Uranium Free South Africa

NO SAFE DOSE OF RADIATION

2008-05-10T11:13:00.001+02:00

"NO SAFE DOSE OF RADIATION"
- NUCLEAR AUTHORITIES (1982)
by G. Edwards

In November 1981 , two atomic workers at Chalk River, Ontario, were granted full pensions because of cancers which they had contracted as a result of radiation exposure on the job. "We acknowledge that it was probable that their cancers were caused by working here," said a statement issued by Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, despite the fact that neither of the men had ever been over-exposed to radiation.

Thomas Arnold was awarded a pension of $1335 a month by the Ontario Workman's Compensation Board (WCB), on the advice of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). Arnold credits AECL with doing all the work to get him the pension. He developed lymph cancer during his 28 years of work as a reactor maintenance man at Chalk River.
The other case involves a 31-year veteran of Chalk River who died of leukemia shortly before the WCB granted his compensation. His widow was awarded $490 a month for life, the maximum permitted under WCB rules. A spokesman for the WCB said there is a third claim pending from Chalk River over a case of skin cancer. Meanwhile, a 50 year-old Pembroke man has also filed a claim with the WCB . Raymond Paplinskie, who has lost an eye and most of the skin on one side of his face, says that he got cancer of the sinuses from doing nuclear cleanup work following a 1958 reactor accident at Chalk River.

AECL spokesman Hal Tracy explained that the nuclear industry in Canada accepts the theory that there is no safe threshold limit for radiation exposure; hence, it must also be accepted that any dose at all has the potential for harm, and that eventually there will be some evidence of this harm. "Possibly there will be more cancers among our workers," said Mr. Tracy. "These first cases weren't a total surprise. Deaths due to radiation exposure had been predicted. We've always believed there was an increased risk."

Robert Potvin, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), which regulates the Canadian nuclear industry, said that the two cases of compensation have "no implications" form the safety standpoint. They "simply confirm the long-standing expectation" that nuclear workers run a higher-than-usual risk of cancer due to years of exposure to low-level radiation, he said.

"Our limits admit that any dose can increase the risk and, on that premise, cancer deaths are not unexpected." He added that "studies say the average risk under these limits is comparable to the risk in an industry with a high safety standard -- for example, manufacturing shoes."

A spokesman for Ontario Hydro, Richard Furness, said in an interview with the Toronto Star that "no one has ever died or suffered lost-time injuries due to radiation at a Hydro nuclear plant -- or any other Canadian nuclear facility." When told about the AECL acknowledgement of two cases at Chalk River, Furness remarked: "Oh. Well, there goes that record."

Ontario Hydro's Health and Safety Director Bob Wilson said it was time the public recognized the facts. For every hundred million hours of work done under radiation exposure (at no more than the permissible limits) about 2 to 4 otherwise unexpected cancer cases will develop, Wilson said. "We have never said a radiation worker is without risk," he insisted, but added that radiation workers are 10 to 100 times less likely to die from work than such people as fishermen, forestry workers, miners or even Hydro linemen.

But a well-informed AECL worker told the Toronto Star that "this is going to open an intense debate about safety. What can we expect from all the other live or dead cancer victims who have long-term low-level radiation exposure at AECL or Ontario Hydro? It could mean that the whole system of predictions that five rems of radiation was an acceptable dose for workers is dead wrong."

Critics of the nuclear industry have argued that the industry's predictions could prove fatally wrong for many more workers than anticipated. It can take 20 years or more for cancers to develop from low-level long-term radiation exposure, and at least 250 Hydro workers and about the same number at AECL are coming up for the 20-year turning point.

In fact, a special report on the medical effects of alpha radiation published by the AECB in September 1982 indicates that the present permissible exposure limits could result in a quadrupling of the risk of lung cancer deaths among uranium miners, whether they smoke or not. This conclusion is based on actual mortality figures among uranium miners from Colorado, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Canada, and elsewhere.

REFERENCES
Canadian Occupational Health and Safety News, v.5, n.10, March 15, 1982.
Canadian Environmental Law Association Newsletter, 1982.
Toronto Star, March 4, 5, 6, 7, 1982.
Globe and Mail, March 5, 11, 1982.
Risk Estimates for the Health Effects of Alpha Radiation, INFO-0081, AECB, Sept. 1982.

Strontium 90 in Baby Teeth near Nuclear Reactor

2008-05-10T11:13:00.000+02:00

published by WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor on May 16, 2003
U.S.: strontium-90 in baby teeth near Florida reactors

A study on childhood cancer near nuclear power plants in Florida, U.S., was released in April. According to the study by the Radiation and Public Health Project, levels of fission product strontium-90 in the teeth of children living in southeast Florida had increased with 37% from 1986-1989 to 1994-1997. The highest levels were found near the Turkey Point and St. Lucie reactors. The amount of radioactive strontium-90 appeared to be 85% higher in the teeth of children with cancer than those without. The results might suggest a link between cancer and exposures to radioactivity from the reactors, but further studies are still needed to confirm this.

(587.5518) WISE Amsterdam - The study was conducted by the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) and funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida. RHPH is an independent non-profit research organization, established by scientists and physicians to investigate the links between environmental radiation, cancer and public health. The main authors of the study are Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emiritus Radiation Physics of the Unversity of Pittsburgh, Dr. Jerry Brown, Founding Professor Florida International University and Joseph Mangano, national coordinator of RPHP.

Four nuclear reactors are in operation in southeast Florida: Turkey Point-3 and -4 in Miami-Dade County and St. Lucie-1 and -2 in St. Lucie County. Concerns have been raised about reported increases in childhood cancer. RPHP studied data on radioactive releases from the plants, radioactivity concentrations in rain- and drinking water, cancer rates in the region and levels of strontium-90 in baby's teeth in the region. The main findings of the RPHP study are:

Radioactivity emissions

Radioactivity in Miami-Dade County (Turkey Point) rainwater rose from a minimum in 1987-1988 to a plateau in 1990-1993, and later by some 60% in the last half of the 1990s. Atmospheric bomb testing by the U.S. ended in 1963 and by other countries in 1980. Accidental releases by underground bomb testing ended in 1992-1993. The releases by these test were an important source of beta-emitting radionuclides. As the activity in water still increased in the late 1990s, the persistence of (high beta) radioactivity in precipitation and drinking water near Turkey Point and St. Lucie therefore is likely to be caused by those two NPPs.

Radioactivity in drinking water

The highest levels of fission product strontium-90 in drinking water in southeast Florida were found within 5-20 miles (8-32 kilometers) of the Turkey Point and St. Lucie reactors. Fission products like strontium-90, cesium-137 and iodine-131 are always released during normal operation of a reactor. The are released by the plant by air or water discharges. The levels of strontium-90 decreased with distance from the plants. This appears to rule out past nuclear bomb tests as the source of strontium-90 in drinking water. Contamination by nuclear tests would have caused equal activity levels all over Florida instead of the highest levels found near the two NPPs.

Cancer rates in Southeast Florida

From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, cancer incidence in children under 10 rose 35.2% in the five counties closest to the Turkey Point and St. Lucie reactors. Childhood cancer in the whole U.S. had only risen with 10.8%. So, the amount of childhood cancer rose more quickly in the regions of the two NPPs. A high amount of 325.3% increase in childhood cancer was observed in St. Lucie County.

Radioactivity in Florida Baby Teeth

The authors collected baby teeth for measurements on strontium-90 concentrations. The study found that levels of strontium-90 in 250 Miami-Dade County baby teeth have been rising since the early 1980s. The current level is even as high as in the late 1950s, when the U.S., U.K., and the Soviet Union conducted atmospheric bomb tests. As the major releases of strontium-90 have ended since the atmospheric tests stopped, the authors suspect another cause for the (increased) presence of strontium-90 in teeth.
A comparison of the 461 baby teeth from six southeast counties near the two NPPs with 24 teeth from 12 other Florida counties (more than 40 miles from any NPP) showed that strontium-90 levels in the six southeast counties have a significant 44% higher concentration of strontium-90.

In 1982, the average concentration of strontium-90 in southeast Florida baby teeth was 2.23 picoCuries per gram Calcium. By 1995, it reached 5.29 picoCurie/g Calcium. That significant rise of +137% makes it almost impossible to ascribe the current levels to past atmospheric nuclear bomb tests. That is because of the fact that one would expect a decline in strontium-90 levels as the atmospheric tests had ended and strontium-90 from that cause is more and more disappearing from the natural environment.
From 17 teeth from children diagnosed with cancer and living in the counties near the NPPs, 14 were found to have strontium-90 levels above the average for those without cancer in the same counties. Furthermore, 11 out of these 14 teeth have significantly higher strontium-90 concentrations. On average, strontium-90 levels in cancer teeth were 85% higher than those found in non-cancer teeth.

Conclusions and recommendations

The authors conclude that the radioactivity releases from the Turkey Point and St. Lucie NPPs are the primary cause of rising strontium-90 levels in southeast Florida baby teeth, which is the highest in the counties near the plants.

Strontium-90 levels are significantly higher in teeth from children with cancer. The higher levels of strontium-90 in children with cancer raises the question whether exposure to emissions by the two NPPs may be a possible cause for the cancer. The authors are quite strong in their conclusions when they state that "there is now substantial evidence that exposure [...] is a significant causal factor". But as this is only a first study on strontium-90 levels in Florida they also recommend that more detailed studies on cancer rates and a relation with strontium-90 levels are necessary before full conclusions can be drawn.

The possible radiation-cancer link should also be considered in future federal policies regulating the operation of nuclear reactors, especially on renewal or extension of the licenses of aging reactors.

More information about the Radiation and Public Health Project can be found at their website: www.radiation.org. The website also includes earlier study results of the project.

Sources:
1. Environmental Radiation from Nuclear Reactors and Childhood Cancer in Southeast Florida, Radiation and Public Health Project, 9 April 2003
2. Press release RPHP, 9 April 2003
Contact: J. Mangano, National Coordinator, RPHP, 786 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215, U.S.
Tel: +1 718 857 9825
Email: odiejoe@aol.com
Web: www.radiation.org

Radioactive Fish

2008-05-10T11:12:00.002+02:00

www.rawfoodinfo.com
The Journal News
(Original Publication: January 16, 2007)
Hudson River Fish Found to Contain Radioactive Isotope
By Greg Clary
Strontium 90's effect on health

Strontium 90 is chemically similar to calcium, and tends to deposit in bone and blood-forming tissue (bone marrow). Thus, strontium 90 is referred to as a "bone seeker." Internal exposure to strontium 90 is linked to bone cancer, cancer of the soft tissue near the bone, and leukemia. Risk of cancer increases with increased exposure to strontium 90. The risk depends on the concentrations in the environment and on the exposure conditions.

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

BUCHANAN - In what could be the region's next environmental controversy or simply just a laboratory mistake, fish in the Hudson River have been found to contain traces of strontium 90.

The radioactive isotope was discovered leaking almost a year ago at the Indian Point nuclear plants, and tests on 12 fish show four with detectible amounts, according to a memo obtained by The Journal News. The tests were conducted for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns the plants, after researchers pulled the fish from the river during the summer - six from the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge area, and the rest from around Indian Point.

"Certainly it's of concern that the strontium was found in 25 percent of the sampling," said C. J. Miller, spokeswoman for Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef.
"The origin of that is something that we need to determine. If indeed it is coming from the plant itself, then that needs to be remedied immediately."

The company has spent millions to find and stop the leaks, but so far have only been able to capture much of the radiated water without successfully plugging the sources. No other radioactive isotopes were found in the fish, federal regulators said. Three of the upriver fish had strontium levels ranging as high as 24.5 picocuries per kilogram, while one taken from near the plant showed 18.8 picocuries per kilogram, according to results first released late last week.

Picocuries measure radioactivity level in the tiniest amounts, and though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't set safe minimums for fish, Westchester County officials said the mean detectible level is 10 picocuries per kilogram. Strontium has a half-life of nearly 29 years and was banned in the United States after weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s left large amounts in the atmosphere. Health officials warned at the time that it competed with calcium in human bodies, especially in growing children, and could affect bone development.

Public officials, regulators and plant owners are eager to see more sampling results to determine if the results were merely inaccurate, as false positives are more likely at low levels, or is something more significant.

"We have samples that quite honestly seem to be a little questionable," said Anthony Sutton, Westchester County's top emergency management official.
"A follow-up test is called for and that's what we've advocated."

Sutton said the fact the majority of fish testing positive for strontium 90 had been found 30 miles away in the control group only muddies the results more. As part of its investigation into groundwater contamination at Indian Point, Entergy has increased its monitoring of aquatic life in the Hudson River, including bass, perch, sunfish and eel. The strontium 90 has shown up in the fleshy parts of the fish, not the bones, which surprised regulators.

Plant officials have acknowledged that a tritium leak discovered in August 2005 and strontium leaks discovered in February have likely reached the river, though they and NRC regulators have maintained there is no threat to worker safety or public health. Jim Steets, Indian Point's spokesman, said state Department of Environmental Conservation officials have been tracking strontium levels in fish around the nuclear plant, and strontium has shown up in fish at these levels before, levels he said were more background readings than a real cause for concern.

Attempts to reach the state DEC yesterday were unsuccessful because the offices were closed for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said his agency was interested in reviewing state data for the area for comparisons while awaiting more sampling data.

"We don't consider this a serious situation," Sheehan said. "We would very much like to gather some more information before we make any judgments on this. There are several issues that may call these results into question."

Opponents of the nuclear plant said yesterday that they want to see more research done as well, to determine how significant the impact on the river is from the leaks.
"If the levels of strontium 90 in Hudson River fish are indeed above background levels, this confirms Riverkeeper's worst fears," said Lisa Rainwater, the Indian Point campaign coordinator for Riverkeeper.

"Based on the preliminary data, the leak is likely affecting the entire Hudson River ecosystem. This is a black eye for Entergy and their management of high-level radioactive waste."

http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_strontium90inHudson.html

Radioactive Rivers - The Brenk Report

2008-05-10T11:12:00.001+02:00

SA Radioactive Stream - 400,000 At High Risk

By Adriana Stuijt
Exclusive to Rense.com
SOURCE: http://www.rense.com/general77/sarad.htm

SOUTH AFRICA -- Elise Tempelhoff, an investigative journalist at the Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld in Johannesburg, South Africa, has published details of a restricted scientific German report which has found that more than 400,000 people living along a 100-km stretch of the Wonderfontein Spruit in Gauteng province are being seriously contaminated by, among others, dangerously high levels of radioactive radium-pollutants including lead and radioactive polonium - similar to the substance which had killed former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London on November 23, 2006.

This lethal pollution comes from Harmony Gold Mines, the fifth-largest producer of gold in the world, and which also produces uranium as a byproduct of its gold-mining operations. More than 400,000 people, their livestock and crops rely on water from this South African stream which has now been found so dangerously polluted.

The report by a group of German physicists headed by Dr Rainer Barthel stressed that there was ' no natural water in the whole area that was safe for use by humans, animals or plants - ' adding that the livestock of the subsistence-farmers living along this stream, are also stirring up the radioactive mud, thus endangering people even more -- and were at particularly high risk. People should not eat any meat from this livestock, drink any of its milk, nor consume any of the crops irrigated with this dangerously polluted water...

According to Barthel 's report, the water from the Wonderfontein Spruit, used to irrigate the crops, had absorbed polonium and lead, the radioactive by products of uranium and radium. More than 400,000 people live in the area ranging from the towns of Randfontein, Bekkersdal, Carletonville, Westonaria, Khutsong and Welverdiend, their livestock drinks from the river and their crops are irrigated from it.

Barthel was prevented from delivering two speeches from the report at the Environmin 2007 conference at the Pilanesberg nature reserve two weeks ago. He had to withdraw these speeches at short notice. These two excerpts had by then already been included in the literature distributed at the conference and were obtained by the Beeld journalist.

International experts say people who eat or drink these products could suffer liver or kidney failure or get cancer. It could also hamper children's growth and cause mental disability. German physicists working with Dr Rainer Barthel from BS Associates warn that the water from the Wonderfontein Spruit, which was used to irrigate the crops, had absorbed polonium and lead, the radioactive byproducts of uranium and radium. Cattle also contaminated

Cattle drinking from the Wonderfontein Spruit that churned up the uranium-rich mud, were also contaminated by these radioactive pollutants. Their meat and milk would also probably be poisonous. This report by the Germans, known as the Brenk report, was compiled on request of the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), who refused to make the contents known for the past three months. Beeld, the hard-hitting Afrikaans-language newspaper, had obtained excerpts from the report. Natural water sources unsafe

Barthel and his co-authors came to the conclusion in the report that the land in this area - where more than 400 000 people live in Randfontein, Bekkersdal, Carletonville, Westonaria, Khutsong and Welverdiend - was seriously polluted by overflow from sludge dams during 100 years of mining.

People in towns in this area received their drinking water piped in from Rand Water Company, but many tens of thousands of people on the farms and in the squatter-camps along its banks rely wholly on water from Wonderfontein Spruit.

Sandy Carroll, who was recently appointed environmental manager at Harmony Gold Mines, told Beeld newspaper that admittedly, 'the mining groups were informed about the dangers indicated in the report.'[ She said Harmony 'was talking to NNR and they were together seeking solutions. '

The West Rand district municipality planned to erect notices warning people along the Wonderfontein Spruit (which runs for 100km) not to use the water. Carroll replied in an e-mail to Beeld's enquiries: "Alternative water sources will be suggested."

The report stressed that there was no natural water in the whole area that was safe for use by humans, animals or plants.

Mariette Lieffering, an environmental activist who established the Public Environmental Arbiters (PEA), said said she had just written to the Human Rights Commission of South Africa to step in. A cabbage that was irrigated with water from the Wonderfontein Spruit catchment area and which was analysed by Dr Francois Durand, zoology lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, was found to contain 153 times more aluminium, 680 times more iron, 590 times more manganese, 980 times more vanadium that was recommended for human and also had too much zinc.

