent River system were badly contaminated with acid generating, highly radioactive wastes. An official Ontario report noted that there were no living fish in the entire river located downstream from the mining wastes.
o In 1978 alone, more than 30 tailing dam failures were reported.
o In August 1993, two million litres of contaminated water spilled from a tailings site at Rio Algom’s Stanleigh mine as a result of a power failure. Rio Algom was charged by the Atomic Energy Control Board with one count of failure to provide appropriate training for its employees, and one count of failure to prevent the spill under “reasonably foreseeable

4 http://www.mindat.org/loc-542.html Ref.: Geol. Survey of Canada, Misc Report 39; Rocks & Min.:59:206-210
5 Ontario Geological Survey Open File Report 6185: Report of Activities, 2005 Resident Geologist Program,
Kirkland Lake Regional Resident Geologist Report: Sudbury District, 2006
http://www.mndm.gov.on.ca/mndm/mines/ims/pub/roa/roapdfs/ofr6185.pdf

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circumstances”. The radiologically and chemically contaminated water spilled into McCabe Lake.
 Uranium City, Saskatchewan
o Uranium deposits were first found at Goldfields in the Beaverlodge area north of Lake
Athabasca in 1935-36. In 1944 Eldorado staked mineral claims in the region. In 1946 the Atomic Energy Control Act was passed in the House of Commons to regulate all operations of the industry. Regulation was administered from Ottawa by the Atomic Energy Control Board.
By March 1951 and after further exploration in the area, sufficient ore deposits had been
identified to warrant a mine and mill. Production commenced in May 1953 and exploration activity increased, resulting in further finds and the establishment of as many as 12 uranium mines and three mills in the Beaverlodge area by 1958. Eldorado operated the Beaverlodge mine and mill continuously for 29 years, closing in 1982.
o In 1952 the town of Uranium City was established in the area of Beaverlodge. Buildings from Goldfields were moved to the site.
o In 1955, Gunnar Mines Limited, a private uranium mining company, began production in the Beaverlodge area.
o In 1957, Lorado Uranium Mines Limited, a private company, began production in the
Beaverlodge area. Numerous small mines like Nisto operated in the Beaverlodge area, using Eldorado and Lorado milling facilities.
o In 1960, Lorado Uranium Mines Limited closed.
o In 1964, Gunnar Mines Limited closed due to depletion of ore body. Eldorado was the only uranium production company in Saskatchewan.
o Between 1953 and 1982 Eldorado mines in the Beaverlodge area produced some 45 million lbs of uranium concentrate (U3O8). Production of ore and yellowcake peaked in 1959/60 and 1967/8.
o The Beaverlodge operation was decommissioned in 1985 and is monitored by Cameco.

“Modern” mines: All are in northern Saskatchewan. Open pit and underground operations, some using freezing and remote control mining techniques; tailings in surface dams and mined-out pits using “hydraulic containment” to control groundwater contamination:6

 Cluff Lake (Areva):
o Discovered in 1971
o Mining began in 1980
o Deposits include: OP underground mine (1983-85), Dominique-Janine open pit mine (1989-90) and extension (1994-97), Janine North open pit mine (1990-91), Dominique Peter and Dominique Janine West mines (1998-1999), and West Dominique Janine underground mine (1994-2002)7
o Mill initially separated radioactive components of tailings for storage in concrete barrels, which leaked.
o On March 24, 1998, the AECB (Atomic Energy Control Board) denied a two year licence renewal. Instead, AECB approved an extension to the licence expiring March 31, 1998 for nine months, subject to several conditions. This decision reflects a number of deficiencies identified by AECB at the Cluff Lake site:
 the recent detection of increased radium levels in a lake located next to the tailings
management facility,
6 Ore reserves and details of processing and tailings disposal are not included here.

