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The Piedmont Environmental council (PEC) has released statistics concerning the mining of uranium in Virginia.
The group along with many others are urging the state to continue its moratorium on this practice and wants it “continued indefinitely.”
According to PEC: * —For each pound of commercially usable uranium produced in Virginia, a ton >of radioactive and toxic waste (tailings and waste rock) will be left in the government’s perpetual care.
—EPA says tailings will remain hazardous for at least 265,000 years and VP I advised the Uranium Task Force to expect the tailings facility proposed by Marline and Union Carbide to leak within a few years;
—Aside from their allegations that “it’s done safely in France,” proponents have been unable to show how they could dispose of tailings and waste rock without contaminating the groundwater or how they could treat process waste-water sufficiently to permit its safe surface discharge in Virginia.
—According to Union Carbide, “technology does not exist to isolate tailings for thousands of years . . .It is difficult if not impossible to design a reclamation plan for a tailings pile that will withstand erosion over a “thousands of years’ period...” " ^—Although industry documents and VP I experts showed radioactive contaminants would seep from the 930 acre waste disposal area, the risk assessment prepared for the Task Force assumed the operator could control enough property to prevent anyone from drinking contaminated ground-water directly from a well. The cost/benefit analysis assumed no environmental degradation.
—The risk assessment which Marline and Carbide say “shows” that health risks from a Virginia ura
90.3%