LINKS:

Beeld report on radioactive poisoning:

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News
/0,,2-7-1442_2156238,00.html

Harmony Gold Mines in SA:

http://www.harmony.co.za/

Russian poisoning:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2090034,00.html

SOURCE: http://www.rense.com/general77/sarad.htm

Alarm Spreads As Gold Mines Poison Rivers

2008-05-10T11:11:00.001+02:00

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Dec 3, 2007, 2007 (IPS/GIN via COMTEX) — Gold-mining companies operating to the west of Johannesburg, South Africa, stand accused of contaminating a number of water sources with radioactive pollutants.

One case involves the Wonderfontein Spruit — a stream that runs 90 kilometers from the outskirts of Johannesburg to the southwest past the towns of Krugersdorp, Bekkersdal, Carletonville and Khutsong, before flowing into the Mooi River near Potchefstroom.

Mariette Liefferink, an environmental activist, blames the mines for the high concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper, cobalt and zinc in the waters of the “spruit” (watercourse). She is particularly troubled by the levels of uranium, which gives off radioactive byproducts such as polonium and lead.

“The Wonderfontein Spruit is of major concern to us because every year the gold mines discharge 50 metric tons of uranium into the receiving watercourse. The Water Research Commission has found that there are approximately 1,100 milligrams per kilogram of uranium in the upper Wonderfontein Spruit and 900 milligrams per kilogram in the lower Wonderfontein Spruit area.”

Government bodies have commissioned several studies to ascertain the gravity of the water pollution in the Wonderfontein Spruit. The most recent study, known as the Brenk report, was commissioned by the National Nuclear Regulator — a governmental body set up to monitor and regulate the production and use of nuclear materials — and compiled under the direction of German physicist Rainer Barthel.

Initially the government was so embarrassed by the Brenk report that the National Nuclear Regulator refused to release it to the public. Barthel was due to present his findings to the Environmin 2007 conference July 24-25, so organizers of this event were told to withdraw his invitation.

When the Brenk Report was eventually made public in August, it resulted in a number of contradictory messages.

Harmony Gold — the world’s fifth largest gold producer, and one of the mines responsible for the uranium discharge — relayed to farmers on its lands a directive from the National Nuclear Regulator saying that livestock may not consume water from the Wonderfontein Spruit.

The report said water in the river had absorbed polonium and lead. Barthel also noted in the study that there was no natural water in the area that was safe for use by humans, animals or plants.

However, Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks said in a written response to a question posed in parliament that none of the 47 samples from the Wonderfontein Spruit exceeded the National Nuclear Regulator regulatory limit for public exposure. “The use of this water is therefore safe for drinking purposes, but it should be borne in mind that the water is raw or untreated river water that has not been treated to potable drinking water standards,” Hendricks said.

This assurance came despite her acknowledgement, in the same response, that “elevated levels of radioactive contamination have been detected in the sediments of dams and weirs along the river. This may pose potential problems should it be ingested by livestock churning up the sediments.”

The chief executive of the National Nuclear Regulator, Maurice Magugumela, has made an effort to quell public fears over this situation, saying that the poisoned water and sediments posed “no cause for concern.”

Source: http://angryscientist.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/mining-industry-malarkey/

Wonderfontein Radioactive Water, the Price of Gold

2008-05-10T11:11:00.000+02:00

Steven Lang
Johannesburg
Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/

Large gold-mining companies operating to the west of South Africa's commercial centre, Johannesburg, stand accused of contaminating a number of water sources with radioactive pollutants.

One case involves the Wonderfontein Spruit ("water course", in Afrikaans): a stream that runs 90 kilometres from the outskirts of Johannesburg to the south-west past the towns of Krugersdorp, Bekkersdal, Carletonville and Khutsong, before flowing into the Mooi River near Potchefstroom.

Mariette Liefferink, an environmental activist, blames the mines for the high concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper cobalt and zinc in the waters of the spruit. She is particularly troubled by the levels of uranium, which gives off radioactive by-products such as polonium and lead.

"The Wonderfontein Spruit is of major concern to us because every year the gold mines discharge 50 tonnes of uranium into the receiving water course. The Water Research Commission (a parastatal research body) has found that there are approximately 1,100 milligrammes per kilogramme of uranium in the upper Wonderfontein Spruit, and 900 milligrammes per kilogramme in the lower Wonderfontein Spruit area."

Heavy metal concentrations are higher in the upper reaches of the river because a large percentage of the pollutants sink into the sediments as water flows downstream. This means that under normal circumstances water tests in lower areas do not cause great concern, and users may feel that they are not under threat from heavy metal contaminants.

If, however, the sediments are in any way disturbed -- by cattle, or children playing in the river, for example -- the uranium can easily be dislodged from the sediments and reabsorbed into the water.

Mixed messages

Government bodies have commissioned several studies to ascertain the gravity of the water pollution in the Wonderfontein Spruit. The most recent study, known as the Brenk report, was commissioned by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) -- a governmental body set up to monitor and regulate the production and use of nuclear materials -- and compiled under the direction of German physicist Rainer Barthel.

Initially government was so embarrassed by the Brenk report that the NNR refused to release it to the public, and as Barthel was due to present his findings to the Environmin 2007 conference on Jul. 24-25, organisers of this event were told to withdraw his invitation.

When the Brenk Report was eventually made public in August, it resulted in a number of contradictory messages.

Harmony Gold -- the world's fifth largest gold producer, and one of the mines responsible for the uranium discharge -- relayed to farmers on its lands a directive from the NNR saying that livestock may not consume water from the Wonderfontein Spruit.

The report said that water in the river had absorbed polonium and lead. Barthel also noted in the study that there was no natural water in the whole area that was safe for use by humans, animals or plants.

However, Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks said in a written response to a question posed in parliament that none of the 47 samples from the Wonderfontein Spruit exceeded the NNR regulatory limit for public exposure. "The use of this water is therefore safe for drinking purposes, but it should be borne in mind that the water is raw or untreated river water that has not been treated to potable drinking water standards."

This assurance came despite her acknowledgement, in the same response, that "Elevated levels of radioactive contamination have been detected in the sediments of dams and weirs along the river. This may pose potential problems should it be ingested by live-stock churning up the sediments."

The chief executive of the NNR, Maurice Magugumela, has made an effort to quell public fears over this situation, saying that the poisoned water and sediments posed "no cause for concern."

In addition, the city council of Potchefstroom has gone to great lengths to assure its residents that the city's drinking water is safe. Potchefstroom sources much of its water from the Boskop dam which is partly fed by the Wonderfontein Spruit.

"Treated water from the Boskop and Potchefstroom dams are of high quality especially regarding its heavy metal and uranium content," said mayoral spokesman Kaizer Mohau, in a statement.

There is no reason to doubt Mohau's statement, which must certainly comfort city residents who drink tap water.

But it will do little for the estimated 150,000 people living in impoverished settlements along the Wonderfontein Spruit's banks. They may have no choice but to drink untreated water from the river.

Acid mine drainage

Gold mines are also finding themselves in the dock over acid mine drainage, another means by which heavy metals are being released into the environment.

Mining operations expose heavy metals and sulphur compounds that have been locked away in the ground. Rising ground water then leaches these compounds out of the exposed earth, resulting in acid mine drainage that can continue to pollute the environment decades after mines have been closed down.

In 2002, acidic water began decanting out of a disused mine on Randfontein Estates about 42 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg. The property belonged at that time to Harmony Gold. In terms of South Africa's National Water Act the owner of land is accountable for the quality of the water flowing out of that ground.

While some of this acidic water was produced by Harmony's own operations, a large proportion was generated by its competitors.

Mining companies extracting ore in the Witwatersrand area, to the east and west of Johannesburg, have created a 300 kilometre labyrinth of interlinking passages, according to the 'Water Wheel' magazine (Jan./Feb. 2007 issue).

The companies have to work together to make sure their respective operations are not flooded out; this means that in some cases even disused mines have to be pumped dry to ensure the viability of a neighbouring shaft.

Water coming out of the disused mine in Randfontein could not simply be channelled into the nearest river because it was far too acidic and could have had serious consequences for the environment.

As an emergency measure, Harmony fed the water into Robinson Lake, at that time a popular recreational area where fishing was a favourite pastime. Today the lake has very high levels of uranium and a pH level of 2.2, which makes it as acidic as lemon juice and completely incapable of sustaining any life forms.

The NNR measured in the water a uranium concentration of 16 milligrammes per litre, obliging it to declare Robinson Lake a radiation area.

Harmony Gold has spent more than 14 million dollars on capital and operational expenses over the last five years to treat the acidic water emerging from disused mines. An additional 200,000 dollars is spent every month to continue with the treatment processes: in its 'Sustainable Development Report 2007' the company claims that it ". . . treats the water to acceptable standards given the current treatment technologies available."

What Harmony Gold finds acceptable, however, may be less so to environmentalists.

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/

Enough of Uranium says Froneman

2008-03-03T10:36:00.001+02:00

Enough was enough, says Froneman
Source: http://www.miningmx.com/energy/952794.htm
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Thu, 21 Feb 2008

[miningmx.com] -- IT was time to move on, and time for a change because a chief executive should only be in the position for five to seven years, said Neal Froneman, who suddenly and unexpectedly quit his position as the head of Uranium One on Thursday.

Froneman, who spent the five years building Uranium One from scratch, announced his resignation at the same time the company issued a second downward revision of uranium production targets in four months because of problems in South Africa and Kazakhstan.

Uranium One shares fell hard in South Africa on news of Froneman’s departure and the production revision, wiping out some R5.5bn in market capitalisation.

The latest reverse in fortunes for Uranium One played no role in his decision, Froneman said.

“Uranium One has moved into a very different phase. There’s going to be a lot more focus on operational issues in coming years and it is an opportune time for me to move on,” Froneman told Miningmx in an interview.

“I’ve had a very difficult, but exciting five years. It gets to a point where enough is enough," he said.

“I left of my own accord. I could have stayed on, but I’ve always said the appropriate tenure for a CEO is five to seven years,” he said, adding he has offered his services as a consultant to Uranium One, which had aspirations to challenge Cameco for the position as number one uranium producer.

Jean Nortier, a company stalwart who is filling the CEO position in the interim, suggested the ongoing problems at the Dominion mine in South Africa could have been one of the causes to prompt Froneman's departure.

"The issue of Dominion raised a lot of tensions internally and it's not nice when an operations doesn't function optimally. You not only have to deal with staff working longer hours, but you also have the difficulties of the promises you made to the market," Nortier told Miningmx.

"Neal's decision was very quick otherwise we would have put in place a proper succession plan. It was a pretty big surprise," he said. Asked whether his departure could have been better planned, leaving a succession strategy in place, Froneman said there was a lot of talent in the company. “I think there’s good succession in place in the company,” he said.

“It’s very difficult to prepare the market for a change,” he said, arguing that by telling the market in advance he was leaving it could have built up an overhang of shares. “Either I could have told the market well ahead of time that I was leaving, but that creates its own longer-lasting damage, or I could just get to the point and leave,” he said. “At executive level, you should just resign and move on.”

Froneman is going to take a break of month or more before devoting his attention to Aflease Gold, a company majority held by Uranium One and one which has long headed as CEO.

“There’s always sadness in leaving behind something you’ve worked so hard to build, but I’m very proud of what’s been achieved. I’ve mixed feelings. I’m happy to be getting into something new,” he said.

The first thing he’d like to do is take the company to an offshore listing, most likely to be on a North American bourse, before looking at mergers and acquisitions.

There needs to be more liquidity in Aflease Gold shares, and while he says he’s not expecting Uranium One to completely exit its holding, Froneman would like to see more Aflease Gold shares released for the retail market.

There are mounting challenges in operating a mining company in South Africa, with the power shortages and the government's approach to enforcing safer working conditions on mines being just two of these, he said.

“If you talk to any mining company in South Africa at the moment you will hear they are operating under ridiculous conditions. The power outages have having a bigger impact than is being realised in the market,” Froneman said.

The Department of Minerals and Energy’s approach of temporarily shutting down shafts when there’s a death on a mine is counterproductive, he said.

“People react very badly when they’re put under pressure from a safety point of view,” he said. “The big stick approach doesn’t work. It’s been tried before and didn’t work.”

Once he’s achieved what he wants to at Aflease Gold, most likely when its growth aspirations have been met, he will move on to something else. “I’m at that stage in my life where I’m looking at other options, but there’s nothing planned.”

********************************************************************************************

Froneman says Dominion a solid asset as Uranium One continues its slide

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=127674

By: Matthew Hill
Published: 22 Feb 08 - 16:44

While distressed uranium-miner Uranium One's stock continued its downward spiral on Friday, shedding a further 15%, questions had been raised about the legitimacy of its Dominion Reefs Uranium Mine, near Klerksdorp, after 2008 production forecasts were slashed by one-quarter.

However, Neal Froneman, who suddenly stepped down as Uranium One CEO on Thursday, said he continued to believe that the project was solid.

"I am still of the view that Dominion is a solid asset," he told Mining Weekly Online in a telephone interview.

Uranium One was trading 15% down at around R32 a share by 11:00 in Johannesburg, before regaining some ground to close at just more than 10% down for the day.

Consultancy firm SRK Consultants compiled the competent persons report on the project in 2006, and the author who signed it off said that the firm had done it in compliance with international standards.

Partner and corporate consultant Roger Dickson said that SRK had no reason to believe that its report was not 100% accurate.

A media report on Friday said that Anglo American had compiled a report on Dominion ten years earlier, which reported a recovered grade that was less one-half of what SRK cited.

Dickson said that he had not seen such a report, nor was aware of the existence of one.

He said he "found it quite hard to believe" that Anglo American would have spent R20-million on such a report, as the media report suggested.

Uranium faces continued bumpy ride

2008-02-05T12:55:00.000+02:00

Uranium faces continued bumpy ride

Source and copyright: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=126044

By: Matthew Hill

Published: 4 Feb 08 - 18:26

The long-term fundamentals for the uranium price looked strong, with possible northward movement in the future, unless there was a worldwide recession, an expert on the nuclear fuel said on Monday.

The 2007 uranium spot price was plagued by volatility, shooting upward in the first half of the year to an all-time high of $138/lb, but then dropping nearly as quickly to trade at current levels of below $90/lb.

These prices would remain volatile until a clear picture of the future in supply and demand emerged, US consultancy firm Ux Consulting president Jeff Combs told his audience at the Mining Indaba, in Cape Town.

But, while the spot price might be dropping, long-term contracts were holding steady, at levels around $95/lb.

The factors affecting uranium's outlook included the number of nuclear reactors that countries around the world were building, and the fact that a large amount of the fuel used in these was produced by a few "megaprojects", which made supply susceptible to disruption, Combs said.

This was illustrated by flooding issues at mines like Canada's Cigar Lake project.

Some 50% of new uranium production would come out of Africa and Kazakhstan.

"There should be no problem if this production comes through to meet demand," Combs said.

However, he stated that these projects needed to be stepped up.

"The production response has been anaemic, except for Kazakhstan," Combs said.

On the demand side, there could be 86 countries producing nuclear electricity by 2050, which equated to 630 reactors that would need uranium to generate power.

China had a big appetite for the fuel, but Russia and India also had significant nuclear ambitions. There were also a number of European countries looking to boost their nuclear power generation capacities.

Egypt had also said that it would build its first nuclear reactor, with Turkey planning two to four of its own.

The Ukraine also had plans to build 15 000 MW of nuclear power capacity by 2030, Combs said.

The South African government had also declared nuclear energy to be a big part of its new power-generation capacity build programme, with 25 000 MW additional nuclear power-generation capacity to come on stream by 2025.

Source and copyright: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=126044

What to do with 'those dangerous uranium stones'

2008-02-04T14:31:00.000+02:00

What to do with 'those dangerous uranium stones'
By Helena Kingwill, free-lance journalist and independent film-maker

Nuclear Energy is the government’s choice as “the cleaner, more eco-friendly” solution to South Africa’s increasing energy crisis. Industrialists promoting this technology use the argument that it is more environmentally friendly because in comparison to the monstrous CO2 emissions being pumped into our atmosphere by South Africa’s dinosaur coal powered power stations, the apparently slick, dinky high-tech Pebble Bed Modular reactors (PBMRs) look cleaner (in theory—they have not been built yet.) Even the controversial existing Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) at Koeberg doesn’t look like it’s contributing to global warming at the rate of her smoke-bellowing coal counterparts. However there is much more to the process of creating nuclear energy than meets the eye. The mining and processing of nuclear fuel does in fact create CO2 emissions, but that is almost beside the point. Media reports about global warming, important as they are, have given the spin doctors for nuclear energy a way to use the public’s own fear to pull wool over their eyes. What about the nuclear waste?

If Eskom's nuclear plan goes ahead, tons of nuclear waste will be produced every year. A whole radioactive industry will be built around it, from the mining of uranium to the processing of the fuel, all of which produce forms of waste. Anything that comes into contact with radiation is regarded as nuclear waste. It all has to be transported along our roads to the SA’s main nuclear waste-dump – Vaalputs near Springbok, from the city highways to the slippery gravel tracks of Namaqualand, where it is very easy for trucks to overturn.

Components of spent nuclear fuel (High-Level Waste) remain toxic for millions of years. Although we have been making it for over 20 years, South Africa still has no official plan for the safe disposal of this waste. Billions of Rands have already been spent on developing the P.B.M.R. yet the safe disposal of the waste it will produce, not to mention the decommissioning of the actual plant, have not fully been accounted for. Obviously this is much longer than any company or government can account for.

If this waste is buried, it could leak into the underground water and poison the ecosystem around it, spreading radiation like a cancer. The earth is constantly moving and shifting. According to paleontologist Dr. John Anderson, “continents drift at the rate of the growth of your fingernails.” One drop of nuclear waste can cause cancer, so by planting nuclear waste in the earth, we could be said to be planting a malignant tumor in the earth’s skin. This is the central metaphor of my documentary: “Buried in Earthskin” which has been screened at the Earthnotes Festival.

The community who are the focus of the film, and which the film constantly returns to, is a group of Namakhoi women whose husbands are workers at the nuclear waste dump Vaalputs in Namaqualand. They live in a village (Nourivier) about 100 km away from the waste dump but are extremely worried about the effects of the radiation on their health. Their greatest concern is that the nuclear waste could be seeping into the underground water supply. They are disappointed by false promises made by the apartheid government who deceived them into believing that the place was going to be a game reserve. They are surprisingly well informed about radiation and its possible effects on the environment and their health.