7 http://www.ir.gov.sk.ca/dbsearch/MinDepositQuery/default.aspx?ID=2153 \

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 the recent twofold increase in workers’ radiation exposure,
 the insufficience of the tailings management facility’s capacity (by the end of 1996, there was capacity for a production of one more year, while mining is scheduled to continue for ten years),

 Cogema’s inadequate project management capabilities at Cluff Lake.8
o Closed 2002

 Key Lake (Cameco/Areva):
o Discovered in 1975
o Mining began in 1983
o Open pit mines and mill
o Gaertner ore body mined out in 1987
o In September, 2004, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved the renewal of the mining operating licence for the Key Lake Operation although the tailings disposal in the Deilmann open pit suffers from periodic sloughing of the pit sidewalls. One million cubic metres of sand have already slumped into the tailings, and another half a million cubic metres may follow. This sloughing not only decreases the capacity of the tailings disposal facility, it moreover distorts the performance of the facility in the long term which is based on the impermeability of the tailings.
o Still operating as mill for McArthur River ore; Deilmann pit to receive tailings

 Rabbit Lake/Collins Bay (Cameco):
o Discovered in 1968
o Mining started in 1975
o Deposits include mined-out original Rabbit Lake open pit and Collins Bay A-, B- and D-zone pits as well as Eagle Point underground (incline access) mine
o In 1989, 2 million litres of radioactive water spilled into Wollaston Lake; the company was charged and eventually pled guilty, attracting a $5000 federal and a $55,000 provincial fine.
o Eagle Point still in operation
o Mill to process half of Cigar Lake ore

 McArthur River (Cameco/Areva):
o Discovered in 1988
o Mining began in 1999
o Ore is frozen and removed by raise boring and boxhole boring remote mining methods and slurried to surface for milling
o On April 7, 2003, Cameco suspended production due to underground flood; resumed operation on July 2, 2003.

 McClean Lake (Areva):
o Discovered in 1979
o Mining began in 1995
o JEB open pit, McClean North & South underground mines, Sue C open pit
o Open pit and underground mines

 Cigar Lake (Cameco/Areva/Idemitsu/KEPCO)
o Discovered in 1981
o Jet boring remote mining method proposed
o Underground flooded October 23, 2006 – production development delayed at least 2 years

8 AECB News Release 98-07 http://www.aecb-ccea.gc.ca/news_rel/9807_e.htm

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 Midwest (Denison/Areva/OURD):
o Underground test mine – not yet developed
Exploration – a long way from mine development even in previously explored areas; 3-5 years at the earliest
 Athabasca Basin (northern Saskatchewan) – unconformity-type deposits
 Thelon Basin (Northwest Territories/Nunavut) – similar to Athabasca Basin
 Southern British Columbia – uranium-rich sedimentary strata like Wyoming’s
 Labrador and western Newfoundland – lower-grade but substantial deposits
Commissions of Inquiry and Environmental Assessments (EAs)
 Bayda Commission, a.k.a. Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry (Province of Saskatchewan, 1977-1978)  Kitts-Michelin Uranium Project (Province of Newfoundland, 1979)
 Key Lake Board of Inquiry (Province of Saskatchewan, 1979)
 Bates Commission, a.k.a. Royal Commission of Inquiry into Health and Environmental Protection in Uranium Mining in British Columbia (1980)
 Nova Scotia Uranium Inquiry under Mr. Justice McCleave (1985)
 Kiggavik Environmental Assessment Panel (federal, 1989-90)
 Environmental Assessment Panel: Rabbit Lake Uranium Mining (federal, 1993): expansion of the Rabbit Lake mine to include Eagle Point underground mine and A- and D-Zone open pit operations.
 Joint Federal-Provincial Panel on Uranium Mining Developments in Northern Saskatchewan (1991-1997): Environmental Assessment of McArthur River, Cigar Lake, Deilmann Pit (Key Lake),
McClean Lake and Midwest Projects.

Environmental Assessment Issues

McLean Lake Court Case
 On July 22, 1999, ICUC applied to the Federal Court, Trial Division to review the AECB’s decision to licence the grant an operating licence for the JEB Uranium Tailings Facility at the McLean Lake uranium mine without a full environmental assessment.

