SoVaNow.com / February 08, 2012
Halifax opponents of the Coles Hill uranium mine were out in force Tuesday night in Danville, where five of the scientists and staff responsible for the National Academy of Sciences uranium study took questions from a crowd of about 200.Largely praised for their heavyweight report – which took many opponents by pleasant surprise with its skeptical undertone – the panel nevertheless repeatedly deflected questions with the response that their study wasn’t site-specific.
Speaker after speaker posed questions about best practices and worst-case scenarios: earthquakes, radiation exposure, worker safety, foreign influences, wildlife and who would pay the clean-up bill if anything disastrous happened.
As often as not, the refrain was similar: “I know we sound like a broken record in saying that,” said Paul Locke, the panel’s chairman and a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Jack Dunavant of Halifax, leader of We the People, an unapologetically environmentalist group, wanted to know who would be responsible if a clean-up were warranted?
Answer: There are “very strict financial security requirements" on the company, plus the “complete life cycle” of the mine would be addressed in planning and regulating it.
Dunavant pressed on: But the tailings have to be contained for 80,000 years. “They’re gonna be responsible for 80,000 years?” he asked.
Locke deadpanned: “I won’t be here to tell you.”
http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/news/article/uranium_qa_best_practices_and_worst-case_scenarios/