The Namakhoi people of Nourivier live in grass-domed homes and follow many old ways in their lifestyle. They are aware of which plants to pick for medicine and are very close to the earth. The women bake bread once a week in wood fired ovens made of clay. According to the Namaqualand Recreation and Education Centre (NAMREC) based in Springbok, although white farmers were moved off land near the dump, many "coloured" communities were not taken into account when the nuclear waste storage facility, Vaalputs, was planned. All around the world, the earth’s first peoples have been the most scarred victims of nuclear technology. In South Africa nuclear workers have suffered health problems due to being exposed to radiation, but have not been compensated due to the fact that they have not been able to prove, nor been in a position to sue or prove that their health problems are due to being exposed to radiation. “The distances are too large and the politics too big,’ one worker told me. This particular character, an ex-Vaalputs worker living in Nourivier, confided that he was never given the results of blood-tests taken one day. He felt that his body was un-naturally worn down by his work at the waste dump. (He died within a year of the interview.)

In comparison to nuclear technology, the government has paid far less interest in researching sustainable renewable alternative technologies such as solar and wind power. The reason given for this is that they will not be as reliable for big industry as centralized power stations. If they were given a chance, researchers developing this technology could find ways to store the energy generated by solar and wind technologies. More focus should be put on ways to reduce our wasteful consumption of energy. (Recent loose screws at Koeberg plunged half the Cape into darkness last year and forced us into a new awareness regarding reducing our energy consumption.)

Respected economist author and academic Patrick Bond puts us in the picture about the history of government spending with regards to energy, with the figures he has at his fingertips: “The problem of priorities appears to be getting worse, not better.” He said “Expenditure on renewable energy was less than 0.5% of the DME budget in 2002/03…. Indeed, perhaps the greatest waste remains in the area of nuclear research and development.”
He explains that historically the nuclear industry has always consumed more than its share of the national energy budget. Ironically it was started during the apartheid era, when the National Party secretly built 6 nuclear bombs. (These were officially dissembled when the A.N.C. came into power. However this new surge of interest in the technology makes one wonder if there may be a second agenda.)

“First considered in the 1960s, South Africa’s nuclear industry began in 1974 with the construction of the Koeberg nuclear station“, Bond explains. “The plant was commissioned a decade later. Nuclear development consumed two-thirds of the DME’s annual budget but only generated about 3% of South Africa’s primary energy supply and 5% of electricity in 1997”, explains Bond. “Eskom has been working on the PBMR since 1993, and therefore has a strong financial interest in keeping the programme going”, he says.

If only the present Government in its position of power on this decision about the future of our country’s energy sources would remember Nelson Mandela’s words when he spoke at the opening to the 5th session of the World Commission on the Ocean: "Our policy must rest on the solid moral foundation of dedication to the primacy of people and their long-term well being. We have to be on guard against temptations of short-term benefits and pressures from powerful forces at the expense of long-term interests of all. We cannot afford to bargain away the birthright of future generations."

The fate of future generations hangs in the balance, especially those poverty stricken communities living near the places where they will be mining, processing, burning and burying the waste from those “dangerous uranium stones’’ as Namakhoi elder, Oom Japie Dekeurs, calls them. Why not invest in even cleaner solar and wind energy projects which could be run by the communities themselves, generating revenue by selling excess power into the grid when weather is favourable, and creating far less hazardous employment for locals? Such decentralized projects would really bring power to the people thus preventing the burning of the last few trees and cutting down on lung diseases such as TB agitated by smoke, not to mention the tragic runaway fires that we see too often. Why I wonder, are we so stuck in the nuclear rut?
For more information about Buried in Earthskin, please contact Helena Kingwill at hdkingwill @ polka.co.za

About Buried in Earthskin:
A young female journalist sets off on a road trip to Namaqualand to see where the nuclear waste is buried. She meets a group of Namakhoi women living near the nuclear dump. In an attempt to understand the government’s decision to invest in nuclear as apposed to renewable energy, Helena visits experts and Nuclear facilities all over South Africa in what becomes a spiritual as well as picturesque physical journey which takes place over two years.

Credits: Helena Kingwill 2004 South Africa 56min

SOURCE: http://www.dlist-benguela.org/Monthly_Newsletter/Newsletter_4/What_to_do_with_%27those_dangerous_uranium_stones%27/

Ireland rejects uranium prospecting applications

2007-12-04T11:06:00.001+02:00

Ireland rejects uranium prospecting applications, signals 'wider policy decision'

SOURCE: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=122718
By: Liezel Hill
Published: 3 Dec 07 - 21:38

Ireland's Natural Resources Minister, Eamon Ryan, said on Monday that would not grant prospecting licenses to two companies which had applied for government permission to explore for uranium in the country.

The rejections signalled a "wider policy decision to prohibit such activity in Ireland", the Ministry said in a statement.

"I have decided...as Minister of Communcications, Energy & Natural Resources, I will not license any prospecting for uranium in Ireland."
Nuclear generation of electricity is outlawed in Ireland, and Ryan said that it would be "hypocritical" to allow the mining of uranium for use in other countries.

"A prospecting license is the first step in the mining process. Granting a license carries an implicit policy agreement permitting its extraction should a viable prospect be discovered," he said.

"There are also significant environmental and public health concerns surrounding uranium mining, including contamination of ground and surface water supplies and radiation levels."

Spot uranium prices reached a record high of $138/lb earlier this year, helped, in part, by setbacks at Cigar Lake, a big new mine under construction in Canada, as well as output constraints at several other mines around the world.

Prices have since retreated somewhat, but Neal Froneman, who heads TSX- and JSE-listed Uranium One, told Mining Weekly Online last month that he expected uranium spot prices to touch new highs in the next year to 18 months.

SOURCE: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=122718

Nuclear Emissions - Helen Caldicott

2007-10-17T18:16:00.000+02:00

URANIUM MINING, MILLING, ENRICHING, ROUTINE RELEASES AND ACCIDENTAL RELEASES

In the last chapter we discussed the medical, physical and biological characteristics of radiation.

In this chapter we will deal with the toxic radioactive legacy of each step of the nuclear fuel chain and the ecological and health impacts that this legacy bequeaths for this and all future generations

As we proceed through this chapter it will become more than obvious that the steps necessary for the production of nuclear power are so medically dangerous that the production, dissemination and distribution of nuclear materials should be subject to the same stringent taxes and restrictions as those placed on the global production of carbon dioxide, or, more obviously perhaps this technology should be abandoned immediately. In fact it beggars the mind that we have benignly allowed the nuclear industry to get away with its severely polluting technology for so long.

As a physician I see the extraordinary efforts that I and my colleagues pursue to save the lives of our patients suffering from cancer and genetic diseases, let alone the amount of money allocated to find the cure to cancer. Yet here we have an industry that is actively promoting and incurring massive increases in these disastrous diseases, and society has not yet called their bluff. It is beyond time that we did.

Uranium Mining

Uranium mining began in Europe in the late part of the 19th century when Madam Curie was refining pitch blend from uranium ore and discovering the wonders of radiation. Large scale mining commenced 65 years ago specifically to provide fuel for nuclear weapons. Much of the uranium was located on Navajo and Pueblo tribal land. The mining continued unabated for many decades thereafter and large numbers of Native Americans were employed as below-ground and above-ground miners.

People who mine uranium below the ground are at great risk because they are exposed to a high concentration of radioactive gas called radon 220 which accumulates in the air of the mine. Radon is a daughter or decay product of uranium, and is a highly carcinogenic alpha emitter which if inhaled, deposits in the air passages of the lung irradiating cells which then become malignant. As a result, uranium miners have suffered from a very high incidence of lung cancer. One fifth to one half of the uranium miners in North America, many of whom were Native Americans, have died and are continuing to die of lung cancer. Records reveal that uranium miners in other countries including Germany, Namibia and Russia suffer a similar fate.

Another lethal uranium daughter is radium 226, which is an alpha emitter with a half life of 1600 years. This radioactive element is notorious in the medical literature. In the early part of the 20th century women painted numbers on watch dials with radium enriched paint, so that the numbers glowed in the dark with radioactivity. To make the figures precise, they licked the tips of the paint brushes thereby swallowing large amounts of radium. Because radium is a calcium analogue it deposited in their bones. Many of these women subsequently died of osteogenic sarcoma – a highly malignant bone cancer, affecting their facial bones while others succumbed to leukemia, because white blood cells which were mutated are manufactured in the bone marrow. Uranium miners are exposed to a similar risk because radium is an integral component of uranium dust in the mine. When they swallow the dust, radium is absorbed from the gut and deposits in their bones.

Uranium ore also emits gamma radiation which emanates from the ore face, so the miners are also exposed to a constant whole-body radiation exposure (like X-rays) emitted by other uranium daughters, which irradiates their bodies and continuously exposes their testicles.

As the uranium ore is mined, and the uranium is extracted, large quantities of radioactive dirt and soil are discarded and left lying in huge heaps adjacent to the mine exposed to the air and the rain. This material is called tailings. Most tailings in North America are situated on indigenous tribal land of the Navajo nation and the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, and on the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, Canada. Millions of tons of radioactive dirt constantly leak radon 220 into the air exposing the indigenous populations who live nearby in their pueblos and settlements. As they inhale the radon, many of these people have and are developing lung cancer.

Rain also leaches soluble radium 226 through the tailings piles into the underground water which often is the source of drinking water for these people. When radium enters streams and rivers it bio-concentrates thousands of times at each step in the food chain of the aquatic life and terrestrial plants. Because it is tasteless and odourless, people in these contaminated populations cannot tell whether they are drinking radioactive water, breathing radioactive air or eating fish or food containing radium 226 which induces bone cancer or leukemia.

Hundreds of mines and tailings heaps lie exposed to the air and wind on Navajo land. Thousands of Navajos are still affected by uranium induced cancers, and will continue to be so for thousands of years unless remediation takes place. In total 265 million tons of uranium tailings pollute the American South West.

Ecological Racism

There has never been any attempt by the government or the nuclear industry to clean up this massive radioactive pollution which contaminates tribal land. It would be hard to imagine that the nuclear industry would be permitted to leave millions of tons of radioactive tailings lying adjacent to the well-heeled town of New Canaan Connecticut or near the Rockefeller estate in the Adirondacks.

Uranium Milling

The US federal government covers the cost of milling uranium. The ore is crushed and chemically treated at the milling plant in the American South West where it is converted to yellow cake. As in the mining process, the waste ore is discarded on the ground. These mill tailings contain radium and a dangerous radioactive element called thorium – a uranium daughter and a high energy gamma emitter with a half life of 80,000 years. Thorium is used in colour television sets. Over the last 40 years over 100 million tons of mill tailings have accumulated in the American South West

Human cost is again important in the energy discussion. To illustrate the dangers of loose unguarded nuclear material, in the mid 1960s, local contractors at Grand Junction in Colorado discovered acres of discarded mill tailings. Not knowing they were radioactive they used them for cheap landfill and concrete mix. Schools, hospitals, private homes roads, an airport and shopping mall were constructed from this material. In 1970, local pediatricians noticed an increased incidence of cleft lip, palate and other congenital anomalies amongst newborn babies born to parents who lived in these radioactive structures, which continually emitted gamma radiation and radon gas.

The EPA allocated monies to the University of Colorado Medial Center to study the correlation between the birth defects and the radioactive dwellings. However one year into the study, funds were abolished because, the government said, it had to save money for budgetary purposes.

Uranium Enrichment

As described in the second chapter, the uranium 235 isotope is enriched from a low concentration of 0.7% to 3% for fuel in nuclear power plants. If uranium 235 is enriched above a concentration of 50% it can be used as nuclear weapons fuel.

Workers at all stages of the enrichment process are exposed to whole body gamma radiation from daughters in the uranium. But the most serious aspect of enrichment is the material that is discarded, and that is uranium 238. This is called “depleted uranium” (DU) because it has been depleted of its uranium 235. But it is not depleted radioactively.

DU is lying around in hundreds of thousands of leaking disintegrating barrels at the enrichment facilities in Paducah Kentucky, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Portsmouth Ohio. At Padacah alone, some 38,000 cylinders of DU await disposal. DU has contaminated the ground water, forcing the government to provide alternative drinking water for the local residents.

But the Pentagon, in its wisdom has found a nifty use for this radioactive waste. Because uranium 238 is 1.7 times more dense than lead it has been found to be the ideal antitank weapon. When shot out of a cannon at great speed its ten pound mass develops great momentum, so the solid uranium antitank shell cuts through the steel on the other fellow’s tank like a hot knife through butter.

But DU has several unfortunate properties. It is pyrophoric which means that it bursts into flame upon impact and up to 80% disintegrates into finely powdered aerosol which is distributed to the four winds. It is radioactive, and it has a half life of 4.5 billion years

Nevertheless, the Pentagon is very keen about this weapon. In the 1991 Gulf war invasion they used 360 tons of it in the form of antitank shells. In the 2002 invasion they already have deployed well over 2000 tons, in cities such as Baghdad where half the population of five million people is children who play in the burned out tanks and on the sandy dusty ground. Children are ten to twenty times more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults. My pediatric colleagues in Basra where this ordinance was used in 1991 report a seven fold increase in childhood cancer and a seven fold increase in gross congenital abnormalities.

Uranium is a heavy metal. It enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure. It can induce kidney cancer. As a calcium analogue, it lodges in bones where like plutonium, it causes bone cancer and leukemia. Last but not least it is excreted in the semen where it mutates genes in the sperm. This may be one of the causes of the huge increase in congenital disease reported in Basra.

Because of the infinitely long half-life of uranium 238, the food, the air and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated. T

In summary, the two gulf wars have been nuclear wars and people, particularly children are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease for ever more.

Other countries involved in uranium enrichment include Britain, China, Russia, Israel, Japan, Germany, Argentina, France, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Brazil and India. Any of these countries if they so desired could make nuclear weapons if they decided to enrich their uranium beyond 50%. America set the example and the world follows.

Fuel Fabrication.

After milling, the uranium fuel is made into cylindrical ceramic pellets the size of a cigarette filter and placed in zirconium fuel rods, half and inch thick and twelve to fourteen feet long. Each rod contains at least 250 pellets. About 50,000 of these rods are then packed into the core of a thousand megawatt reactor within a cylindrical space, fourteen feet high and twenty feet in diameter. Fuel fabrication workers are once again exposed to gamma radiation emanating from the uranium as well as to radium radon gas and uranium dust.

It Does Not Take An Accident

Routine Releases

Once the fuel in a nuclear reactor reaches critical mass, the high radiation ambiance causes uranium fuel to swell over time, pinhole breaks appear in the zirconium cladding and some faulty welds rupture in the fuel rods themselves releasing radioactive isotopes into the cooling water. In addition, the radiation emitted through the wall of the fuel rods activates water molecules and impurities in the water itself. For example, neutrons emitted from the fuel rods interact with water molecules to form tritium – a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The primary coolant - water which cools the reactor core thus becomes intensely radioactive.

This thermally hot primary coolant is piped through a steam generator to heat the secondary cooling system. This secondary water is converted to steam which turns the generators to produce the electricity. The primary coolant is not supposed to mix with the secondary coolant but of course it does, allowing radiation to be released to the environment from this secondary system.

Because of these factors and many more to be described, a nuclear power plant cannot operate without routinely releasing radioactivity into the air and water.

Radioactive gases which leak from fuel rods are routinely released or “vented” into the atmosphere at every nuclear reactor. Before release they are temporarily stored to allow the short lived isotopes to decay and then released to the atmosphere through engineered holes in the reactor roof and from the steam generators. This process is called “venting”. About 100 cubic feet of radioactive gases are also released hourly from the condensers at the reactor. Planned ventings increase in frequency when the reactor shuts down due to mechanical malfunctions. Accidental ventings are not infrequent.

Planned “purges” when radioactive gases are actively flushed into the atmosphere by a fan, are officially permitted by the NRC so that utility operators can decrease the intensely radioactive environment into which maintenance workers must enter. Older reactors are allowed 22 purges per year during routine operation and 2 purges per year during cold shut-down. (Cold shut occurs when the fission reaction is stopped at the reactor and 30 tons of very radioactive fuel is removed and replaced by new fuel).

Some of the more dangerous gases such as iodine 131 are usually trapped by filters, but not always. After the radioactive iodine is filtered, noble gases are routinely released. The nuclear industry argues that noble gases are chemically inert and therefore not capable of reacting biochemically in the body but they actually decay to daughter isotopes which themselves are chemically very reactive.

Noble gases have names that remind me of superman - xenon, argon, krypton. There are many varieties of these elements, some of which I will describe below. They are inhaled into the lung, particularly on a day when a meteorological inversion system causes the plume of radioactive gases to cling to the ground in a concentrated form.

Noble gases are high energy gamma emitters and they are readily absorbed from the lung, and enter the blood stream. Because they are very fat soluble, they tend to locate in the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, adjacent to the testicles and ovaries. There, they can induce significant mutations in the eggs and sperm of the people living adjacent to a reactor.

There have never been any epidemiological studies performed on the effects of exposure to the noble gases xenon and krypton. This is a grave deficit in the study of radiation biology because these gases are so ubiquitous around nuclear reactors, and are released with irresponsible impunity.

But many noble gases decay to other more dangerous isotopes, all of which have different metabolic pathways in the body. I will describe several of the more dangerous.

Xenon 137 with a half life of 3.9 minutes converts almost immediately to the notoriously dangerous cesium 137 with a half life of 30 years.
Krypton 90 , half life of 33 seconds, decays to rubidium 90, half life of 2.9 minutes, then to the medically toxic strontium 90, half life 28 of years.
Xenon 135 decays to cesium 135 with an incredibly long half life of 3 million years. Large amounts of xenon 133 are released at operating reactors, and although it has a relatively short half life of 5.3 days, it remains radioactive for 106 days.
Krypton 85 which has a half life of 10.4 years is a powerful gamma emitter.
Argon 39 has a 265 year half life.

