Don’t put uranium over health, safety
Posted: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 9:34 amTo the editor.
I am writing in response to the gentleman’s free trip to, and opinion of, Elliot Lake.
I live in Canada a few hours south of Elliot Lake, and glad of it.
I am not an expert on uranium by any means. But the more I read about it, the more I become afraid of it.
I visit Chatham two to three times per year. Every time I hit town I see more signs of people against the mining of uranium.
Let`s face the facts. And to do so you must go online to “Elliot Lake and Uranium, The Deadliest Metal.”
For those of you without a computer, you can go to your public library.
As I have been visiting Chatham since childhood, I have become fond of its charm, beauty, the people and way of life.
The mining of uranium will most definitely have a negative effect in regards to all of that.
It’s so sad to see money have priority over health and safety.
Brian Simmons
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
http://www.wpcva.com/opinion/article_5d9f0dfe-4f69-11e2-8774-001a4bcf887a.html
Why Virginia uranium mining ban should not be lifted
By DEBORAH and KEN FERRUCCIO | Posted: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 9:00 amRain: How we need to protect the rain from uranium air emissions in Virginia
ItWe discuss the rain, how we need it, how we can’t create it, but how we can do something to keep from polluting it, especially with radioactivity if the Virginia Legislature were to lift the thirty-year ban on uranium mining and begin to allow mining in Chatham, Va., near the headwaters of the Roanoke River Basin that feeds Kerr and Gaston lakes.
Roanoke River Basin, Kerr and Gaston Lakes: Precious Water to 2 Million
These lakes supply precious water to towns, counties and cities, including metropolitan Virginia Beach; to add to the numbers of people dependent on the lakes for water, preparations are in the making for Raleigh to tap in to Kerr Lake. The Roanoke River and Kerr and Gaston lakes supply more than precious drinking water to some 2 million people. They are essential parts of the natural resources that enrich North Carolina, a state heavily dependent on agriculture and tourism.
Radioactive Mine Tailings Threaten Groundwater
Clearly, uranium mining would create radioactive contamination of priceless surface water, and contamination of groundwater is also inevitable. The claim by mining proponents is that they can contain the 120 million tons of radioactive waste mine tailings in lined pits. The claim is that today’s containment design is much improved from the old design. We have not heard the word “landfill” used at the hearings, but digging a hole and lining it with plastic is how landfills are made. It’s long been documented, even by the EPA, that no” best practices,” “state-of-the-art” landfill can contain the waste, not in the short or the long term. The landfill will take on and let out water, much like a bathtub with the faucet turned on and the drain open.
At one of the public hearings that we attended in Virginia, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was specific concerning the containment structures for the radioactive waste, including such components as leachate collection and monitoring systems and plastic liners that they said might last 100 years (while the waste would remain radioactive for well over 100,000 years). As we know in Warren County, the 1982 EPA-approved “state-of-the-art” PCB landfill failed in numerous ways. It is the same design used for all landfills for the past 30 years, and it is the same as today’s “best practices” containment design for radioactive waste mine tailings. While EPA continues to approve failed “best practices” for waste management, it nevertheless states in its Federal Register that all landfills leak and should be used only as a stop-gap measure for waste. For more evidence on failure to contain waste, citizens can Google G. Fred Lee, a nationally renowned expert in the field of waste management.
The theoretical science of waste management regarding containment of waste has become an ideology to be defended and promoted for vested interests instead of a science to be challenged in light of the failure of its basic prediction---namely, that containment structures can be engineered to prevent environmental contamination. This prediction continues to be tested and continues to be proven false. The containment structures simply recycle waste back into the environment, destroying the environment and gradually but inevitably exterminating human existence.
Air Emissions Spread Through Wind and Fall with Rain
Uranium mining would create radioactive air emissions that would be breathed in and spread with prevailing winds. Once in the air, the radioactivity would become part of the precipitation that would rain down on the earth, contaminating land and households in Virginia and North Carolina. The contaminated wind and rain would follow the prevailing winds in a widening path along the East Coast and across the Atlantic.
Key Supporters of the Ban on Uranium Mining Recently Speak Out as Canadian Uranium Mining Company Faces a $1.2 Billion Cleanup!
Lt. Governor Bolling, president of the Virginia Senate, announced his opposition to uranium mining, and his vote could be the vote to break a tie. In addition, legislative members of the North Carolina Environmental Review Commission voted to oppose uranium mining in Virginia and wrote to Governor-Elect McCrory, asking him to oppose uranium mining because of the “threat to the strategic current and future water supply for North Carolina that comes from the Roanoke River.”
