Uranium Mining almost near Grand Canyon and is Elsewhere!

( – promoted by navajo)

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A British mining company is about to begin exploratory drilling for toxic, radioactive uranium in Kaibab National Forest just outside the eco-fragile boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park.

Of course, the idea of uranium is being sold as if it were an absolute necessity.

Do these companies really care about the beauty of the Earth Mother,

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they’re altering for the worst?

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(only photo of a uranium mine I could find)

No.

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This ill-conceived drilling is powerful evidence that tighter restrictions must be enacted to protect the Canyon. It further indicates the critical need to modernize the General Mining Act of 1872, which authorizes mining for economic minerals on federal public lands.

Funny thing about that capitalistic motivation is that in spite of it, there is now an example of an energy efficient home from Extreme Makeover.

So, let’s consider clean energy usage from that new Navajo home verses “high levels of cancer and areas of radioactivity.”

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Uranium mining has been linked to high levels of cancer and areas of radioactivity on the Navajo Reservation. The tribe has banned it. The various mining techniques used all risk contaminating the groundwater aquifer or surface water.

Next, let’s consider clean energy usage from that new Navajo home verses “how the uranium mining will affect their water, livestock and their families.”

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People in Wyoming and South Dakota are afraid of how the uranium mining will affect their water, livestock and their families, just like their Coloradan neighbors to the south, but they are more afraid of the ramifications of speaking up, White Face said.

Last of all, let’s consider clean energy usage from that new Navajo home verses “Uranium dust from abandoned open-pit mines in Wyoming makes its way into South Dakota, she said, and it even finds its way into the Cheyenne River, which flows into South Dakota’s Black Hills, uranium-rich in its own right.”

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White Face said she’s seen firsthand the sorts of things uranium can do to public health, even in more remote parts of the United States. Uranium dust from abandoned open-pit mines in Wyoming makes its way into South Dakota, she said, and it even finds its way into the Cheyenne River, which flows into South Dakota’s Black Hills, uranium-rich in its own right.

Oh wait,
we need to consider clean energy usage from that new Navajo home verses “… make(ing) yellowcake. That material can be turned into weapons-grade uranium or enhanced for use in nuclear power plants.”

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Groundwater is oxidized and turned into a solution called a “lixiviant,” which is forced down into the sandstone layers, where the uranium is essentially drawn to combine with the water. The solution is pumped back to the surface and combined with resin beads in a process that works basically the same way as a home water softener. Molecules of uranium hop on to the resin beads, which are taken to a processing facility to strip the uranium off, refine it and make yellowcake. That material can be turned into weapons-grade uranium or enhanced for use in nuclear power plants.

I’d said earlier that there’s a funny thing about that capitalistic motivation,

The military-industrial complex is generally defined as a “coalition consisting of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government.”

which is why I don’t foresee the clean energy usage from that new Navajo home being used widely anytime soon, or in my lifetime.

Uranium mining is no solution to the impending doom of it now being merely five minutes to midnight,

(emphasis mine)

IT IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction–the figurative midnight–and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences and nanotechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm.

– snip –

Unfortunately, however, the possibility of a nuclear exchange between countries remains.

as uranium mining becomes more common, it may facilitate even more “possibility of a nuclear exchange between countries,”  drawing us closer to midnight.

Threat of Nuclear Autumn

Famine sweeps the Third World. A billion people flee across borders. Vast regions become abandoned. Governments fall. Hundreds of millions die.

This is the future that might overwhelm the planet if any of the eight nuclear-armed countries – or the 35 other countries with enough weapons-grade fuel build their own bombs – start blasting their enemy’s cities with low-yield nuclear weapons.

(Take accordingly. I don’t think anyone but real intelligence has the real numbers, but the point is made)

Where are the bombs?

Pakistan –
– 52 warheads

India –
– 85 warheads

Israel –
– 116 warheads

Britain –
– 200 + warheads

France –
– 350 warheads

China —
 400 warheads

USA –
– 10,315 warheads

Russia –
– 16,200 warheads

Think how much uranium had to be used to make all those nuclear weapons and how much beautiful land had to be ruined. Furthermore, think of how much “uranium dust from abandoned open-pit mines” caused health problems, how much uranium mining affected “water, livestock, and families,” and the cumulative effects of the “high levels of cancer and areas of radioactivity” caused by all those uranium mines.

The uranium mining companies must be soooooooooooooo concerned about the possible future of our planet,

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or not.

Crossposted at The Wild Wild Left

3 Comments

  1. View from near Lukachukai  

    I was driving last night on a muddy road at the base of the Lukachukais.  It snows a lot here and then it melts.  The ground turns into a brownish red cake mix.  

    A friend of mine is a teacher whose father died of cancer caused by uranium mining.  The mine is site is accessible when the ground is not muddy, on a bench of ground up against the mountain.

    He has a cough which is a second generation effect.  It isn’t hard to meet someone here whose family was affected.  

    The mines, run by the government or by corporations with federal contracts, were really something out of a movie about slavery in the Roman Empire.  Miners used shovels and just dug out big “dog holes.”  They stayed covered with yellowcake dust, even when sleeping at night.  Their wives were exposed by just being with their husbands and by washing clothes.  Many of them are either gone now or having health problems.

    The callousness and contempt with which the mining companies treated those who actually produced their product should have been subject to war crimes prosecution, it was so hideous.  Instead, they probably all got rich.

    The Navajo Nation has gotten stronger over the years, and has succeeded in getting a number of bright young kids through law school and into an awareness generally of their right to make sovereignty a reality.

    The problem with McCain and with Arizona in general is that there is still an old west mentality at work.  People with the utmost respect for the principle of integrity will often turn right around and lie straightfaced to Indian people.  The coming resource shortage that will start with oil will produce a rush on whatever resources there are, such as uranium and coal and water, which may well bring on another Indian war.  

    This time it would be more about political manuevers and legal gamesmanship than overt and public spectacles like sending in the cavalry.  The problem with McCain as president is that he won’t really be against using legislative and courtroom processes for large scale robbery.  He will just see it as something consistent with the way the West works and won’t understand the protest.

    A President Obama would have no investment in the Western way of thinking, and would be more likely to find a balance that was fair and which respected Indian nation’s sovereignty.

    I don’t think anyone should be entirely comfortable about the future under a scenario where people in cities like Phoenix are screaming for resources that were plentiful when a large population moved in and then proved insufficient to carry more growth.

    Ominously, there are already letters to the editor in the Arizona Republic calling for ending carefully negotiated agreements with Indian reservations and just taking the water.
    Those people are on the wing nut fringe, but it wouldn’t take much in this landscape for that sentiment to seem more mainstream.

    How to prevent this?  More strength for the legal concept of sovereignty.

    by Stuart Heady

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