Other dangerous noble gases include xenon 141, 143 and 144 which decay to cerium 141, 143 and 144. According to the National Council on Radiation protection (NCRP Report No 60) these three cerium isotopes which are beta emitters, are abundant products of nuclear fission reactions and have moderately long half lives. They bio-concentrate in the food chain and they irradiate the lung, liver, skeleton and gastrointestinal tract where they act as potent carcinogens.

A very important and little discussed isotope that is routinely emitted in large quantities into the air and waste water from nuclear power plants is tritium, (H3) a radioactive isotope of hydrogen which is composed of one proton and two neutrons. Tritium has a half life of 12.4 years and as such is radioactive for 248 years. H3 combines readily with oxygen to form tritiated water (H3O).

Because it is impossible to remove tritium gas or tritiated water via filters, it is released continuously from reactors into the air and into lakes, rivers or seas – depending upon the reactor location. At least 1360 curies of tritium are released annually from each reactor.

Tritium gas is an interesting radioactive material which is utilized extensively in exit signs, runway signs at airports and on watch faces. But it is very reactive and tends to chemically bind with any material in which it is enclosed.

Tritiated water in particular is scary material. If one is immersed in a cloud of tritiated water on a foggy day near a reactor it is absorbed straight through the skin. It is also readily absorbed through the lungs and the GI tract.

Because tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, all the radiation it gives off is readily absorbed by the surrounding cells, hence it is biologically very mutagenic.

There is a vast literature on the biological effects of tritium demonstrating that it is highly mutagenic and causes chromosomal breaks and aberrations. In animal experiments it has been shown to induce a five fold increase in ovarian tumours in offspring of exposed parents while also causing testicular atrophy and shrinkage of the ovaries. It causes decreased brain weight in the exposed offspring and mental retardation with an increased incidence of brain tumours in some animals. Increased perinatal mortality was observed in these experiments as well as a high incidence of stunted and deformed foetuses.

These effects were observed with surprisingly low concentrations of tritium, becoming three times more dangerous biologically at very low doses.

Tritium is also more dangerous when it becomes organically bound in molecules of food. As such it is incorporated into molecules including DNA within bodily cells. Chronic exposure to contaminated food causes 10% of the tritium to become organically bound within the body where it has a biological half life of 21 to 550 days - meaning that it can reside in the body from one year to twenty five years.

When tritium is released to the environment it is taken up by plants and trees, partially incorporating into the ecosystem. Trees constantly transpire water vapour into the air it has been found that higher concentrations of tritium occur at night at breathing height in a forest that has incorporated tritium from a nearby reactor.

Let’s look again at the reactor.

The primary coolant water becomes extremely radioactive over time because the fuel rods leak. But to add fuel to the fire, the NRC is now allowing nuclear operators to retain uranium fuel in reactors for six years instead of three, lengthening the “burnup” time and substantially increasing the radiation levels in the fuel. As well the NRC is allowing a concentration of 4.5% uranium enrichment in the fuel instead of the previously approved maximum of 3.5%. This policy will also substantially increase the amount of radioactivity produced in the fuel rods.

The longer the time that the zirconium fuel cladding is exposed to high levels of radiation, and the higher the radiation levels, the greater the damage to the cladding subsequent leakage of radioactive materials into the primary coolant.

Radioactive corrosion or activation products not the result of uranium fission are produced as neutrons bombard the metal piping and the reactor containment. These elements which are powerfully radioactive include cobolt 60, iron 55, nickel 63, radioactive manganese, niobium, zinc and chromium. These materials slough off from the pipes into the primary coolant. Officially called CRUD (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits), this material is so intensely radioactive that it poses a severe hazard to maintenance workers and inspectors in certain areas of the reactor.

According to David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, during shutdowns of reactors, the utilities not uncommonly flush out pipes, heat exchangers etc to remove highly radioactive CRUD build-up. Some of the CRUD is sent to radioactive waste dumps while some is released to the river, lake or sea on which the reactor is located.

The utilities admit that about 12 gallons of intensely radioactive primary coolant leaks daily into the secondary coolant via the steam generator through breaks in the pipes which is then released to the air. Some of these emissions are not even monitored. Likewise about 4,000 gallons of primary coolant water are intentionally released to the environment on a daily basis while some just leaks out unplanned. Many other emissions are simply not monitored.

In summary, radioactive gases, radioactive water, and CRUD particulates are intentionally released in daily batches, some in continuous streams and some during accidents.

Very radioactive primary coolant filters which frequently contain often contain intensely carcinogenic plutonium 238, 239, 241, americium and curium are shipped to nuclear waste facilities. Other dangerous elements in the filters include technetium 99 with a 211,100 year half life, iodine 129 with 15,700,000 year half life, carbon 14 with a 5700 year half life, nickel with a 100.1 year half life, and plutonium 241 with a 14.29 year half life.

Almost certainly these extraordinarily dangerous materials which are present in the primary coolant are escaping also in small quantities via the gaseous or liquid effluents into the environment at the nuclear power plant where they will bio-concentrate in the food chain, there to enter human bodies!

It is instructive to note that most of the data of radiation releases are not real measurements but are only estimates made by computerized mathematical models based on data generated from operational reactors, field and laboratory tests and plant specific design calculations.

Hence the nuclear industry is consistently guessing about its radioactive releases and has no real idea what specific isotopes are escaping from its radioactive mausoleums. They even admit that when their operating data is non existent, information that was confabulated – made up and drawn from laboratory and field tests and from engineering judgement! The reference for this material is dated 1985, the last such document published by the NRC available for the public scrutiny. Also note that this last document was published when reactors were relatively young and plagued with fewer corrosion and maintenance problems.

In other words, all the releases are done in secret, they are at best guesstimates, and the general public is kept in the dark.

Reports indicating gaseous and liquid radioactive releases vary enormously. For instance, the Millstone One reactor in Connecticut alone released a remarkable 2.97 million curies of noble gases in 1975, while Nine Mile Point One released 1.3 million curies in 1975. In 1974, the total release from all reactors in the US was 6.48 million curies while in 1993 it ranged between 96,600 curies to 214,000 curies.

Some years the nuclear industry is collectively releasing millions of curies annually. But remember that the nuclear industry claims it is “emission” free and they are gearing up to build a new generation of nuclear power plants!

Lesson? Do not live near a nuclear power plant, otherwise you will never know what you are breathing, eating and drinking.

Niger's Uranium Rebelllion

2007-10-17T16:09:00.000+02:00

David Lewis
17 September 2007 11:59

Before the protest march, leaflets were scattered around town claiming Libyan troops had entered Niger to annex the country’s oil and land while French business people were busy looting the country of its meagre wealth.

And when hundreds of Nigeriens took to the streets of their capital recently, they did more than accuse neighbouring Libya of backing rebels and call for Areva, a French nuclear firm mining uranium in the north of the country, to leave.

They highlighted the complexity of Niger’s latest rebellion, which, though not even officially recognised by the government, has killed some 50 government soldiers, seen dozens more kidnapped and sparked a vast military operation in the north.

Seven months ago, the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), a Tuareg led rebel group, emerged from relative obscurity, launching strikes on military and strategic installations in remote corners of Niger’s desert north. Mainly targeting isolated military camps or patrols, the rebels have also attacked fuel depots and foreign mining interests.

In response, the army has sent 4 000 men to the region, where they operate under special powers granted by the president. The region of Agadez is now effectively under martial law as government forces continue their operations and impose strict controls on movements.

Since then, the MNJ has outlined its demands for justice and a fairer distribution of Niger’s modest wealth. But, for some, the complaints have fallen on deaf ears. “It is not about rebellion, but a bunch of bandit mercenaries who are benefiting themselves,” explained Nouhou Arzika, the head of the Citizens Movement, which organised the march.

Arzika believes that the MNJ is just another band of criminals involved in the Sahara’s lucrative trade in weapons, drugs and cigarettes. Areva’s involvement stems from its anger that the Nigerien government recently ended its 35 year monopoly on uranium, while Libya is hoping the rebellion will boost its claims to Niger’s oil, he says.

The government largely agrees, though not publicly in such vociferous terms, but many feel that it may be lending Arzika’s movement a helping hand.

Looking to profit from a resurgence in global interest in nuclear power, Niger has issued 90 exploration licences for uranium mines in the last year and hopes to double production by 2011. Among other issues, claims that some of Niger’s potential oil fields belong to Libya are at the heart of tensions with that country.

But the origins of the latest rebellion lie in previous Tuareg-led rebellions in the region, the first of which was in the 1960s in Mali. Violence broke out again in Mali and in Niger in the early 1990s as Tuaregs, who are divided up between the five countries that share the Sahara, accused their respective governments of marginalising them until peace deals silenced the guns in 1995.

However, while they were then promised development, jobs and a greater say in the running of their part of the country, critics say violence has erupted because the deals were never fully implemented.

“The first rebellion was about reducing the gap between the north and the south,” says Iguelas Weila, president of Timidria, a Nigerien human rights organisation. “Peace deals were signed and people took jobs, but nothing has changed for people on the ground.”

Initially without a clear set of goals, the MNJ has set up a regularly updated website that claims military successes and clarifies its strategies. “Our community has been persecuted. Our people haven’t been able to integrate into society,” complains MNJ political secretary Ahmed Akoli. “This is a situation that is imposed. We have an ideal. It is not just banditism.”

According to the UN, Niger remains the least developed country in the world. The literacy rate is estimated at about only 25% and with a population growing at 3%, there is increasing pressure on food security, even in a good year. Buyers from neighbouring Nigeria will often pay more for food, leading to food shortages. A recent increase of seven US cents in the price of a baguette prompted threats of a boycott of bakeries.

Some say the failure to implement past peace deals was as much a lack of ability as a lack of will and that Niger has been simply too poor to improve the lives of any of its people, not just the Tuaregs.

Now, though, internal politics are also at play. So far the government has pursued a policy of denying that there even is a rebellion; local broadcasters have been banned from holding live debates on the situation and foreign journalists are not allowed to travel to the region.

Analysts say Nigerien President Mamadou Tandja’s refusal to recognise the rebels and begin talks is compounded by the southern-dominated armed forces’ desire for a military solution and politicians’ reluctance to make further compromises.

Source: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=319475&area=/insight/insight__africa/

DEADLINE: Public Comment- Nuclear Energy Policy (Deadline 17 October 2007)

2007-10-12T00:16:00.000+02:00

Public Comment: Nuclear Energy Policy & Strategy for the Republic of South Africa

The Department of Minerals and Energy has invited the public to make written submissions on the Nuclear Energy Policy and Strategy.

Deadline: 17 October 2007

For Attention: The Director-General, Mr T Maqubela

Postal Address: Private Bag X59, Pretoria, 0001

Or Fax: 012 322 8570

Or Email: kedibone.theko@dme.gov.za

The document is available at HERE, HERE or HERE (PDF – Adobe Acrobat Format)

Contact Person:

Mr T Maqubela 012 317 8340

Finally some sense - more African governments need to do this.

2007-10-08T14:54:00.000+02:00

DRC says Brinkley uranium venture 'won't progress'

By: Liezel Hill
Published: 8 Oct 07 - 11:53

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has fuelled undercurrents of concern regarding the security of investments in the country, by announcing on Friday that a “questionable” mining joint venture between UK-based Brinkley Mining and the country’s Atomic Energy Authority (CGEA) “will not be progressing”.

Brinkley said in July this year that it had signed an agreement with the CGEA to form a uranium exploration and development joint-venture company.

However, in a statement released by public relations firm Bell Pottinger, the government said that it had determined that the agreement between Brinkley and the CGEA did not meet “the highest standards of integrity”.

Further, the Commissaire General of the CGEA, Professeur Francois Lubala Toto, who negotiated and promoted the relationship with Brinkley Mining, and scientific director Professeur Leopold Makoko Moyengo, had been dismissed, and were currently the focus of a criminal investigation into the origins and terms of the agreement.

However, in a statement also issued on Friday, Brinkley said that, while it had seen the press statement, it had not received any confirmation from the government of the DRC that the joint venture would be cancelled, and was seeking further clarification from the CGEA.

The DRC is conducting a review of about 60 existing mining contracts, and seeking to determine the validity of mining permits, in an attempt to “clean up” and “stabilise” its mining industry, which had been damaged by years of political instability.

“This [the Brinkley] enquiry has been in progress for some time. Just as my colleagues in the Ministry of Mines are moving to ensure that the mining industry is based on deals that have been fairly and properly transacted, so must we ensure that all nuclear issues are managed according to the law,” said DRC Minister for Science and Higher Education Sylvain Ngabu Chumu.

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=118523

The African Nuclear Renaissance

2007-09-23T10:56:00.000+02:00

NUKES FOR AFRICA?

If nuclear power is okay for South Africa, what about Zimbabwe? Or how about Rwanda, or Sierra Leone? If we are concerned about South Africa's ability to provide safe transport for nuclear fuel and waste, risks of sabotage and smuggling of nuclear materials - what about nations in Africa that have been torn by civil war? What about a neighbouring nation like Zimbabwe where inflation is now at 7000%? South Africans may not be aware that despite poverty and starvation, Zimbabwe is somehow still considering the hugely expensive option of nuclear power. How comfortable do South Africans feel about President Mugabe sitting with a potential finger on the nuclear button?

The nuclear industry's multi-million dollar marketing programme (courtesy of the taxpayer) is making security in Africa about as predictable as a game of roulette. Spin the nuclear wheel of fortune and the dial could point to any one of a number of African countries, where despite a majority of impoverished people, certain governments have still managed to spend millions on weaponry.

Countries in Africa currently prospecting for uranium, include: Algeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and of course, Zimbabwe.

In Harare Zimbabwe's Minister of Energy Michael Nyambuya said nuclear energy was an option, although Zimbabwe still had to verify uranium deposits. The company responsible for prospecting uranium in Zimbabwe is Omegacorp Ltd.

However, the same names pop up in each country - like Uramin, Brinkley Mining, Paladin and Areva. And while the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) has gone out of its way to reassure South Africans that an expanded nuclear programme in this country would be "safe", there is no way that they can make any guarantees concerning other nations. Despite this, Necsa and the fabled Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project intend - not only to manufacture nuclear reactors for South Africa - but also to export to the rest of Africa.

What about the Congo? This country's uranium mines produced material for the nuclear bombs the US dropped on Japan in World War II. They were officially closed since 2000, but illegal mining continued. Negotiations between the Congo and Brinkley Mining ground to a halt when the government official who set up the deal was imprisoned on charges of illegally selling uranium.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is suspected of trying to reopen the Shinkolobwe uranium mine with help from North Korea. (In 2000, North Korea denied reports that it might be importing uranium from Congo to manufacture nuclear weapons).

In Malawi, five Non-Governmental Organisations oppose uranium mining. They are extremely concerned about Malawi's natural heritage including treasures such as Sere Stream, Rukuru River and Lake Malawi. "This is an ecological disaster in waiting," they said. They were aware of the detrimental impact uranium mining would have on the health of workers and nearby communities, radioactive mine wastes, environmental damage and water contamination.

In Niger, the uranium mining industry has been plagued by violence. In April 2007, heavily-armed men attacked a camp of uranium prospectors in northern Niger, killing a security guard and wounding three other people. Between 20-30 men from the Niger Movement for Justice raided French nuclear company Areva's camp. A Chinese employee from a uranium mining company was captured on July 6, 2007, by the same group.

Despite this, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has directed his energy ministry to establish a nuclear unit and in Zambia, Albidon Ltd and African Energy Resources Ltd have begun feasibility studies for uranium mining. The Omega Corporation wants to open up a uranium mine in Siavonga with an investment of 60 million US dollars and Equinox Minerals Ltd is considering extracting uranium from Lumwana in Zambia.

In South Africa, Uramin Inc wants to expand into the Beaufort West area of the Karoo and produce 1745 tonnes of uranium oxide per year. Interestingly, an American comapny - SRK Consulting - was to conduct the feasibility study.

The Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) granted Uranium One a new order mining right for the Dominion Uranium Project for 30 years covering an area of 14 000 hectares. First Uranium intends to produce 342 tonnes of uranium annually. This year, Uranium One produced ammonium diuranate (ADU) at Dominion Reefs Uranium Mine near Klerksdorp. This was shipped to the Nuclear Fuels Corporation of South Africa (Nufcor SA) to be processed into U3O8 (yellow cake) in Nufcor's calcining plant.

Just as there is no smoke without a fire, so there is no nuclear without the uranium fuel. Unfortunately, the nuclear industry has been selling nuclear as a "sustainable" energy source, which it obviously is not. In fact uranium reserves will be depleted before coal reserves run out and the nuclear industry is even asking for coal to power its nuclear smelter at Pelindaba.

The nuclear industry has also been marketing itself as "safe" which again has proven to be a false claim. South Africa has one nuclear reactor at Koeberg and yet at least three men have been caught and stood trial for smuggling nuclear materials. If, as the South African government intends, the nuclear programme in this country expands to include 30 nuclear reactors for South Africa and others marketed to Africa, how much illegal nuclear trade will go on?

The construction of "dirty bombs" and international terrorism is only one of the deadly faces of the nuclear industry. Wherever uranium mines are sited, radioactive contamination spreads to soils and water sources and the dust is blown by the wind into the homes of nearby communities. Primary cancers are recognized as a health hazard of uranium mining and the inhalation of uranium dust is second only to tobacco smoking for producing lung cancers.

From the cradle to the grave, the nuclear process is deadly. And for Africa - regarded as the cradle of life - this would seem to be the final desecration of a once beautiful and fertile continent.

Yours sincerely

INGELA RICHARDSON

SA wants to enrich own uranium

2007-09-19T10:58:00.000+02:00

SA wants to enrich own uranium

SOUTH Africa is holding off joining a US-led initiative to spread atomic power since it does not want to give up its right to enrich uranium.

Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica told reporters, at a meeting of the UN atomic agency, about Global Nuclear Energy Partnership’s (GNEP) invitation accompanied by a declaration.

But “we got a bit concerned that there was some conflict of ... our national policy”.

