Flash Flooding around Coles Hill, Proposed Uranium Mining and Milling!
WORLD VIRGINIA | February 17, 2011
Energy | | Gailon Totheroh
By 2015 Virginia could become a major part of a renaissance in alternatives to carbon fuels—or not.
Virginia Uranium, Inc. is proposing to develop a uranium mine in Pittsylvania County near Danville on the state’s southern border. The Coles Hill project could yield enough ore to add 2 million pounds of processed “yellowcake” uranium annually to the 4.2 million pounds produced domestically for nuclear power plants.
However, safety concerns could trump mining.
The National Academy of Sciences held hearings in Danville in December and in Richmond last week, with a major report due to the Uranium Mining Subcommitte of the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission by December.
A 1982 state law bans uranium mining. Environmental groups including the Dan River Basin Association, the Virginia Conservation Network, and the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, along with some residents, have opposed tapping the deposit because they worry that the mining and milling will foul the air, rivers, streams and reservoirs with radioactive tailings scattered by torrential rains or hurricanes. That could contaminate with radioactivity the water sources for the nearly 2 million residents of the Hampton Roads area.
"The threat to downstream communities like Virginia Beach is real,” said Cale Jaffe, staff attorney for the Charlottesville-based Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). “We expect our elected officials to take sufficient time to weigh the evidence about these threats before taking any action."
Uranium mining elsewhere in the U.S. has taken place in drier, western climates.
Read more:
http://www.worldmag.com/virginia/17666
