Wednesday, April 20, 2011 9:08 AM EDT
The ads that Virginia Uranium Inc. has been paying big money for each week are not telling the complete story to the general public.
This past week's ad attempts to convince readers of how safe "yellowcake" is.
Yellowcake is the uranium that is ready to be shipped out of state to be sold or processed and is the first part of the complete nuclear cycle.
What the ad does not tell you is what happens to produce this yellowcake. The earth is blasted with explosives either with underground or open surface mines.
Virginia Uranium has offered conflicting opinions as to how they will do this. The waste rock (which doesn't have enough uranium to process economically) is disposed of in waste piles that no federal or state agency monitors.
The rock that is higher in uranium is then sent to the on-site mill to be crushed into fine particles like fine sand and is leached with chemicals.
The types of chemicals are not being disclosed by VUI. Either alkaline or acid solutions may be used (acid normally gets more of the uranium out of the milled rock and is cheaper).
The uranium (yellowcake) will then be put in 55-gallon barrels and shipped out of Virginia.
What is left behind after removing the yellowcake is what causes concern. The leftovers contain approximately 85 percent of the radioactive daughter products like radioactive arsenic, radium, thorium, and plutonium.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission states: "This ore residue contains the radioactive decay products from the uranium chains (mainly the U-238 chain) and heavy metals.... A conventional mill uses uranium ore extracted by either open pit or deep mining. The ore is then crushed and sent through the mill, where extraction processes concentrate the uranium into uranium-oxygen compounds called yellowcake. The remainder of the crushed rock, in a processing fluid slurry, is placed in a tailings pile/cell."
It has been calculated there will be millions of tons of waste just from this one site alone. How much will be left if VUI processes uranium for other mines along the East Coast?
The uranium company has said it hopes to return the tailings to the mine. They say they are planning to mine for 30 to 35 years.
How can that be done until the mine is no longer being mined, whether it be open pit, underground or a combination of both?
If pits are dug for mining or mill tailings, Virginia Tech's study says the water table there is very shallow. What will happen to our underground water supply?
NRC regulations state they have to be put into tailings pile/cell no larger than 40 acres. How tall will these be or how deep into the earth?
Will NRC regulate the tailings or will Virginia become an "agreement state' is yet to be determined.
Neither seems to have adequate money to undertake such an operation.
What happens if the site becomes flooded, such as the Ranger mine in Australia, and closes down for months?
What would happen to these tailings pile/cell if one of the tornadoes that Virginia and other states experienced this past weekend had touched down there?
So each week when you look at these beautiful color ads, take a closer look, do some research and see why they are really spending probably about $500 a week to spread their news.
Deborah Lovelace
Gretna, VA
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2011/04/21/chatham/opinion/opinion13.txt