South Africa was not among the 11 countries which joined the US-led GNEP in Vienna on Sunday – an effort to spread atomic power but not technology which can be used to make nuclear weapons. Uranium enrichment makes nuclear power reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.

New members Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine joined the United States, China, France, Japan and Russia in signing a statement of principles for GNEP.

Sonjica said that under the GNEP “fuel would be distributed” to countries but South Africa “has taken a decision to beneficiate its minerals ... in other words to end-value the minerals in South Africa, and that would include uranium”.

Exporting uranium only to get it back refined, instead of enriching it in SA, would be “in conflict with our national policy”, she said.

Sonjica added that SA, which abandoned its nuclear weapons programme in the 1990s, including uranium enrichment, is now set to expand its civilian atomic power programme in order “to reduce the amount of CO2 our power plants emit”.

It is looking for international partners to develop uranium enrichment.

Nuclear power is seen by many as crucial in a world where energy demand is booming since it makes electricity without adding to the greenhouse gases which cause global warming. — Sapa-AFP

Source: http://www.dispatch.co.za/2007/09/19/SouthAfrica/anuke.html

Oz firm targets Namibian Uranium Project for 2011

2007-09-18T08:54:00.000+02:00

Oz firm targets 2011 start-up at Namibian uranium project
By: Matthew Hill
Published: 17 Sep 07 - 11:48

Australia-based uranium company Bannerman Resources said on Monday that a scoping study of its Namibian Goanikontes project indicated it to be economically viable, and that it could begin production in mid-2011, ranking the company within the top-ten nuclear fuel producers globally.

The mining and milling would be similar to that of diversified giant Rio Tinto’s nearby Rossing mine, with a maximum production target of 4 000 t/y of U3O8, Bannerman said in an emailed statement.

Capital costs for the project were projected to be between $363-million and $400-million, depending on the plant design.

Bannerman said that it would complete a bankable feasibility study of the project by the end of next year.

MD Peter Batten said that the project could see Bannerman rank within the top ten uranium producers in the world “almost immediately”.

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=116968

DRC minister says Brinkley Uranium deal not valid

2007-09-18T08:53:00.000+02:00

DRC minister says Brinkley Uranium deal not valid
By: Reuters
Published: 17 Sep 07 - 17:28

Congo's deputy mines minister said on Monday a uranium prospecting deal between UK-based Brinkley Mining and Congo's nuclear agency had "no value or validity", but both parties to the deal insisted it stood.

In July, Brinkley announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Democratic Republic of Congo to create a joint venture with the vast central African nation's atomic energy agency to explore for, mine, and export uranium.

But Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported the deal could be under threat from a review by Congo of mining practices because of the pivotal role played in setting up the accord by a convicted fraudster who has fallen foul of the government.

"There is no ministerial approval of this deal. So it has no value or validity for the government," Congo's Deputy Mines Minister Victor Kasongo told Reuters.

Reacting to the Sunday Times report, Brinkley issued a statement via the London Stock Exchange on Monday saying its board was confident the agreements were "legally binding and will deliver value for shareholders".

Brinkley Africa Ltd, a subsidiary of Brinkley Mining, signed the deal with the blessing of Sylvanus Bonane, then minister of scientific reasearch -- a post which has authority over the country's General Commission for Atomic Energy.

Kasongo said Bonane, who was fired from the government just days after the deal was announced, had no authority to approve it.

"This was a commercial company that hid behind a research company to negotiate a commercial deal. It doesn't exist for us," Kasongo said.

A new minister of scientific research has not yet been named.

However, Francois Lubala Toto, the head of Congo's nuclear energy agency, the CGEA, told Reuters there was nothing wrong with the deal and that it was awaiting signature by President Joseph Kabila.

"Everything involving the negotiation of exploration, exploitation, and treatment of uranium falls under the responsibility of the agency," Toto said.

"It's not until we make a request for a mining permit that the ministry of mines is implicated."

By 1250 GMT, Brinkley shares were down 4 pence, or 23.88 percent, at 12.75 pence, after falling as low as 12 pence in earlier trade.

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=117004

Reason not to glow about Nuclear

2007-09-17T17:55:00.000+02:00

Reasons Not to Glow
On not jumping out of the frying pan into the eternal fires
by Rebecca Solnit

Chances are good, gentle reader, that you are going to have to sit next to someone in the coming year who will assert that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. What will you tell them? There’s so much to say. You could be sitting next to someone who hasn’t really considered the evidence yet. Or you could be sitting next to scientist and Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a supporter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy™, which quotes him saying, “We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one safe, available, energy source—now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.”

If you sit next to Lovelock, you might start by mentioning that half the farms in this country had windmills before Marie Curie figured out anything about radiation or Lise Meitner surmised that atoms could be split. Wind power is not visionary in the sense of experimental. Neither is solar, which is already widely used. Nor are nukes safe, and they take far too long to build to be considered readily available. Yet Stewart Brand, of Whole Earth Catalog fame, has jumped on the nuclear bandwagon, and so has Greenpeace founding member turned PR flack Patrick Moore. So you must be prepared.

Of course the first problem is that nuclear power is often nothing more than a way to avoid changing anything. A bicycle is a better answer to a Chevrolet Suburban than a Prius is, and so is a train, or your feet, or staying home, or a mix of all those things. Nuclear power plants, like coal-burning power plants, are about retaining the big infrastructure of centralized power production and, often, the habits of obscene consumption that rely on big power. But this may be too complicated to get into while your proradiation interlocutor suggests that letting a thousand nuclear power plants bloom would solve everything.

Instead, you may be able to derail the conversation by asking whether they’d like to have a nuclear power plant or waste repository in their backyard, which mostly they would rather not, though they’d happily have it in your backyard. This is why the populous regions of the eastern U.S. keep trying to dump their nuclear garbage in the less-populous regions of the West. My friend Chip Ward (from nuclear-waste-threatened Utah) reports, “To make a difference in global climate change, we would have to immediately build as many nuclear power plants as we already have in the U.S. (about 100) and at least as many as 2,000 worldwide.” Chip goes on to say that “Wall Street won’t invest in nuclear power because it is too risky. . . . The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island taught investment bankers how a two-billion-dollar investment can turn into a billion-dollar clean-up in under two hours.” So we, the people, would have to foot the bill.

Nuclear power proponents like to picture a bunch of clean plants humming away like beehives across the landscape. Yet when it comes to the mining of uranium, which mostly takes place on indigenous lands from northern Canada to central Australia, you need to picture fossil-fuel-intensive carbon-emitting vehicles, and lots of them—big disgusting diesel-belching ones. But that’s the least of it. The Navajo are fighting right now to prevent uranium mining from resuming on their land, which was severely contaminated by the postwar uranium boom of the 1940s and 1950s. The miners got lung cancer. The children in the area got birth defects and a 1,500 percent increase in ovarian and testicular cancer. And the slag heaps and contaminated pools that were left behind will be radioactive for millennia.

If these facts haven’t dissuaded this person sitting next to you, try telling him or her that most mined uranium—about 99.28 percent—is fairly low-radiation uranium-238, which is still a highly toxic heavy metal. To make nuclear fuel, the ore must be “enriched,” an energy-intensive process that increases the .72 percent of highly fissionable, highly radioactive U-235 up to 3 to 5 percent. As Chip points out, four dirty-coal-fired plants were operated in Kentucky just to operate two uranium enrichment plants. What’s left over is a huge quantity of U-238, known as depleted uranium, which the U.S. government classifies as low-level nuclear waste, except when it uses the stuff to make armoring and projectiles that are the source of so much contamination in Iraq from our first war there, and our second.

Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel was supposed to be one alternative to lots and lots of mining forever and forever. The biggest experiment in reprocessing was at Sellafield in Britain. In 2005, after decades of contamination and leaks and general spewing of horrible matter into the ocean, air, and land around the reprocessing plant, Sellafield was shut down because a bigger-than-usual leak of fuel dissolved in nitric acid—some tens of thousands of gallons—was discovered. It contained enough plutonium to make about twenty nuclear bombs. Gentle reader, this has always been one of the prime problems of nuclear energy: the same general processes that produce fuel for power can produce it for bombs. In India. Or Pakistan. Or Iran. The waste from nuclear plants is now the subject of much fretting about terrorists obtaining it for dirty bombs—and with a few hundred thousand tons of high-level waste in the form of spent fuel and a whole lot more low-level waste in the U.S. alone, there’s plenty to go around.

By now the facts should be on your side, but do ask how your neighbor feels about nuclear bombs, just to keep things lively.

The truth is, there may not be enough uranium out there to fuel two thousand more nuclear power plants worldwide. Besides, before a nuke plant goes online, a huge amount of fossil fuel must be expended just to build the thing. Still, the biggest stumbling block, where climate change is concerned, is that it takes a decade or more to construct a nuclear plant, even if the permitting process goes smoothly, which it often does not. So a bunch of nuclear power plants that go online in 2017 at the earliest are not even terribly relevant to turning around our carbon emissions in the next decade—which is the time frame we have before it’s too late.

If you’re not, at this point, chasing your poor formerly pronuclear companion down the hallway, mention that every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle is murderously filthy, imparting long-lasting contamination on an epic scale; that a certain degree of radioactive pollution is standard at each of these stages, but the accidents are now so many in number that they have to be factored in as part of the environmental cost; that the plants themselves generate lots of radioactive waste, which we still don’t know what to do with—because the stuff is deadly . . . anywhere . . . and almost forever. And no, tell them, this nuclear colonialism is not an acceptable sacrifice, since it is not one the power consumers themselves are making. It’s a sacrifice they’re imposing on people far away and others not yet born, a debt they’re racking up at the expense of people they will never meet.

Sure, you can say nuclear power is somewhat less carbon-intensive than burning fossil fuels for energy; beating your children to death with a club will prevent them from getting hit by a car. Ravaging the Earth by one irreparable means is not a sensible way to prevent it from being destroyed by another. There are alternatives. We should choose them and use them.

Source: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/316/

NUCLEAR FUEL TRANSPORT ROUTES

2007-09-11T09:33:00.000+02:00

NUCLEAR FUEL TRANSPORT ROUTES

A number of people in South Africa have been very concerned that the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA)has indicated no specific transport routes showing where enriched uranium, nuclear fuel and nuclear waste will be moved through in this country.

We are hoping that NECSA or the NNR - as a concerned independent body - will be able to supply information concerning these transport routes, seeing as a Record of Decision has already been signed on the nuclear smelter at Pelindaba and many people are still unaware as to the method of transport and direction that will be used.

So far it seems that NECSA has been rather vague - and indicated that materials will move from Durban (presumably from the port) through to Pelindaba and from Pelindaba to Koeberg. Then another route would obviously be from Koeberg to Vaalputs waste dump. However, since the government plans to build a nuclear reactor in the Eastern Cape, it is obvious that this area is also involved in terms of delivery of nuclear fuel and removal of nuclear waste from the site. This could then involve the Port Elizabeth harbour and main roads or rail.

The people of South Africa need to know the method of transport chosen in all cases: whether road, rail or shipping. And all the towns that would be passed through or close by on this route, since all people in these areas would need to have some kind of emergency planning in place in the event of a nuclear accident, leak or spill. South Africa’s roads and transport system are not known for being the safest in the world.

If NECSA is unable to provide this information at this late stage of their planning, then it begins to appear to the people of South Africa as a deliberate attempt to leave them ignorant and uninformed about decisions that may impact negatively on their health and wellbeing.

We therefore look forward to seeing a full and specific disclosure of the nuclear raw material, fuel and waste transport routes, as a matter of priority.

Thank you for your time.

Yours faithfully

INGELA RICHARDSON

Waste storage dilemma crimps nuclear future

2007-09-09T21:21:00.000+02:00

Waste storage dilemma crimps nuclear future

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

The San Francisco Chronicle

Jun 11, 2006
Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo County -- In a quiet, air-conditioned room deep inside the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant sits a small pool filled
with water colored an unnatural blue. It's packed with radioactive waste. The pool holds roughly half of all the used fuel ever pulled from the
plant's reactors. The other half sits in a second concrete tank nearby, slowly cooling beneath 25 feet of water. Some fuel rods have been there
about 20 years.

Both pools are nearly full. Neither was designed to store this much waste. But there's nowhere else to put it.

The government long ago promised Diablo's owner, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., that it would haul away the waste and entomb it deep below Nevada's
Yucca Mountain. But, in the face of unrelenting opposition from Nevada residents irate over the prospect of becoming a dumping ground for nuclear
waste, the repository never opened.

With the nation's appetite for energy growing, the U.S. nuclear industry appears poised for a renaissance. President Bush has made building nuclear
plants, for the first time in decades, a cornerstone of his energy policies. And some former foes are willing to give the technology another
look, lured by the promise of generating abundant power without belching greenhouse gases from more fossil fuel plants.

But the industry and its supporters in Washington still have not resolved one of the biggest issues that derailed nuclear power in the 1970s and
1980s -- what to do with the waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years. Yucca Mountain remains bottled up by Nevada
politicians.

One alternative would be to recycle spent fuel rods, extracting radioactive material for reuse and reducing the amount of waste that would
need to be stored. But the idea has long been blocked by fears that plutonium removed from old rods could fall into the hands of terrorists or
rogue countries trying to build nuclear weapons.

So Diablo and other nuclear plants must keep their waste on-site -- indefinitely. PG&E installed replacement racks that pack more rods into
Diablo's pools and has even started building another storage facility that could cost up to $200 million on a hillside behind the plant.
"The government hasn't lived up to its contracts, so what's happening now is Plan B," said David Vosburg, a PG&E project manager. "The extra racks
are filling up. The same thing's happening across the country."

Extra storage sites next to nuclear plants, however, won't solve the problem. They will just buy time.

"You just have to hope that there's a national solution, because this won't be a Diablo issue -- it will be a national issue," said Richard
Hagler, project engineer for the new storage facility.

Anyone living near a nuclear plant also lives near a long-term storage site for radioactive waste. Those facilities aren't long-term by the
standards of engineers, who must consider what happens to radioactive material over centuries. Homeowners, however, find themselves spending
decades close to used fuel rods, with no end in sight.

"They promised us that the waste would be removed and the government would come to the rescue," said Jack Biesek, 58, who lives in a lushly wooded
canyon about 7 miles downwind of Diablo. "I think it's going to stay there. The handwriting's on the wall."

Without a long-range solution for the waste problem, America's much-heralded "nuclear spring" may never come.

"Obviously, waste storage is the elephant in the room," said Frank Bowman, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the
industry's main lobbying group. America now has roughly 40,000 metric tons of spent radioactive fuel, according to the institute, with another 2,000 metric tons added each
year. Even if Yucca Mountain opens, the nation would soon need another facility just like it. Reprocessing the fuel would relieve that pressure, but it's far from clear that reuse will ever happen.
"If we don't recycle, we're going to have to build a new Yucca Mountain every few decades," said U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell.

Used fuel rods are hot and highly radioactive when they emerge from a reactor. Both the heat and the radioactivity drop substantially within the
first several years, the radiation falling by a factor of 1,000 in a decade, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. But the rods remain
dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.

Diablo Canyon has relied on its twin spent-fuel pools to store waste since the plant began commercial operation in 1985.

They sit not far from the towering containment domes that hold Diablo's reactors, separated from the outside world by steel walls and concrete
floors. The plant refuels every 18 to 21 months, plugging some new rods into the reactors and transferring old ones to the storage pools.
Standing 12 feet tall, each rod is a metal tube filled with uranium pellets -- the source of the plant's power. The rods are narrow, about the
width of a fat pencil, and are bundled into assemblies that weigh 1,350 pounds each. Workers maneuver the assemblies into the pools through a
series of water-filled channels to keep the fuel cool, making sure it never touches open air. A crane grabs the assemblies underwater and lowers
them into waiting racks.

Each pool was designed to hold 270 assemblies. Now, the racks have been reconfigured to store 1,324.

One pool already has 1,064. The other, 1,100.

"Five percent of the state's electricity generation for the last 20 years is sitting in that pool," Vosburg said, as a current of circulating water
rippled the surface. The water, surrounded by concrete walls 6 feet thick, dissipates heat coming from the fuel rods and shields the outside world
from radiation. Boric acid, added to the water to absorb neutrons, gives the pool its deep blue tint.

Later this year, PG&E will install temporary racks in both pools to provide 154 more storage slots each. Even so, they will run out of room by
2010. So PG&E, like operators of the nation's 64 other nuclear power plants, is trying to make do.

On a shaved-off hillside overlooking the plant, workers pour the concrete floor for Diablo's next storage facility. Instead of using a pool, PG&E
will seal old fuel assemblies inside 20-foot-tall canisters lined up like squat obelisks on an open field. There will be no walls or ceiling of any
kind -- just the canisters themselves.

The technology is called dry cask storage, and it isn't new. Its use at Diablo, however, has alarmed many of the plant's long-standing opponents.
They fear that the field, which could eventually hold 138 casks, will make an even more alluring target for terrorists than the plant itself, perched
on a rocky stretch of the central California coast. A commandeered jet, they say, could approach Diablo from the water, fly over the plant and
crash into the casks, spewing radioactive material into the air. "How is that safe from terrorism, especially when there's no 'no fly
zone' at the plant?" asked Rochelle Becker of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. "California needs to know, how much radioactive waste are
we willing to store on our coast, for how long?"

Last week, a federal court ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have examined the possibility of a terrorist assault on Diablo
before giving PG&E permission to build the dry cask facility. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the commission to
study what threat an attack could pose to the local environment. However, a PG&E spokesman said construction will continue during the review, with
the first casks scheduled to be loaded with fuel next fall. The company considers the facility secure.

Standing above the field, PG&E engineer Hagler sketched out possible lines of terrorist attack. Fly a commercial airliner in from the west, over the
ocean, and the hillside would rip off the plane's right wing before it could reach the casks. Approach from the east, and the pilot would have to
hug the contours of several protecting hills before making a swift, steep plunge into the field.

Those obstacles wouldn't matter as much to a small plane. But small aircraft, he said, lack the mass to smash open the steel-and-concrete casks.
"An aircraft that size? It'd be like a bee hitting a windshield," Hagler said. "I know the cask is going to win."