The Keep the Ban endorsements by key Virginia and North Carolina officials come as more information has recently been revealed about Cameco, the Canadian uranium mining company that is lobbying for uranium mining in Virginia. Their “best practices” operation has landed them with a $1.2 billion cleanup, so whatever revenues are promised from Virginia uranium mining, the real figures for taxpayers to consider are the billions that must be budgeted to pay for high-salaried staff, endless scientific and health studies, drawn-out litigation, bitterly fought-for clean-ups, and compensation for irrevocable damages.
Lifting the Ban on Uranium Mining Would be Seen as Declaration of Radioactive Aggression Against the Region
Hopefully, Virginia legislators are listening to the voices of reason and will Keep the Ban on uranium mining. If they don’t listen to the public, and they lift the ban, the decision will be an arbitrary and capricious declaration of radioactive aggression against the region. Such a declaration would have the gravest of consequences because public sentiment against uranium mining is clear, and the protests, demonstrations, and civil disobedience that would follow in response to the decision to lift the ban would gain national and international attention.
http://www.vancnews.com/the_warren_record/opinion/article_3c421396-4b9e-11e2-914c-001a4bcf887a.html
Uranium mining’s radioactive pollution of groundwater
A Decades-Old Deal With Uranium Miners Is Causing Trouble For The EPA
Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica | Dec. 26, 2012, GILLETTE, Wyo. — On a lonely stretch at the edge of the Great Plains, rolling grassland presses up against a crowning escarpment called the Pumpkin Buttes. The land appears bountiful, but it is stingy, straining to produce enough sustenance for the herds of cattle and sheep on its arid prairies.
“It’s a tough way to make a living,” said John Christensen, whose family has worked this private expanse, called Christensen Ranch, for more than a century.
Christensen has made ends meet by allowing prospectors to tap into minerals and oil and gas beneath his bucolic hills. But from the start, it has been a Faustian bargain.
As dry as this land may be, underground, vast reservoirs hold billions of gallons of water suitable for drinking, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Yet every day injection wells pump more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste from uranium mining into Christensen’s aquifers.
What is happening in this remote corner of Wyoming affects few people other than Christensen u2014 at least for now.
But a roiling conflict between state and federal regulators over whether to allow more mining at Christensen Ranch u2014 and the damage that comes with it u2014 has pitted the feverish drive for domestic energy against the need to protect water resources for the future. The outcome could have far-reaching implications, setting a precedent for similar battles sparked by the resurgence of uranium mining in Texas, South Dakota, New Mexico and elsewhere.
Twenty-five years ago, the EPA and Wyoming officials agreed that polluting the water beneath Christensen Ranch was an acceptable price for producing energy there.
The Safe Drinking Water Act forbids injecting industrial waste into or above drinking water aquifers, but the EPA issued what are called aquifer exemptions that gave mine operators at the ranch permission to ignore the law. Over the last three decades, the agency has issued more than 1,500 such exemptions nationwide, allowing energy and mining companies to pollute portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers.
When the EPA granted the exemptions for Christensen Ranch, its scientists believed that the reservoirs underlying the property were too deep to hold desirable water, and that even if they did, no one was likely to use it. They also believed the mine operators could contain and remediate pollution in the shallower rock layers where mining takes place.
Over time, shifting science and a changing climate have upended these assumptions, however. An epochal drought across the West has made water more precious and improved technology has made it economically viable to retrieve water from extraordinary depths, filter it and transport it.
“What does deep mean?” asked Mike Wireman, a hydrologist with the EPA who also works with the World Bank on global water supply issues. “There is a view out there that says if it’s more than a few thousand feet deep we don’t really care u2026 just go ahead and dump all that waste. There is an opposite view that says no, that is not sustainable water management policy.”
if he had it to do over again, he’s not sure he would lease out the rights to put a uranium mine on Christensen Ranch.
“It’s probably worthwhile for this generation,” he said. “You just don’t know about future generations.”…….
(at end of article) As of now, it’s unclear how the EPA will answer Wyoming’s challenge to its authority at Christensen Ranch.
Meanwhile, uranium mining has resumed on the property.
Uranium One, a Canadian-based company with majority Russian ownership that bought the facility from Cogema in 2010, is moving forward with the added injection wells to expand the operation.
http://www.propublica.org/article/on-a-wyoming-ranch-feds-sacrifice-tomorrows-water-to-mine-uranium-today/single#republish#ixzz2GHRDcS3D
http://antinuclear.net/2012/12/26/uranium-minings-radioactive-pollution-of-groundwater/
TEPCO, “a wholly owned public benefit subsidiary of the government of Japan,” misrepresented radiation levels after the meltdown in order to lull the US Navy ”into a false sense of security.”
