DAILY PRESS, NEWPORT NEWS, VA.
CORY NEALON
Sun, Sep 19, 7:58 AM
Sept. 19--The effort to determine if uranium can be safely mined in Virginia is underway and the stakes are high.
Yet if not properly managed, uranium mining might contaminate Lake Gaston, the principle water supply for about 400,000 Virginia Beach residents.
The topic was one of several -- including Chesapeake Bay restoration and offshore wind development -- covered Saturday at Environmental Assembly 2010. Held at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, the event is an annual fundraiser for Virginia Conservation Network, an umbrella organization of 125 environmental and community groups.
Thomas Leahy, the Virginia Beach director of public utilities, led the uranium mining discussion.
"There's going to be some increase in radioactive levels," he told 45 or so people at the convention center. "The only question is if it's going to be significant or not."
Virginia lawmakers banned uranium mining in 1983, the fallout from the nuclear accident four years earlier at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Public distaste for nuclear energy has since waned, especially as the U.S. imports energy from unstable countries.
That, coupled with a spike in uranium prices, has refueled the debate whether to reverse the 27-year-old ban.
Scientists estimate there are 120 million pounds of uranium buried several hundred feet to 1,000-feet underground. That's roughly the amount needed to supply the nation's 104 nuclear reactors for two years.
Most of Virginia's uranium is located on the Chatham farm of one man, Walter Coles Sr., who created Virginia Uranium, Inc.
The studies, expected to cost Virginia Uranium $1.4 million, are being arranged by Virginia Tech. The National Research Council, an independent scientists' organization, agreed to finish the studies by December 2011.
Virginia Beach officials, like Leahy, say the studies fail to consider the impact mining could have upon Lake Gaston. As a result, the city ordered its own study -- at a cost of $440,000 -- that should be finished by December.
Depending on the results, the city might order a more detailed report that will cost a few million dollars and take two to three years to complete, he said. The cities of Norfolk and Chesapeake might participate should it go that far, he said.
"We want to see a worst case analysis, a BP event," he said, alluding to the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
http://dailyme.com/story/2010091900002163/studies-uranium-safely-mined-virginia.html