To some neighbors, terrorism isn't the only issue. They object to the possibility that Diablo's waste will never leave, staying decade after
decade on the coast they love until its presence becomes permanent. "This whole area is going to be a carbuncle ruined for millennia," Biesek
said.

Since 1976, he has lived in nearby See Canyon, along a stream shaded by oak and pine trees. He and his wife, Susan, have long opposed the plant.
They keep a Geiger counter in the house, although it needs new batteries. The Bieseks question whether any storage technology can isolate nuclear
waste from the environment forever, particularly in a place prone to earthquakes and other disasters. If radioactive material from Diablo found
its way into an aquifer or the ocean, they said, who knows how widespread the effects could be?

"It's not like this backyard dump is just our dump," Susan Biesek said one recent morning, as birdsong filled the canyon's cool air. "Where do you
move that's safe?" Such talk drives nuclear engineers to distraction. Used nuclear fuel does pose risks, they say, but those risks can be controlled.
"I hate the word 'dump,' " said Mark Somerville, a PG&E physicist specializing in radiation protection. "I sympathize with people who, like
we did, thought there'd be an endgame where things would be handled long term. ... But it's anything but a dump. It's a very carefully controlled
process."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration keeps pushing to open Yucca Mountain and recycle used fuel. Storing waste on-site, Deputy Energy Secretary Sell
said, is safe but won't solve the problem.

"As an interim solution, it's acceptable," he said. "As a long-term solution, it's not." E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

GOLDEN OLDIES AND LOST ISOTOPES

2007-09-09T13:37:00.000+02:00

GOLDEN OLDIES AND LOST ISOTOPES

By Ingela Richardson

Forget about those American sit-coms. We have the Minerals and Energy Portfolio Committee with their update on Nuclear Energy brought to you by the corporation who wants to bring back all those golden oldies from way back when South Africa had nuclear weapons. Unfortunately you can't hum along to the tunes, but you can click your fingers to the Geiger counter - if you happen to have one handy. If not, better get one, because the government wants to raise dem nuclear bones.

At a meeting on 22 August, the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) stated that South Africa was "moving toward an enhanced reliance on nuclear energy". The problem is that no one seems to know how much this will cost. And this isn't a couple of rands we're talking about - it's millions. A better reason for not committing to a price is that old excuse used by contractors when time and materials have run out, the bank loan is called in and the job is still not finished - "It was just a rough estimate!"

Suddenly the DME has changed its mind. Instead of selling uranium as a raw material to those hungry "colonnial" powers overseas who have nuclear reactors and scientists who want to hang onto their jobs - South Africa is now planning to manufacture its own nuclear fuel. This is slightly tricky, since it will cost a bundle (about R20 billion quoted - but you know quotes) and is highly dangerous as far as radioactive contamination is concerned.

The DME has said that they will show concern for the environment though - which must be a relief to many environmentalists who were thinking that the DME wanted to do away with the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) altogether. After all, who cares about a few frogs and butterflies anyway? They are not as important as people. They may be food for some animals that eat other animals that in turn are eaten by people, but that is not important - is it? What is the old circle of life anyway? Just a song by Elton John.

It is also reassuring that the DME hastens to add that nuclear energy is intended for civil consumption only. Phew! Here we were worrying that while we only have one nuclear reactor (Koeberg) we already have about three nuclear smugglers. If South Africa increases its nuclear programme to include up to 30 reactors, that would make, how many smugglers? Don't really want to look at that Math. After all, South Africa's crime rate is improving, isn't it? No reason to think terrorists could gather radioactive material for a "dirty bomb" here?

Rob Adam (CEO of Necsa) is very proud of his isotopes, but he shouldn't have tried to explain basic chemistry to the committee. After all, not everyone is a rocket scientist. How was Mr Louw of the ANC to know that Dr Adam hadn't literally "lost" a third of his radioisotpes. They just decay, don't they - if they aren't delivered in time? Don't ask where the radioisotopes are being transported, in what and how. Don't bother your pretty little head. It's just part of the wonderfully unstable nature of the nuclear business.

There have indeed been changes in the "nuclear environment". If you read ANC policy from 1994 that was decidedly anti-nuclear - you wouldn't believe it is the same party that desperately wants nuclear now. Almost as though someone were putting words in their mouths...And whose example is South Africa to follow in this nuclear arena? Dr Adam cites the Russians. Would those be the same Russians who invented Chernobyl and have dozens of old reactors ready to kick the bucket at any minute knocking around Eastern Europe? Or would it be the Russians who invented the brand new "floating reactors" that nobody wants to buy because they are so dangerous? As for President Bush - well anyone would like their daddy to buy them a presidency one day when they grow up, wouldn't they? He knows which side his bread is buttered. If he swings enough work the nuclear contractors' way, perhaps they will fund his re-election?

What is sad though, is whenever unpalatable projects are on the cards, the South African government dangles employment like a carrot in front of the starving masses. Thousands of jobs are always mooted for these projects. Once again, is that an estimate? Or a quote?

According to the DME, uranium mining is not going to leave a legacy of radioactive slime pits - not like the gold mines have done. Shameful! So how about South Africa cleaning up the radioactive slime dams in Gauteng before they start building uranium slime dams in the Karoo and Magaliesburg? The National Nuclear Regulator has known about Gauteng's radioactive contamination for a couple of years now - so South Africa can rest assured that if there is a radioactive emergency in this country, the NNR will be there - sooner or later.

Unfortunately, uranium is not sustainable. Like coal or oil, it will run out. And then there will be all those nuclear reactors standing around with no fuel. To consider "recycling" or "reprocessing" nuclear fuel is just another of George Bush's bad dreams that goes against 30 years of US policy, is extremely expensive and highly dangerous. Like trying to extract the proverbial needle from a radioactive haystack. Then try to get another thousand needles out of another thousand haystacks and use the needles for fuel. How much electricity does Koebergy make again? 4 per cent? 6 per cent? Not much for your money, is it?

It is good to know that someone has been allocated to deal with every aspect of nuclear. There is Nuclear Research, Development and Innovation (Necsa), Nuclear Power Generation Organisation (Eskom) Integrated Nuclear Safety Regulator (someone?) Nuclear Security Agency (someone else) Nuclear Architectural Capability (someone else) Radioactive Waste Management Agency (er?).

The DME congratulated graduates in nuclear technology. Lucky students to have been given the necessary funding for their degrees. It seems that the Innovation Fund that was set up years ago to focus on little problems in South Africa like crime, is now almost totally devoted to science and technology. Coincidentally, Rob Adam is the chairman of this trust fund. Perhaps Dr Adam believes that nuclear science is just more important than crime statistics in South Africa?

The DME and Necsa are reassuring each other that there will actually be people with the necessary skills to run nuclear reactors in South Africa. But while the DME is hoping that the solution will come from the youth, Necsa wants to bring back its pensioners (the golden oldies) before they forget how reactors work. The DME wants to encourage the development of local skills, but with the price of electricity set to sky-rocket to accommodate nuclear prices (and therefore prices of everything else going up, including crime) there may be more of a brain-drain than government would like. Strangely, some people - whether young or old - do value safety and security above nuclear technology.

Mr Louw of the ANC believes that the youth are not sufficiently informed about the benefits of nuclear energy. How strange! But then perhaps today's youth are less credulous. Perhaps young people today have learned that "our friend the atom" can be deadly? Perhaps they have seen young people, like themselves dying in conflicts where Depleted Uranium was the weapon of choice and soldiers and civilians alike have suffered the consequences?

Mr Greyling of the ID queried costs of the nuclear programme. But it seems that the DME is looking ahead to potential profits, rather than immediate costs. The story of "counting chickens before they are hatched" springs to mind. And Mr Kekana of the ANC said the media should be used to promote nuclear engineering. Does he mean the media as in advertising pamphlets and brochures? Or the media as in daily newspapers that are supposed to be unbiased?

Prof Mohamed of the ANC asked how the DME planned to dispose of lethal plutonium. But Dr Skalk De Waal, a Nuclear Specialist, has that one covered. It seems this issue is governed by Act 47 of 1999. Relax South Africa. You are protected from plutonium by legislation. What a relief. According to Dr De Waal, there is a "facility" in Namaqualand for waste managed by Necsa. Remember that next time you want to see those blooming daisies.

At any rate, South Africans will be relieved to know that the issue of nuclear security is "a work in progress" according to Mr Maqubela of the DME. So while EIA's for the construction of nuclear reactors may be forging ahead, security is still being planned. It seems that "intelligence agencies" will train Eskom and Necsa.

Ms Mathibela of the ANC was reassured that South Africa would not be placed in a similar position to that of Iraq - being accused of possessing nuclear weapons - since South Africa has signed all the right papers.

When Adv Schmidt of the DA asked what would happen if communities were not in favour of nuclear, Mr Maqubela responded that the public had sixty days to comment on government strategy - but after that the government would have to proceed. No sense in letting a little thing like public opposition delay government plans.

So drug addicts just say "No", victims of crime say "No", but communities against nuclear say "No" and the government goes ahead? Is that what they mean by public participation? You can get involved and have your say as long as you know the government will continue anyway? Mr Maqubela said there was no purpose in extending the period of public meetings that "might not even add value to the process". In other words, quick build that nuclear reactor before those people know what hit them.

The DME is very clear. South Africans do have a choice - as long as they choose nuclear. But if they say, "NO!" the government will just carry on. After all, no sense in listening to the people, is there?

Uranium Resources South Africa

2007-09-09T12:44:00.000+02:00

Here is an image showing the Uranium resources of South Africa. The South African Government, Eskom, Necsa, PBMR and "friends" all wish to see most of South Africa mined for this toxic metal to fuel their multitude of planned nuclear reactors all over South Africa. A few "already" wealthy men will continue to follow their paths of greed just so they can get even richer and screw the people of South Africa.

Zambian Uranium Projects

2007-09-07T16:22:00.000+02:00

African Energy from Zambian uranium
By: Mariaan Olivier
Published: 5 Sep 07 - 16:49

Uranium explorer Albidon has finalised a joint-venture agreement with African Energy, covering the Chirundu and Kariba Valley uranium projects in Zambia, the company said on Wednesday.

The Chirundu project included the Njame uranium deposit and the recently discovered Gwabe uranium prospect.

African Energy is exploring for uranium on a number of Albidon’s mineral tenements in Zambia under an exploration cooperation agreement .

Albidon said that African Energy had spend A$1-million on the Chirundu project which earned it an initial equity interest of 30% in the property, with the right to earn up to a 70% stake by completion of a prefeasibility study.

The company informed Albidon in January that it planned to earn equity stakes in the Chirundu and Njame projects.

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=116268

At least 25 new uranium mines needed by 2020

2007-09-06T15:15:00.000+02:00

'At least 25 new uranium mines needed by 2020'

By: Martin Creamer
Published: 6 Sep 07 - 10:51
The world would need “at least” 25 new uranium mines by 2020 and global uranium marketing would change as fundamentally as oil marketing did in the 1970s, Paladin Resources MD John Borshoff said in Perth on Thursday.

Borshoff told the Africa Downunder conference that, in transforming from being inventory dominant to being mining dominant, uranium marketing would shed its current “cosy arrangement” between consumer and supplier and take on a new global dimension.

Borshoff, who is credited with accurately forecasting uranium’s renaissance well ahead of time, described the current uranium-price downturn as being “almost a shenanigan”.

On uranium coming down in price from $138/lb to $90/lb, he said: “Rest easy, because it’s going to start moving upwards again.”

He said that the price drop was part of an extremely sharp upturn and would continue on an upward path after an adjustment.

And on marketing, he added that “remarkable” uranium-marketing changes would be at a level of “the oil shock of the 1970s”.

Thirty-two nuclear reactors were currently under construction and proposed are another 288 reactors by 2025, compared to 35 in 2003 and 150 in 2005.

The current production of 103-million pounds of uranium a year would need to rise to 190-million pounds in 2013 and then between 230-million pounds and 250-million pounds going further forward.

“These are massive requirements from an industry that has almost been dead in the head for 20 years,” he said.

From that “sleeping mode”, the industry would have to prepare itself to achieve “huge” increases in the supply, which was not only needing to grow above the current 103-million-pound base, but that base was in the throes of diminishing as mines depleted.

There thus had to be both replacement and additive components and “at least 25 new mines would be required by 2020”, Borshoff said.

But, having reached that point, the industry would then immediately have to enter the next phase to find more uranium.

“Whether or not we get the 288 reactors by 2025, is not that relevant, but what is relevant is that the growth of nuclear reactors is going to outpace the supply of uranium,” he said.

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=116350

Uranium madness hits parliament

2007-08-28T17:46:00.000+02:00

MPs told about profitability of uranium enrichment

PARLIAMENT – Building a uranium enrichment plant can cost up to R20 billion, but once it is operating the profits are big, minerals and energy department chief director nuclear energy, Tseliso Maqubela, told MPs on Wednesday.

Briefing members of Parliament’s minerals and energy portfolio committee on South Africa’s draft nuclear energy policy and strategy, approved by Cabinet earlier this month, he said the beneficiation of uranium had been identified as having “huge potential”.

“We are proposing that in line with government’s beneficiation programme, uranium must also be beneficiated, and here we are particularly saying including the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes. We cannot shy away from that.

“That is because to make fuel, you need enriched uranium. It would be better for us to actually have that capability as a country.

“Our first preference... would be to do this with international partners. of course, if we don’t succeed in this, we will have to develop our own capabilities. We are saying, we're ready for partners, but if they don’t come, we're going to have to do the beneficiation ourselves,” he said.

Uranium enrichment was a very attractive business, with profit margins of more than 50 percent.

“But of course you need to have invested in the technology upfront,” he said.

Maqubela said a new era of investment in energy infrastructure had arrived, and nuclear energy was set to “form an integral part of South Africa’s future diversified electricity generation mix”.

He noted there was an “abundance” of uranium in South Africa and other countries on the continent.

“Africa needs to benefit from this... not just by selling ore or concentrate.”

The nuclear energy sector was growing internationally, and South Africa needed to tap into the market.

“We must position South African industry to play in that space... we need to identify areas where we have a competitive edge,” Maqubela said.

His colleague in the department, senior nuclear specialist Schalk de Waal, said up to 95 percent of the high-level waste from South Africa’s nuclear reactors could be recycled and re-used as fuel. –Sapa

Source: http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=46290,1,22

Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be A Major Energy Source

2007-08-27T22:01:00.000+02:00

Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be A Major Energy Source

It takes a lot of fossil energy to mine uranium, and then to extract and prepare the right isotope for use in a nuclear reactor. It takes even more fossil energy to build the reactor, and, when its life is over, to decommission it and look after its radioactive waste. As a result, with current technology, there is only a limited amount of uranium ore in the world that is rich enough to allow more energy to be produced by the whole nuclear process than the process itself consumes. This amount of ore might be enough to supply the world’s total current electricity demand for about six years. Moreover, because of the amount of fossil fuel and fluorine used in the enrichment process, significant quantities of greenhouse gases are released. As a result, nuclear energy is by no means a ‘climate-friendly’ technology.

Click here for the full document

Radioactive ruin

2007-08-26T22:49:00.000+02:00

Radioactive ruin

South Africa’s uranium reserves will make a few individuals rich and the majority of South Africans poorer — through radioactive pollution.

When uranium mines that are planned for Beaufort West, Klerksdorp and the Magaliesberg farming regions leach into dams and water systems, agricultural produce and animals will begin to die off.

Uranium mines will contaminate large areas and contribute to cancers in residents near the mines or those who consume the water.

Dust inhalation from uranium mines is secondary only to the tobacco industry for causing lung cancer.

So, if the government goes ahead with uranium mining and building nuclear reactors, the population might as well go ahead and start chain-smoking. The result will be the same.

— Ingela Richardson

Amendments to mining law defended

2007-08-23T18:44:00.000+02:00

Amendments to mining law defended

Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs Director-General Sandile Nogxina has defended amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act, saying the amendment Bill ‘creates, rather than removes, regulatory obstacles for the mining industry’. The Financial Mail says the DG was responding to criticism of the proposed legislation from Webber Wentzel Bowens partner Peter Leon. Nogxina admits that a number of clauses have been materially changed in the amendment, but he maintains the changes are justified to meet the aims of the Act. ‘They bring the regulations in line with the intention of the legislation,’ he says, and they come partly in response to problems encountered by the DME. He singles out the issue of ‘fronting’ by parties claiming to meet BEE requirements. Chamber of Mines CE Mzolisi Diliza says his organisation was looking for more clarity in the legislation. ‘For example, what the Bill means by a ‘concentration of mineral resources’'. We are in discussions with the DME over this.’

NOTE: For the average landowner, and by this I mean "land" not your little house in Sandton, these amendments are hideous in nature. They seek to bypass the National Environmental Management Act NEMA, they seek to bypass the EIA process completely, they seek to bypass any sort of public comment or public participation. These amendments place decisions on mining totally in the hands of the minister of the Department of Minerals and Energy DME.

The DME has proven their inability to police and monitor the mining community effectively as can be seen in cases such as the contamination of the Wonderfonteinspruit Catchment which is contaminated with radioactive Uranium due to years of mining activities that have violated environmental laws.

These amendments allow the government and minister to take any minerals on any land, simply because the government owns all mineral rights of course.

SA State may demand first pick of uranium

2007-08-22T20:39:00.000+02:00

SA State may demand first pick of uranium
By: Reuters
Published: 22 Aug 07 - 17:47

South Africa may compel local miners to first offer uranium to the state to feed the country's expanding nuclear energy programme, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The government announced this month it would ramp up use of nuclear energy as it moves to meet fast-growing demand for power, using the country's large resources of uranium.

"The intervention in the uranium market (is necessary) ... there is no way we can have a situation where we battle for uranium, to get uranium ore, when our country is actually exporting," Tseliso Maqubela, chief director for nuclear energy at the department of minerals and energy, told legislators.

The enrichment programme, now biased towards reprocessing used fission material, was needed to power the country's nuclear plans, he said. These see nuclear power rising to 15 percent of total supply from the current 6 percent.

