VUI pushing ahead, despite study

Virginia Uranium Inc. has told financiers in New York that its uranium deposit has a net present value of “approximately $500 million.” If the global price of uranium rises to $100 per pound, the company boasts that the site could be worth $1.1 billion. Yet in a recent opinion piece, Walter Coles Sr., of Virginia Uranium Inc., writes that his company will only seek to lift Virginia’s longstanding ban on uranium mining “if, and only if, the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) concludes that this can be done with the highest regard for the well-being of the people, livestock, and the environment.” (“Coles: No End-Run Around The Study,” The Register & Bee, March 28.)

This pledge ignores three facts.

First, the NAS has emphasized that it will not determine whether uranium can be mined safely in Virginia; Coles is promising to abide by a decision that the NAS will never make. At each public meeting, NAS representatives have explained that their charge is to provide scientific and technical information to Gov. Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly. Our state policymakers then have the exclusive responsibility to weigh the possible benefits against the risks of mining uranium and disposing of the radioactive waste in-state.

Second, Virginia Uranium is not waiting on the NAS. It is moving full steam ahead with its plans. Since 2007, the company has spent more than $345,500 lobbying the General Assembly. The company has entertained three members of the state’s Coal and Energy Commission on all-expenses-paid trips to France, first-class airfare included. In fact, last year the company was the second largest in-kind gift giver to state politicians, ahead of even Dominion Power.

Third, the NAS is not the only entity researching this issue. Two other studies are investigating the socio-economic impacts of lifting Virginia’s mining ban. In addition, the City of Virginia Beach has retained a major engineering firm to assess the threat to drinking water supplies from uranium waste during a major rainstorm or hurricane. Phase I of that study has been completed, finding that drinking water for Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Norfolk could be contaminated for as long as two years if a “worst-case storm” triggered a spill.

The threat of such a storm is very real. Virginia was witness to one of the most devastating weather events in our nation’s history, Hurricane Camille, which unleashed 31 inches of rain on portions of Central Virginia. A State Police report at the time documented the tragedy, noting that the ensuing flood “carried everything with it. Highways, roads, people, houses, cars, trucks. In one area alone we lost two tractor trailers completely.” What would a storm like this do to an active uranium mine or to containment cells holding radioactive waste?

I am hopeful that legislators will have the courage to resist pressures to lift the ban in the upcoming legislative session. The public needs sufficient time for a thorough comparison of the complex, and possibly contradictory, findings from all four reports.

We know that waste from uranium operations remains radioactive for centuries, which is why more than $2.2 million is being invested in the various studies. We should take more than a couple of weeks to review the results.

Jaffe is the senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, working out of the Virginia/Tennessee headquarters office in Charlottesville. Learn more about the group at its website, www.southernenvironment.org.