 On September 23, 2002, Federal Court Judge Campbell ruled that a Judicial Review was necessary for the AECB decision. The operating licence for the JEB nuclear waste facility is quashed; the mine continues to operate without a licence.

 On Nov. 7, 2002, the Federal Court of Appeal granted a stay of the Federal Court decision, allowing the mine to operate legally.

 On June 4, 2004, the Federal Court of Appeals overturned the Federal Court decision.

 On March 24, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed ICUCEC’s request to appeal the Federal Court of Appeal decision and awarded costs against ICUCEC.
Rabbit Lake/Collins Bay A-zone Decommissioning

 On October 24, 2003, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) announced its decision to renew the operating licence for Cameco Corporation’s Rabbit Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. As part of this licence, the company will be allowed to breach the dike that separates the mined-out Collins Bay A-Zone pit from Wollaston Lake itself.

MiningWatch Canada was among the intervenors who demanded an environmental assessment of this decommissioning plan.

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In fact, no environmental or public consultation information was brought before the Commissioners, although this did not seem to bother them.

 In a public meeting in spring 2003, people in the community of Wollaston Lake told the company in no uncertain terms they did not want the dike breached at all.
The CNSC determined that breaching the dike is not “decommissioning” but rather part of the “ongoing site rehabilitation” and therefore no EA is required, much less meaningful consultation with the affected Athabasca Denesuliné First Nations and accommodation of their interests on Crown lands.
Joint Federal-Provincial Panel on Uranium Mining Developments in Northern Saskatchewan
 Serious weaknesses in Panel process led to two Panel members and several intervenors withdrawing:
o Dr. Annalee Yassi, University of Manitoba occupational and environmental health professor, resigned from the panel on August 15, 1996.
o John Dantouze, vice-chief with the Prince Albert Grand Council, and only aboriginal member of the panel, resigned from the panel on October 1, 1996.
o The Inter-Church Uranium Committee (ICUC) withdrew from the participation in the review process.
o The mayors of four Northern Saskatchewan communities announced on October 1, 1996, that they would not allow the scheduled public hearings to be held in their communities.
Cluff Lake Decommissioning

 On April 15, 2004, Environment Minister David Anderson announced that the decommissioning of the Cluff Lake Uranium Mine and Mill facility does not require further assessment by a review panel or mediator under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. The Minister referred the
project, proposed by COGEMA Resources Inc., back to the federal responsible authority, the CNSC, for appropriate action.

Kiggavik Project
 In a March 26, 1990, municipal plebiscite the Baker Lake community voted 90.2% against the proposal.
 The EIS was deemed deficient by the Panel; on July 5, 1990 the proponent asked for “indefinite delay” in proceedings.9

Kitts-Michelin Project
 Brinex (British Newfoundland Exploration) discovered uranium in 1977 and planned an open pit mine at Michelin and an underground mine at Kitts. Brinex submitted a revised EIS in 1979 and the provincial government held public hearings; the Labrador Inuit Association and local people (Inuit and settlers) from Makkovik and Postville expressed strong opposition to the proposal and on May 29, 1980, Premier Brian Peckford announced a moratorium on uranium mining in the Province of Newfoundland, saying the proponent had failed to satisfy the government “it can and will safely and permanently dispose of the waste materials (tailings)” and that its social impact studies were “woefully inadequate”.10

Nova Scotia – A moratorium on uranium exploration, declared in 1984, expired on January 1, 1995.

British Columbia – In 1980, premier Bill Bennett bowed to public pressure and introduced a seven-year moratorium on uranium mining and exploration. It was not renewed.

9 The Gulliver UG (Urangesellschaft) Dossier, http://www.sea-us.org.au/gulliver/ug.html
10 The Gulliver File: Mines, people and land: a global battleground. Roger Moody. Minewatch, London, 1992.