South Africa, one of the biggest producers of uranium, is building a multi-billion dollar new technology pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR), and has mooted building more conventional plants to add to its sole facility near Cape Town.

The move towards nuclear technology is driven by local concern over energy sustainability and by international worries over greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

South Africa's ageing electricity power grid is already struggling to cope with demand, with main cities Johannesburg and Cape Town already suffering intermittent blackouts.

Maqubela said he expected opposition to the proposal to intervene in the market as the country planned to reserve uranium stocks and not allocate all mining rights.

"I believe that opposition is mainly driven by commercial interests...the profit margins are quite huge in as far as enrichment of uranium (is concerned), upwards of 50 percent," he said.

Maqubela added that mining companies such as Uranium One, Anglogold and First Uranium, were expected to significantly increase output to exploit soaring uranium prices. South Africa needed to position itself to take advantage of a global nuclear revival.

"There is a growing nuclear energy sector globally, and we need to tap into that market. We need to position South African industry to be able to play in that space," he said.

Source: http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=115257

Europe's Dirty DU Secret

2007-08-21T11:20:00.000+02:00

Europe's Dirty DU Secret

The uranium enrichment multinational Urenco has come under fire from green groups for exporting thousands of tonnes of depleted uranium to Russia, in spite of Russia’s appalling safety record and the fact that dumping is technically illegal.

Urenco, whose plant at Capenhurst in Cheshire enriches uranium for use in the UK’s power plants has exported more than 75,000 tonnes of DU to Russia since 1996. The importation of nuclear waste into Russia for the purposes of storage is illegal, but Urenco and other European uranium enrichment and reprocessing firms bypass this by arranging the return of some reprocessed material. However, around 98% of the waste has not been returned and is now being stored at four sites across Russia.

The containers used to transport the uranium waste do not meet current International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards and pose a serious risk during the thousands of kilometres journey to the Russian disposal sites, where they are illegally dumped. Once there, the containers, each of which contains up to 10t of gaseous DU are left in the open air to slowly corrode. A large proportion of the waste is in the form of hexafluoride crystals, which react violently with water leading to dispersal of toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride.

In Russia, Greenpeace has filed a case in the Moscow district court against the Russian government nuclear export company, Tecksnabexport. According to paragraph 3 of article 48 of the federal law of 2001 ‘On Environmental Protection’, import of nuclear waste and foreign nuclear materials to the Russian Federation for the purpose of its storage or disposal is prohibited.

“The nuclear industry is opting for the cheapest, dirtiest and most dangerous option – dumping in Russia,” said Vladimir Tchuprov of Greenpeace Russia in La Havre. “Russia already has a nuclear waste crisis, and yet EDF, EoN, and all other European nuclear utilities are making the situation worse. Disposal and even storage of foreign nuclear waste in Russia is illegal,” said Tchuprov.

The waste is sent to Sverdlovsk-44, Angarsk, Krasnoyarsk-45 and Tomsk-7, one of the most radioactive sites on Earth and a centre for plutonium production.

Source: http://www.cadu.org.uk/info/nuclear/22_1.htm

South Africa SOLD to Canadian, American, British & Australian Mining Companies

2007-08-20T21:10:00.000+02:00

Mining ministry to call legal shots

Environment minister may lose power

August 20, 2007 Edition 1
Tony Carnie

THE mining ministry has thumbed its nose at South Africa's official environmental custodian, by declaring that it will now call the legal shots on all future environmental mining disputes.

The move has triggered fears that other government departments may attempt to follow suit and sideline the national environmental department by setting up their own in-house environment branches to approve anything from nuclear power stations to airports or major toll roads.

It has also heightened fears that final decisions to mine the Wild Coast and other ecologically sensitive areas will be handed exclusively to the Department of Minerals and Energy.

However, Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete has been asked to intervene urgently following attempts by the mining department to "smuggle" a controversial law amendment through parliament, which could exempt mining activity from safeguards in the National Environmental Management Act.

Durban environmental law specialist Jeremy Ridl said at the weekend he was becoming increasingly "uneasy" about the future of environmental protection laws in the light of several statements made by President Thabo Mbeki, Premier S'bu Ndebele and other senior ministers critical of environmental impact assessment laws.

Ridl said South Africa had enacted some of the best environmental laws in the world over the past 10 years, but he feared they might not be secure.

He sympathised with developers frustrated by bureaucratic delays in granting environmental approvals, but he also believed much of the criticism of environmental impact assessment legislation was overstated.

Ridl said pressure from the government and developers to "streamline" environmental regulation had resulted in messy and ambiguous changes rather than simpler laws.

Dangerous

As a result, the original environmental impact assessment laws had grown from about seven pages in 1997 to 53 pages in 2006, with another 83 pages of amendments published for comment earlier this year.

The overall result was unlikely to please either developers or environmentalists.

Ridl said it was difficult to judge whether proposed amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act marked the start of a new process to strip power away from Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk.

However, it was a dangerous precedent to allow "rabbits to look after the lettuce patch", and if the mining department was given such powers on environmental issues, it was a very easy step to give the same powers to other departments.

In the case of the Wild Coast, where an Australian company hopes to mine coastal sand dunes south of Port Edward, environmental consultants have already made it clear that the final decision will be taken by officials in Minister Lindiwe Hendricks's Minerals and Energy Department, not Van Schalkwyk's department.

Late last week attorney Angela Andrews of the Legal Resources Centre wrote to Mbete to voice concern that recent amendments to the Minerals Act created "an entirely new approach" to environmental regulation in the mining industry.

While public hearings were held to discuss the amendments earlier this year, the most controversial changes were not included in draft copies circulated to the public.

Andrews said these amendments were added on June 20, after public hearings were concluded by the portfolio committee on minerals and energy. "Most worrying from a procedural point of view, this substantial change was effected midway through the parliamentary process . . . it was not included in the version of the Bill which the public was invited to comment on, and no public hearings have been held or comments received on this particular amendment," she said in a letter to Mbete and National Council of Provinces Chairman Johannes Mhlangu.

Andrews has urged Mbete and Mhlangu to allow the public to comment on the change, since it affected the legal authority of provinces as well as the fundamental mandate of the environment department.

"Our instructions are further to challenge the constitutional validity of the Bill on procedural and other grounds should it become necessary."

Loggerheads

Mining is a listed activity under the newly revised environmental impact assessment regulations, but the mining and environment departments remain at loggerheads over who has final authority to regulate environmental issues when mining is involved.

The power struggle was clearly evident during a meeting of the minerals and energy portfolio committee on June 19.

Jacinto Rocha, the acting director-general of mining, was adamant that his department should be trusted to safeguard the environment during mining operations, though environmental watchdogs argue that it cannot act impartially as player and referee.

Rocha also disputed whether Van Schalkwyk's department had exclusive legal competence to deal with environmental matters. But with no resolution in sight, the environmental impact assessment process on the Wild Coast mining application is already under way.

The environmental consultants say public meetings will be held between now and September and they hope to conclude the environmental impact assessment report towards the end of October.

The public and other interest groups would get 30 days to comment and it was expected that a final decision would be taken by the mining department before February 22.

If the project is approved, as seems increasingly likely, the Wild Coast miners hope to process 15 million tons of sand a year and convert this into products such as paint pigments and glass television screens.

The mining operation would last for nearly a quarter of a century along a 22km-long stretch of coastline in Xolobeni, just south of the KwaZulu-Natal border at Port Edward.

The Wildlife and Environment Society has pointed to several similarities between the Xolobeni and Lake St Lucia dune-mining debates, but its members fear there will be less public debate because the Pondoland area is not as well-known as St Lucia.

Toxic Water - WonderfonteinSpruit

2007-08-20T18:22:00.000+02:00

Toxic Water

The Wonderfontein Spruit starts near Randfontein in the north and moves all the way down south to Potchefstroom. It flows through the richest gold mining region in the world.

Copyright - CarteBlanche
Date : 12 August 2007
Producer : Carol Albertyn Christie
Presenter : Devi Sankaree Govender

The Coetzee’s have stopped farming mealies because the crops turned yellow when they were irrigated from the Wonderfontein Spruit. The water in Robinson Lake is as acidic as orange juice and is radioactive. Hundreds of fish who fed on the uranium-rich sediment of the Donaldson Dam died recently. Across the way, in the Krugersdorp Nature Reserve, many animals havevdied, and the herds of buck are showing signs of low fertility. The common denominator in all of these examples is uranium-contaminated water and, if unchecked, it may eventually reach Potchefstroom.

Mariette Liefferink (Activist): “I want to emphasise this: I am not a ‘greeny’, or, as you put it, “a bunny hugger!” I am an environmental justice activist.”

Many believe that South Africa’s success has largely been founded on gold, and yet this woman - who looks like a glamorous executive - has single-handedly taken on the might of the gold mines on the West Rand. She is a South African Erin Brockovich, who has spent seven years of her life fighting for a cause that she is passionately committed to. She has written thousands of letters trying to get Government to act on what she believes is a national crisis.

Devi Sankaree Govender (Carte Blanche presenter): “How serious is this situation?”

Mariette: “There is more than abundant evidence that the chemical toxicity of the uranium in the Wonderfontein Spruit certainly can translate into a hazard or a risk to human health.”

South Africa was one of the countries that supplied America with uranium for its nuclear bomb programme called The Manhattan Project. Uranium is one of the most dangerous metals on earth. Not only is it highly toxic, but it is also radioactive.

Devi: “Why is uranium so dangerous?”

Mariette: “Uranium has two properties. It is chemically toxic; it can lead to kidney failure. It is also radioactive, which means it has a carcinogenic effect.”

Radium is a daughter product of uranium and was the key ingredient of luminous paint that was used in the First World War on clock dials. The factory women, who painted the dials, licked the paintbrushes that contained minute quantities of radium found in the luminous paint. They developed severe health complications and the phenomenon was referred to as Radium Jaw. Many of the women suffered from cancerous growths, anaemia and bone fractures and in some cases the illness only manifested decades later.

Mariette: “But unfortunately - since we have stopped selling uranium to other countries overseas, such as the Manhattan Project - uranium is being dumped into tailings dams.”

It is still estimated that the gold mining industry discharges 50 tons of uranium into the watercourses every year. This is compounded by the 100 000 tons of uranium that are estimated to be in the tailings dams.

Dr Francois Durand (Zoologist): “Half the people of South Africa live in Gauteng and we are right here on a nuclear waste site.”

Dr Francois Durand is a zoologist at the University of Johannesburg. He has been looking at the impact of the contaminated water of gold mining on the water quality.

Dr Durand: “The water is very acidic and it contains a lot of heavy metals, of which many are dangerous to life - not only aquatic life, but also to humans.”

Mariette: “I cannot justify that a major mining company that has deteriorated the ecology, would cause harm to the community and would not be prepared to pay for the pollution caused, or the health effects that may have been caused.”

Mariette Liefferink is a self-funded activist and has, in the past, taken on the oil giant Shell and won.

Wonderfontein is home to some of the largest gold mining companies in the world. AngloGold, Goldfields, DRD and Harmony are the four major operators. Mariette Liefferink believes they are largely responsible for the contamination of the Wonderfontein Spruit.

Willie Jacobz (Goldfields: Sustainable Development): “The water that comes off our mines today… we must make sure that water is clean and drinkable and of a high quality.”

Willie Jacobz is the head of sustainable development at Goldfields Limited, the fourth largest gold mining company in the world, employing over 40 000 people.

Willie: “It used to be a largely agricultural area. Subsequently, it has become overtaken by mining; and clearly mining has an impact, and we acknowledge that.”

Water is inextricably linked to the mining process. It is pumped out of the ground to get to the ore and it is also used in the extraction procedure. The mine effluent is meant to be pumped and contained into tailings or slimes dams.

Willie: “Our company took very proactive steps throughout the ‘70s and the ‘80s. For instance, all of our slimes dams have got measures around them to prevent spills and runoffs. It does happen, but we manage it well.”

They may manage that aspect, but there is the history of over 100 years of uranium that is settled in the sediment of the Wonderfontein Spruit.

Sas and Douw Coetzee are farmers along the Wonderfontein Spruit. Their family has been tilling the soil for nearly three decades.

Over the years their irrigation dam started to silt up because of all the sediment flowing into the dam. In December 2001 the brothers decided to break the dam wall, take the mud out and build it again to have more water for irrigation. They had no idea of the consequences of their actions.

Douw Coetzee (Farmer): “As soon as we started moving the mud, the National Nuclear Regulator arrived and asked us what we were doing and who gave us permission to move the mud from the dam.”

Devi: “It must have been a shock to suddenly see people from the NNR pitch up on your property?”

Douw: “We then realised that there is a big problem.”

They were stunned when the National Nuclear Regulator told them that their dam was radioactive. Their dam allegedly contains nearly a thousand times more uranium concentration than allowed by the Department of Water Affairs. But theirs is not an isolated example.

This is a radiometric image [on screen] of an area further north in the Wonderfontein Spruit. The red areas show an elevated radioactivity and are gold mine dumps. However, the image also shows that the radiation is seeping into the wetlands and waterways.

Devi: “The most contaminated part of the Coetzee’s dam is the sediment where the uranium and heavy metals have settled. The dam is about 30km from Potchefstroom. The question is: if there is a big storm or heavy flooding, will this sediment make its way to Boskop Dam? … which 400 000 Potchefstroom residents rely on for their drinking water.”

When the Coetzee’s broke their dam wall, Potchefstroom Municipality picked up uranium in their drinking water and took an interdict out against DRD - the closest mine nearby, who quickly fixed up the dam wall.

Devi: “The closest mine to the Coetzee’s farm is DRD - Durban Roodepoort Deep. Their former chairman was Brett Keble. We asked them for an interview and their response was that they didn’t want to participate in our programme.”

Mahesh Rupa is Potchefstroom’s Health and Safety Director.

Mahesh Rupa (Potchefstroom Municipality): “It is true it is not easy to estimate the danger to Potchefstroom. But the safety of our residents is paramount to all issues.”

Although he is very concerned about the safety of his residents, part of the agreement with the DRD was that they would also rehabilitate the sediment spill at the Coetzee dam. To date this hasn’t happened.

Devi: “The point, however, is that agreement was brokered five years ago?”

Mahesh: “In wanting to find a solution, it is not necessary to assume that we are going to do it in a manner that will be hasty.”

Although there have been some slightly elevated levels of uranium in the Boskop Dam, the municipality insists that the current water quality is well within allotted standards. The concern, though, is - the contamination is moving slowly downstream.

Marius Keet (Department of Water Affairs): “We are concerned about all the catchments in South Africa, but specially the Wonderfontein Spruit because it is so heavily industrialised. The major concern is of course the mines.”

According to Marius Keet, the Government has created a task team of the Departments of Water Affairs, Mineral and Energy Affairs and Environmental Affairs to address the issues in the area. He has been monitoring the water situation for a while and believes that there is an improvement in the surface water.

Marius: “Yes, there is a possibility that you have uranium in the sediment. In some cases the concentration of uranium in the sediment is fairly high. But that is in the sediment. As far as the water is concerned, I honestly think that the water is quite safe.”

Devi: “The Department of Water Affairs has tried to reassure us by saying that the sediment is stable. But other studies have shown that if the water is churned by animals or people, the highly toxic uranium is mobilised.”

The National Nuclear Regulator released the Brenk report on 2 August this year, and it stated that there were 11 sites along the Wonderfontein Spruit that exceeded the annual limit of radioactivity. One of the concerns in the report was the irrigation of vegetables from these sites. Khutsong is a town of about 150 000 people and many of the residents rely on this water source. Carte Blanche tested some leeks that were growing near the river.

Even though the NNR report said that “none of the lives of the residents are in any impending danger”, the leeks we tested contained sixteen times more uranium per kilogram than the daily limit, as suggested by the World Health Organisation, for human consumption.

Devi: “Although many of the farmers are aware of the water problem, there is still a lot of agriculture going on along the Wonderfontein Spruit. This [on screen] was a peat farm that supplied the mushroom industry. But in December last year they closed shop because they were concerned about the water quality.

Rene Potgieter (Peat Farmer): “We became aware of the fact that the biggest threat to our business was this pollution plume that was slowly migrating down the Wonderfontein Spruit and seeping into the wetland.”

Rene Potgieter’s peat farm is only about 4km away from Potchefstroom. She says that 95 percent of the peat that was used by the mushroom industry came from this wetland. She has been pressurising the government to do a peat study, but when the water quality deteriorated even further in the wetland and the mushroom yield dropped, they took those warning signs to heart.

Rene: “Imagine the implication if all of a sudden the study is completed and it is discovered that there is uranium in this peat, and how many millions of people eating mushrooms?”

Rene Potgieter started the Potchefstroom Action Group to pressurise the authorities to deal with the issues for the future safety of their town and children.

Devi: “The Coetzee brothers were primarily mealie farmers. This abandoned field behind me used to produce ears of corn.”

The mealie on the left [large] was irrigated by rainwater and the mealie [small] on the right from water from the dam. The Coetzee’s say that all of the mealies irrigated from the contaminated dam were substantially smaller.

This has basically cost them their livelihood. The only thing left in their lands is khaki bos.

Douw: “For the past three years we have been unable to irrigate because there was not enough water in the dam and we could also not take the mud out of the dam because the government told us it was radioactive. In the meantime we are suffering with huge damages.”

Sas Coetzee (Farmer): “If you don’t farm or produce then you face bankruptcy. In other words, we will end up on the street.”

During our research we could not find any studies that quantified the amount of heavy metals found in plants that were grown at the Wonderfontein Spruit. To our knowledge Carte Blanche has been the first to test vegetables that were grown in the area.

We tested a cabbage and leek, the leek is more contaminated - possibly because it grew closer to the water stream. The cabbage, we believe, was irrigated by borehole water.

Dr Francois Durand interpreted the results based on the Department of Water’s daily guidelines and said that the heavy metal levels were unacceptably high. His concern is that heavy metals accumulate in the body.

Aluminium has been linked to Alzheimer’s, iron to haemochromatosis and manganese to neurological problems.

Rene: “You can’t see the effects on human health because they haven’t done studies yet on human health. I think the biggest reason they haven’t done studies yet is because they don’t actually want to see the results.”

