Comment: So people knew that Coles Hill had uranium deposits since the 1950's! Strange! No uranium mining or milling!
BY BETTY JOYCE NASH
A large deposit of uranium ore — possibly 119 million pounds, if geologists’ assessments bear out — lies beneath Pittsylvania County’s bucolic pastures.
But in Virginia, there’s the small matter of a 1983 state moratorium on uranium mining. State legislators had rejected a uranium mine study, but a Virginia Coal and Energy Commission subcommittee has authorized negotiations with the National Academy of Sciences to study the idea.
The stakes are high. The study could clarify long-term effects on air, water, and health.
Virginia’s Southside Walter Coles Sr. still remembers the early 1950s when a Geiger counter ticked up in response to what may be the biggest untapped source of uranium in the United States.
The signal was so strong that the geologist who brought the device, a friend of his father’s, thought it was broken. Nuclear was hot then. President Dwight Eisenhower had pitched “atoms for peace” in a 1953 speech to the United Nations. Nuclear fuel occupied a prominent place in a future of military might and peacetime energy.
Contaminated leftover materials and chemicals used in this kind of extraction process typically are collected in retention ponds. The prospect of overflow or failure of impoundments worries the state’s biggest environmental group because of Virginia’s comparatively rainy climate.
Most mines are out West, in arid climates, or in remote regions of Canada. At least one city that gets its drinking water from reservoirs downstream, Virginia Beach, has opposed it.
In 1979, however, Marline and Union Carbide drilled core samples until 1984 under mineral rights leased from the two families that own the land.
The firms back then also leased mineral rights to 16,000 acres in Fauquier, Orange, Culpeper, and Madison counties.
Uranium Supply and Demand
There was even an economic impact study on the possible Coles Hill uranium mine. But demand collapsed and the leases eventually expired in the wake of core meltdowns in 1979 at Three Mile Island, and 1986 at Chernobyl. Cost overruns, nuclear disarmament, and overestimates of electricity
demand also killed the 124 nuclear reactors then on the drawing board.
But nuclear’s looking, if not hot, then lukewarm. Nuclear reactors don’t directly emit carbon.
Nuclear does leave a footprint, though. Worldwide, uranium mines release carbon, processors discharge chlorofluorocarbons, also a greenhouse gas,
and then there’s that unsolved mystery — waste storage.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 offered investment tax credits and subsidies for construction, among other nuclear perks. That and the industry’s longtime federal insurance caps on accident liability have helped propel nuclear energy, and, by extension, uranium prices.
Virginia Uranium estimates its gross revenues at about $280 million annually depending on uranium prices, which long term are expected to average $70 per pound.
Back in the mid-1970s, uranium prices reached roughly $112 per pound, in 2006 dollars. Uranium sold for $7 a pound in 2002; the price is now about $42 per pound, down from $136 a pound in 2007. The $136 was “due to a lot of investors in this industry looking to buy and hold uranium,” says Nick
Carter of the Ux Consulting Co. “It’s now at a level where, in order for a lot of these new mines to be developed, there needs to be a much higher price.”
Production costs help determine viability. “Production costs at Coles Hill are unknown,” he says. “The costs typically are higher here than say Kazakhstan and the eastern countries because the regulatory system is much more stringent here than in Asia.”
The Unknown Element
The uranium mine at Coles Hill remains a largely “on paper” enterprise, with operations and output, employment, and other possible effects, good and bad, unknown to the larger community. No current laws address the mining of uranium.
The Virginia General Assembly, if it lifted the moratorium,would amend mining laws and draft regulations, according to Mike Abbott of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy, which regulates coal mines in the state, among other duties. “Our agency would be involved in
drafting the language with input from a variety of stakeholders,
including the general public.”
Once the mine is decommissioned, then the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission specifies how the tailings, or waste,are to be managed. How water flows through rock may affect that.
From 1911 through the 1950s, a Canonsburg, Pa., site was inappropriately mined, but remediated by the government in the 1980s. While there were no milling-related traces in the surface waters of the nearby creek, the groundwater remains contaminated. Both surface and ground waters will be monitored in perpetuity, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Mines in remote Canadian locations, however, could prove similar in geology and hydrology to Virginia, according to Virginia Uranium.
Because this hard rock mine is breaking new ground, the Piedmont Environmental Council has requested that Virginia sponsor original research. “The first thing to do is study those areas comparable to Virginia — rainfall, geology, hydrology — to see if it’s ever been done properly,” says Todd Benson, a council attorney. “Show us five places where it’s been done comparably.”
Meanwhile, the firm’s parent has sold an 8 percent stake to a Canadian resource firm, Santoy, to raise cash, and plans to go public in Canada first. The United States has been out of the uranium mining business since the price collapsed, and Coles notes that there’s little mining expertise left on Wall Street.
Benson, for now, wants to make sure the study is sound. “It appears the best possible study will require you do in-thefield research,” he says, because of Virginia’s rainfall compared to the arid West. Waste lagoons could overflow in a heavy rain event, and inaccurate predictions would mean
trouble.
“Let’s look at where it’s been done -- has it been done anywhere comparable to Virginia? If it’s never been mined anywhere similar to Virginia, then at least we know we’re in uncharted territory.” RF
Read more:
http://econpapers.repec.org/article/fipfedrrf/y_3a2009_3ai_3awin_3ap_3a22-23_3an_3av.13no.1.htm
