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are required to make a judgment on unproven technologies in previously uncharted territory. Couple this enormous uncertainty the industry’s discomfort with close scrutiny, and the study effort becomes even more difficult.
It is no wonder, then that the state has wrestled for nearly three years with the safety question. Despite considerable work by state legislators, agency staff and citizen and industry representatives, the ultimate and crucial question remains unanswered.
After developing a sense of the magnitude of risk involved in an uninformed decision, the General Assembly in 1983 created an advisory group which could study in depth the technical and policy questions involved. The 14-member Uranium Administrative Group (UAG) has spent the past year working on the uranium issue with the state’s consultants, who bring to the discussion their expertise in waste disposal and water contamination.
In recent months both the Uranium Administrative Group and the consulting firm of Rogers, Golden and Halpern (RGH) have issued final reports for the year. Neither RGH nor the UAG has been able to declare uranium mining safe for Virginia. Nor are they able to declare uranium mining totally unacceptable.
The UAG deserves thanks for its diligence and probing, but there are those who have chosen to blame both the Group and the consultant for the inherent difficulties of the study topic. The uranium industry has been notably slow to deliver the information requested
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