US Navy sailors sue Japan for lying about Fukushima radiation http://rt.com/usa/news/sailors-japan-fukushima-radiation-878/ 26 December, 2012, American sailors have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government for allegedly lying about the health risks they faced while assisting in rescue efforts after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Crewmembers from the USS Ronald Reagan filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in San Diego, California this week in an attempt to hold Japan accountable for any long-term damage they’ll caused during “Operation Tomadachi,” the spring 2011 relief effort that sent sailors near the coast of Japan to assist in the days after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami ravaged the island nation and caused a level 7 meltdown at three reactors in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The plaintiffs, eight sailors from the 5,500 or so that were aboard the USS Reagan at the time, say Japan did not act honestly in regards to explaining the severity of the meltdown and the risks they faced in involving themselves in the relief efforts. They are asking the state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for $10 million in compensatory damages, as well as another $30 million in punitive damages for fraud, negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, public and private nuisance and defective design, Courthouse News Service reports
Non Nukes: Québec Shutters Its Only Nuclear Power Plant http://www.7dvt.com/2012non-nukes-qu-bec-shutters-its-only-nuclear-power-plant
BY KEN PICARD [12.26.12] “….. Seven Days reported in May, “G-2” is closer to northern Vermont than any American reactor, including Vermont Yankee. And, like the Vernon plant, G-2 got a new lease on life when its owner, Hydro-Québec, announced plans to refurbish the reactor and keep it operational for another three decades.
Canadian antinuke activists have fought for years to shut down G-2. Since going online in 1983, the plant has experienced problems eerily similar to those at Vermont Yankee — but worse. G-2 releases more radioactive tritium into the air and water each day than the tritium estimated to have leaked from Vermont Yankee in all of 2011.
Yet despite those problems and overwhelming opposition from Québécois — 320 Québec municipalities adopted resolutions calling for G-2’s closure — Canadian regulators earlier this year gave the plant approval to continue splitting atoms. In October, Hydro-Québec announced it would close G-2 at the end of this year — specifically, on December 28.
Why the change of heart? The company cited “increased production costs” — $6.3 billion compared to $1.8 billion to decommission the plant — combined with “falling market prices” for electricity.
Politicians, too, were against the plant. During last summer’s election, Québec’s newly elected premier, Pauline Marois, promised to shutter the province’s only nuke when its license expires at the end of 2012.
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, hailed the decision, saying “Québecers are proud that ours will be the first jurisdiction in North America to phase completely out of nuclear power.”
Environmental groups say the EPA should not be letting mining companies write their own rules.
Similar disputes are erupting across the country.
“This is a health issue as much as a water supply issue,”
A Decades-Old Deal With Uranium Miners Is Causing Trouble For The EPA Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica | Dec. 26, 2012, GILLETTE, Wyo.“…….The problems and pressures the EPA is facing at Christensen Ranch are not unique.
With uranium mining booming, the agency has received a mounting number of requests for aquifer exemptions in recent years. So far, EPA records show, the agency has issued at least 40 exemptions for uranium mines across the country and is considering several more. Two mines are expanding operations near Christensen Ranch.
In several cases, the EPA has struggled to balance imposing water protections with accommodating the industry’s needs.
Video has English introduction and then in French language
A cons-forum was organized by the group “Nuclear Free Now” in Koriyama, a city 55 km from Fukushima, from 12 to 17 December 2012, in response to the ministerial meeting on nuclear safety organized on the same dates in this city by the Japanese government and the IAEA.
Against the organizers of the forum, a member wishing to make a presentation “Independent WHO” the agreement WHO / IAEA and collective activities, Christophe Elain has participated in various events organized by “Nuclear Free Now.”
In this video Christophe Elain intervention during the press conference at the event on Friday 21 December 2012.
Thank you to Kna for mounting the video and the subtitles
http://kna-blog.blogspot.fr/
http://nuclear-news.net/
if he had it to do over again, he’s not sure he would lease out the rights to put a uranium mine on Christensen Ranch.
“It’s probably worthwhile for this generation,” he said. “You just don’t know about future generations.”…….
(at end of article) As of now, it’s unclear how the EPA will answer Wyoming’s challenge to its authority at Christensen Ranch.
Meanwhile, uranium mining has resumed on the property.
Uranium One, a Canadian-based company with majority Russian ownership that bought the facility from Cogema in 2010, is moving forward with the added injection wells to expand the operation.
http://www.propublica.org/article/on-a-wyoming-ranch-feds-sacrifice-tomorrows-water-to-mine-uranium-today/single#republish#ixzz2GHRDcS3D
http://antinuclear.net/2012/12/26/uranium-minings-radioactive-pollution-of-groundwater/
Legal action against Japan by American Navy men over Fukushima radiation
TEPCO, “a wholly owned public benefit subsidiary of the government of Japan,” misrepresented radiation levels after the meltdown in order to lull the US Navy ”into a false sense of security.”
