Despite public outcry, Virginia could permit mining at one of the world's largest uranium deposits
Door Tara Lohan, AlterNet / GlobalPossibilities.org, 6 december 2012
Appalachian states like West Virginia have also long endured coal mining, but in recent decades have faced increasing threats from an even more extreme form of mining - mountaintop removal mining, in which the tops of mountains are blown to bits by explosives and the 'waste' rock dumped into mountain streams and valleys.
[...] As extractive industries grow in the East, Virginians have realized their state may be the bullseye of yet another energy industry - nuclear power. Large deposits of uranium were discovered in the state in 1979.
[...] the Coles Hill deposit is estimated at 119 million pounds of uranium worth about $10 billion. It may be the largest find in the U.S. and one of the 10 biggest globally. But uranium mining is all about economics and in 2005 the price of uranium rose high enough that there was renewed interest in Coles Hill; this time from the owner of the land himself, Walter Coles, whose family owns a 750-acre farm where the uranium was found.
[...] 'Geologists suspect that the Coles Hill deposit is not isolated', writes Andrew Rice for the New Republic. [...] Robert Bodnar, a geochemistry professor at Virginia Tech, has spent the last two years studying how the uranium got to Coles Hill. 'I think there’s a very high probability that there are other deposits of the same size, same grade, as Coles Hill located in the eastern United States', he told [...].
[...] In the coming months, Virginia legislators will decide the fate of uranium mining in their state, but the vote may well be a harbinger for our energy future.
Zie ook:
Impacts from Uranium Mining and Milling
WISE, circa 2010
Uraniumwinning
Tegenstroom / WISE
Virginia Against Uranium Mining
Virginiaagainsturanium.blogspot.nl
En m'n blognotities:
Aboriginals willen stop op uraniumwinning in Australië
Wereldwijd protest tegen uraniumwinning
6 vuile energiebronnen die de aarde kapot maken
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