US Navy sailors sue Japan for lying about Fukushima radiation http://rt.com/usa/news/sailors-japan-fukushima-radiation-878/ 26 December, 2012, American sailors have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government for allegedly lying about the health risks they faced while assisting in rescue efforts after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Crewmembers from the USS Ronald Reagan filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in San Diego, California this week in an attempt to hold Japan accountable for any long-term damage they’ll caused during “Operation Tomadachi,” the spring 2011 relief effort that sent sailors near the coast of Japan to assist in the days after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami ravaged the island nation and caused a level 7 meltdown at three reactors in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The plaintiffs, eight sailors from the 5,500 or so that were aboard the USS Reagan at the time, say Japan did not act honestly in regards to explaining the severity of the meltdown and the risks they faced in involving themselves in the relief efforts. They are asking the state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for $10 million in compensatory damages, as well as another $30 million in punitive damages for fraud, negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, public and private nuisance and defective design, Courthouse News Service reports
Quebec’s nuclear power plant will be gone – but the radioactive problem lingers on
Non Nukes: Québec Shutters Its Only Nuclear Power Plant http://www.7dvt.com/2012non-nukes-qu-bec-shutters-its-only-nuclear-power-plantBY KEN PICARD [12.26.12] “….. Seven Days reported in May, “G-2” is closer to northern Vermont than any American reactor, including Vermont Yankee. And, like the Vernon plant, G-2 got a new lease on life when its owner, Hydro-Québec, announced plans to refurbish the reactor and keep it operational for another three decades.
Canadian antinuke activists have fought for years to shut down G-2. Since going online in 1983, the plant has experienced problems eerily similar to those at Vermont Yankee — but worse. G-2 releases more radioactive tritium into the air and water each day than the tritium estimated to have leaked from Vermont Yankee in all of 2011.
Yet despite those problems and overwhelming opposition from Québécois — 320 Québec municipalities adopted resolutions calling for G-2’s closure — Canadian regulators earlier this year gave the plant approval to continue splitting atoms. In October, Hydro-Québec announced it would close G-2 at the end of this year — specifically, on December 28.
Why the change of heart? The company cited “increased production costs” — $6.3 billion compared to $1.8 billion to decommission the plant — combined with “falling market prices” for electricity.
Politicians, too, were against the plant. During last summer’s election, Québec’s newly elected premier, Pauline Marois, promised to shutter the province’s only nuke when its license expires at the end of 2012.
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, hailed the decision, saying “Québecers are proud that ours will be the first jurisdiction in North America to phase completely out of nuclear power.”
Drinking water threatened as EPA allows uranium miners to inject radioactive wastes into groundwater
Environmental groups say the EPA should not be letting mining companies write their own rules.Similar disputes are erupting across the country.
“This is a health issue as much as a water supply issue,”
A Decades-Old Deal With Uranium Miners Is Causing Trouble For The EPA Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica | Dec. 26, 2012, GILLETTE, Wyo.“…….The problems and pressures the EPA is facing at Christensen Ranch are not unique.With uranium mining booming, the agency has received a mounting number of requests for aquifer exemptions in recent years. So far, EPA records show, the agency has issued at least 40 exemptions for uranium mines across the country and is considering several more. Two mines are expanding operations near Christensen Ranch.
In several cases, the EPA has struggled to balance imposing water protections with accommodating the industry’s needs.
Independent WHO forum ”Nuclear Free Now” – December 2012 -Koriyama, Japan (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM-1bDfVfxoVideo has English introduction and then in French language
A cons-forum was organized by the group “Nuclear Free Now” in Koriyama, a city 55 km from Fukushima, from 12 to 17 December 2012, in response to the ministerial meeting on nuclear safety organized on the same dates in this city by the Japanese government and the IAEA.
Against the organizers of the forum, a member wishing to make a presentation “Independent WHO” the agreement WHO / IAEA and collective activities, Christophe Elain has participated in various events organized by “Nuclear Free Now.”
In this video Christophe Elain intervention during the press conference at the event on Friday 21 December 2012.
Thank you to Kna for mounting the video and the subtitles
http://kna-blog.blogspot.fr/
WHO Report on Fukushima a Travesty
8 – DECEMBER – 2012
The World Health Organisation has failed in its obligation to protect the public and guilty of the crime of non-assistance. World Health Organisation subservient to nuclear lobby. The World Health Report (May 2012) entitled “Preliminary dose estimation from the nuclearaccident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami” [1] is a public relations exercise to reassure the world that WHO is fulfilling its role in the area of radiation and health. Following the preliminary dose estimation, WHO will complete a health risk assessment to “support the identification of needs and priorities for public health action.” But this report [ Read More ]
http://independentwho.org/en/
http://nuclear-news.net/