When mining started over 100 years ago they had little idea of the impact it would have on the environment. Given the amount of money the State was making from the mines, there was also very little impetus to create legislation to protect the environment.

Harmony is the fifth largest gold mining company in the world and was founded in the ‘50s as the Rand Mines Company, but listed independently in 1997. By law the mines have to set aside a remediation fund to rehabilitate the environment. Sandy Carroll and Rex Zorab work on Harmony’s environmental team.

Rex Zorab (Operational Environmental Officer): “The remediation fund is the one that is provided for at closure; now some of these legacy issues are addressed at that point.”

Devi: “Are we then saying that we have to wait for the mine to close before we address issues of legacy that started earlier on?”

Sandy Carroll (Environmental Consultant): “We can address some of those legacy issues already… that is what we term concurrent rehabilitation. Harmony has some plans in place to actually start addressing some of those issues in this area.”

Devi: “So why weren’t plans put in place when you came, when you knew what you had walked into?”

Sandy: “Absolutely, I think the focus has always been to work within the regulatory framework in terms of our operations, which we have done all along. It is only recently that we have realised that there is an opportunity in actually starting to address some of those legacy issues.”

To compound the issue, not only is the surface sediment contaminated, but the underground water is also toxic, as it percolates with the heavy metals that have been exposed during mining.

In 2002 this acidic water started pouring out of a disused mine shaft on Harmony’s land.

Dr Durand: “The lake behind me has a pH of 2.2. Now that is acidic as battery acid. I have a sample of this; it is not water, it is acid.”

As an emergency measure, Harmony pumped this toxic water into Robinson Lake where it could be contained. The uranium levels here are 40 000 times above the natural background levels.

Devi: “Listening to you, Francois, I get so upset. Why is somebody not doing something about this?”

Dr Durand: “This is what we are trying to do now.”

Devi: “But what about government departments?”

Dr Durand: “The problem with government is that they have to try and sustain the economy. If the mines close down, suddenly millions of people - that is mine workers and their dependents - haven’t got an income.”

Nothing can live in this water. Robinson Lake is a barren radioactive wasteland. Harmony, who owned the lake at the time of the decant, sold the property, and it now belongs to a property developer who wants to build luxury houses around it.

Devi: “At that time of selling that particular area, were you aware that the water was pretty toxic in that dam?”

Rex: “We were well aware of it - that there was rehabilitation that needs to be done; it was in the current process.”

Devi: “And the understanding was that the mine would rehabilitate the dam?”

Rex: “Indeed.”

Devi: “Have you started work on it?”

Rex: “When you say have we started work on rehabilitating it, the answer is no. Have we started work on investigating the rehabilitation routes? The answer is yes.”

The decant happened five years ago and Harmony is still thinking of ways to sort the problem out.

Given the potential for harm, one would expect the government to be diligent about what went into the waterways. But judging from the Coetzee’s cell phone footage of mine effluent on its way to the Spruit, the mines aren’t sticking to the rules.

Marius: “It is very difficult to be on site on a 24 hour a day basis. If necessary, we can take them on; we can take them to court.”

Devi: “Have you ever taken them to court?”

Marius: “Not the mines, not these mines. It is always better to do an evaluation and rehabilitate than just to give them a penalty of R50 000 or R100 000. But if necessary, we will do it.”

Gold mining will still continue for at least another 40 years. In their defence, Goldfields has created a forum of all of the key players to address these issues. But the affected parties feel that another forum, like all of the reports that have been written, may just be delaying tactics.

Devi: “You knew the impact of mining was having on the environment. But from their side it doesn’t look like much was done or that their issues were taken seriously. What would you then say to them?”

Willie: “We’re doing it today.”

Devi: “Is it good enough, though, doing it today?”

Willie: “We can’t run back the clock. We have to deal with the issues that we are faced with today.”

Mariette: “It is time now that people should not serve the economy, but that the economy should serve the people.”

Mariette Liefferink believes that the mines may well in the future be forced to address the environmental issues, because their shareholders won’t want to be associated with dirty gold.

Dr Durand: “The people who own these mines sit outside the country and they don’t have to drink the water. We have to drink the water. We have to sit here with all this rubbish and pollution. We have to sort out the ecological problems, not them!”

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.

Source: http://www.carteblanche.co.za/Display/Display.asp?Id=3370

Poisonous Legacy

2007-08-20T15:27:00.000+02:00

This flash video is well worth the watch for EVERY single citizen on earth.

http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html

Lives at risk as mines coin it

2007-08-20T13:40:00.000+02:00

Lives at risk as mines coin it
by Joel Avni

State knew about danger for 40 years

Gold mines on the Witwatersrand are exposing millions of people in Gauteng and North West to poisoned waters, leaving a trail of suspected cancer, kidney disease and death.

No one can put a figure to the devastation because officials have refused to heed calls for an epidemiological study to determine the extent of the catastrophe, say researchers and environmental groups monitoring the disaster.

National, provincial and local officials have known since the 1960s that citizens would be exposed to the witch’s brew of toxic chemicals that current and closed mines spew as waste into our waterways every single day.

But bureaucrats and their political masters in democratic South Africa have been as unwilling to offend the magnates and their investors as their counterparts were during apartheid.

The poor, the old, the young, and especially those infected with HIV are most at risk.

The constitution and a slew of laws nominally protect citizens. But Sowetan has witnessed unwitting communities – megarich and pitifully poor – drink, bathe and play at unfenced poisonous sites. Radioactive dams as corrosive as battery acid and devoid of plant and animal life were not even signposted.

The cocktail includes heavy metals and chemicals that cause cancer and mental retardation, destroy the kidneys, and can even poison victims outright.

Uranium and other radioactive elements occur in such high concentrations that dams are declared nuclear sites.

But no sign warns local communities and no fence keeps them or their livestock at bay – as required by law.

The mines, academics and researchers have known about the problem for decades. But the departments of Minerals and Energy, Water Affairs, Environment and Tourism, the National Nuclear Regulator, provincial and local officials have suppressed or ignored their reports, says Mariette Liefferink, an activist for environmental justice.

Wonderfonteinspruit rises in Randfontein on the West Rand and feeds the Mooi River, which provides Potchefstroom with its water. Millions of people live next to this waterway, which is poisoned all along its length by mine waste, according to reports by the Water Research Commission, the Council of Geoscience, the Jordaan Commission, and the national State of the Environment Report 2002 for North West.

Tudor Dam in Mogale City lies a short distance northeast of the spruit’s source. The sediment is contaminated with so much uranium that it should be declared a nuclear site, cordoned off and marked with signs warning people of the danger.

But it has been bone-dry for months, with no water to shield the residents alongside it from the sediments.

Children playing in the dust on Sunday said no one had ever warned them of the dangers.

Robinson Lake lies a few kilometres down the Wonderfonteinspruit in Randfontein. The dam was once a popular picnic area and prime fishing spot.

For the past five years Harmony gold mine has been pumping water into the lake, which is now completely dead. A recent investigation found a single species of amphipod in its waters – and nothing else. It too is so radioactive that by law it should be fenced off and signposted.

But the Randfontein Golf Estate with a hotel and more than 520 homes is being built on its lifeless banks.

No warning is posted to advise the proud new owners that their investments are perched on an impoundment that poses a risk to them and their children.

Source: http://www.sowetan.co.za/article.aspx?ID=522473

Fears grow that 'green' ministry may be sidelined

2007-08-20T12:30:00.000+02:00

Fears grow that ‘green’ ministry may be sidelined

There are fears that the mining ministry’s decision to call the legal shorts on all future environmental mining disputes – thus sidelining National Environmental Department – will encourage other government departments to follow suit and set up their own in-house environment branches to approve anything from nuclear power stations to airports or major toll roads.

A report in The Mercury says the move has also heightened fears that final decisions to mine the Wild Coast and other ecologically sensitive areas will be handed exclusively to the Department of Minerals and Energy.

However, Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete, has been asked to intervene urgently following attempts by the mining department to ‘smuggle’ a controversial law amendment, which would exempt mining activity from safeguards in the National Environmental Management Act, through Parliament.

Durban environmental law specialist Jeremy Ridl said at the weekend he was becoming increasingly ‘uneasy’ about the future of environmental protection laws in the light of several statements made by President Thabo Mbeki, KZN Premier S’bu Ndebele and other senior members critical of environmental impact assessment laws. Ridl said SA had enacted some of the best environmental laws in the world over the past 10 years but he feared they might not be secure.

Full report in The Mercury (subscription needed)

Study warns of radioactive food

2007-08-20T12:27:00.000+02:00

Study warns of radioactive food
Elise Tempelhoff, Beeld

Johannesburg - Meat, fish, milk, maize and other crops produced near Wonderfontein Spruit in Gauteng are probably harmful to people as they are seriously contaminated by, among others, radioactive pollutants. This pollution affects the area between Randfontein and Potchefstroom. International experts say people who eat or drink these products could suffer liver or kidney failure or get cancer. It could also hamper children's growth and cause mental disability.

According to findings in a report compiled by German physicists under Dr Rainer Barthel from BS Associates, the water from the Wonderfontein Spruit, which was used to irrigate the crops, had absorbed polonium and lead, the radioactive by products of uranium and radium.

Cattle also contaminated
Cattle drinking from the Wonderfontein Spruit that churned up the uranium-rich mud, were also contaminated by these radioactive pollutants. Their meat and milk would also probably be poisonous.

This report by the Germans, known as the Brenk report, was compiled on request of the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), who refused to make the contents known for the past three months. Beeld obtained excerpts from the report.

Maurice Magugumela, chief official of the NNR, upon enquiry said "there is no reason for concern". He said the NNR was studying the report and has had "several talks with those involved".

Barthel was prevented from delivering two speeches from the report at the Environmin 2007 conference at the Pilanesberg nature reserve two weeks ago. He had to withdraw these speeches at short notice. These two excerpts had by then already been included in the literature distributed at the conference.

Natural water sources unsafe
Barthel and his co-authors came to the conclusion in the report that the land in this area - where more than 400 000 people live in Randfontein, Bekkersdal, Carletonville, Westonaria, Khutsong and Welverdiend - was seriously polluted by overflow from sludge dams during 100 years of mining.

People in towns in this area received their drinking water from Rand Water, but people on farms and informal settlements were reliant on water from Wonderfontein Spruit.

Sandy Carroll, who was recently appointed environmental manager at Harmony Gold, admitted that the mining groups were informed about the dangers indicated in the report. She said Harmony was talking to NNR and they were together seeking solutions.

The West Rand district municipality planned to erect notices warning people along the Wonderfontein Spruit (which runs for 100km) not to use the water.

Carroll replied in an e-mail to Beeld's enquiries: "Alternative water sources will be suggested."

The report stressed that there was no natural water in the whole area that was safe for use by humans, animals or plants.

Tested cabbage
Mariette Lieffering, an environmental activist who established the Public Environmental Arbiters (PEA), said it was "surprising" that Magugumela could state there was no reason for concern for the residents in the area. She has just written to the Human Rights Commission to step in.

• A cabbage that was irrigated with water from the Wonderfontein Spruit catchment area and which was analysed by Dr Francois Durand, zoology lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, was found to contain 153 times more aluminium, 680 times more iron, 590 times more manganese, 980 times more vanadium that was recommended for human and also had too much zinc.

Source:News24

See also: http://www.environment.co.za/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1124

The Uranium Meltdown

2007-08-20T10:35:00.000+02:00

The Uranium Meltdown
Bush is Moving On...But to Where?

By JOHN TROYER

"The President has moved on," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said to reporters at a news conference on Saturday when asked about the continuing attention being given to false intelligence information used in President George W. Bush's January State of the Union Address. I take Fleischer at his word--the president really, really wants to stifle any scrutiny directed towards the administration's use of intelligence information before occupying Iraq. I do not think, however, moving on is going to be so easy for President Bush, Vice President Cheney or senior White House officials. Even though a statement released last Friday by CIA Director George Tenet takes responsibility for allowing information about uranium sales between Africa and Iraq to appear in the State of the Union Address, I think the Bush administration's problems are just beginning.

Three large problems still face the Bush administration and no statement by any top official near the White House can entirely obscure these problematic situations.

The first issue is Tenet's own statement. Without a doubt, as the BBC's description of Tenet's statement suggests, he is the one falling on his sword for the president and the White House. The Washington Post reported on Saturday the statement itself "had been in the works for two days" before being released. So clearly, shocking as it may sound, the whole affair seems rather programmed. A key word is used in Tenet's statement and I have a hunch it will not go unnoticed by critics. In explaining how investigations regarding the alleged uranium sales were handled Tenet states: "Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the president, vice president or other senior administration officials." The word to contemplate is "brief." Just because the president, the vice president and other senior administration officials were not briefed, does not mean they didn't know the information was false. If these people didn't know, then Tenet's statement should have said--they did not know. Remember, when the U.S. military hits civilian targets or the Al-Jazeera network offices in Baghdad the Pentagon explains those places aren't "being targeted". That doesn't mean, however, those same locations aren't being smashed to bits by the U.S. military. The nuance of language and words matter a great deal when establishing culpability.

Problem two is in the United Kingdom. Tony Blair and his government have been left to drown by the White House. The BBC reported last week the CIA told President Bush the Africa story was bad information and by extension opened deeper questions about Blair's use of British intelligence on the same subject. Now the White House has said the British intelligence was wrong in its entirety. Suddenly, and without warning, the White House is telling the citizens of the United Kingdom their government is lying. Blair and his ministers are standing by their intelligence on uranium sales to Iraq, albeit alone and under heavy scrutiny in Parliament. John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, has also apologized over the weekend to his country for using the same intelligence in his speeches. Most damaging to Blair were comments carried by the BBC on July 9 from senior officials within Blair's own government saying weapons of mass destruction are "unlikely to be found." All of these problems leave Blair and his Labor Party one option when speaking to the public--to blame the United States and President Bush for their problems. I doubt Blair would ever, say, turn Britain's back on an ally when accusations regarding governmental policy emerge, but it may be his only chance for re-election. Adding to the fire Blair is already under are two U.K. citizens, Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, being held in Guantanamo Bay by the United States as illegal combatants. Both men now face the newly established military tribunals orchestrated by the Pentagon. Members of the British Parliament across the board are demanding these men be repatriated and given a trial in the U.K.

The third problem faced by the Bush administration, and it's a big one, is the sheer volume of journalistic reports regarding heavy-handed uses of information by the Pentagon. In the March 31 issue of The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh wrote an extensive story about how the uranium intelligence information was fictitious and manufactured. More recently, on June 19, The New Republic posted an even longer story by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman about the problems with the Bush administration's intelligence gathering by the Department of Defense. Finally, on July 6 former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV published an opinion piece in The New York Times about his February 2002 trip to Niger examining reports of the uranium sales. Wilson's trip, it should be noted, was undertaken at the request of the CIA and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The piece by Wilson has been widely distributed but one key portion regarding his trip to Niger suggesting an important paper trail has been given far too little attention. Wilson states: "Although I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in U.S. government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure."

Even though President Bush is ready to move on, I have a feeling the problems are just beginning for his administration--I didn't even touch on the occupation of Iraq or problematic domestic issues. While I am not a fan of the word scandal, the really interesting shake-ups in Washington take time to unravel. From start to finish, Watergate plagued the Nixon administration for roughly two years. The irony of the situation is the classic distraction used by previous presidents during bad times, namely bombing Iraq or the Middle East writ large, isn't possible now--too many Americans are in the way. So, move on Mr. President--I want to see where you end up going.

John Troyer is a PhD student at the University of Minnesota. He can be reached at troy0005@tc.umn.edu

THE RADIOACTIVE MERRY-GO-ROUND

2007-08-20T10:15:00.000+02:00

THE RADIOACTIVE MERRY-GO-ROUND

There is no such thing as nuclear waste disposal. Instead, nations around the world having been putting nuclear waste on a constant radioactive merry-go-round - transporting it from country to country to be met with outrage from their people at the suffering, death and environmental havoc the waste has wrought. And now the merry-go-round has come to Cape Town, South Africa as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) host a nuclear waste "workshop" in Cape Town over a cup of coffee.

It is interesting to take a look at the representatives who have been invited to attend this "Common Framework for the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal" from 2-6 July. They include: Didier Louvat of the IAEA, Peter Lietava (Czech republic), Wolfgang Goldammer (Germany), Zhiwen Fan (China), Oleg Bonderenko and Volodmyr Tokarevski (Ukraine), P.A. Brown, D.E. Metcalfe and D.M McCauley (Canada), Marko Giacomelli (Slovenia), Ms. Alena Zavazanova (Slovak Republic), Sergie Dmitriev (Russia), Tariq Tahir (Pakistan), Djarot Wisnurbroto (Indonesia), Azucena Sanhueza-Mir (Chile), Karoli Berci (Hungary), Francois Besnus (France), Yongsoo Hwang (Korea), Vilmos Zsombori (Romania), Shang (China) and Luc Beakaland (Belgium).

This starts to look like an ID parade for the "Usual Suspects". What do you suppose they would have to say on the topic of "disposing" of nuclear waste? In which country shall we put it all this year? But then hopefully the NNR has seen fit to accomodate, not only all these foreign representatives, but also plenty of local press to inform South Africans as to how their taxes will be spent on Eskom's planned R400 billion nuclear programme? But check on that price tag, because it seems to go up every month.

Talking about the "disposal" of nuclear waste - here is another unlikely fairytale. Once upon a time there was a happy village in West Siberia. Then the Russian Atomic Ministry, Minatom, decided to build a nuclear reactor nearby - and so the Mayak nightmare began. Radioactive waste from the Mayak nuclear complex was pumped into the Techa River - the source of drinking water for many villages. Nuclear waste was also dumped into the lakes of West Siberia. Then in 1957 one of the cooling systems of the Mayak-plant exploded and at least 272 000 people were affected. No this was not Chernobyl - it just looked a lot like Chernobyl. And served to activate Russian environmental group Ecodefense to deliver a mass petition demanding the end to nuclear waste imports into Russia. The petition was signed by 5 000 Russians - tired of living with nuclear waste from other nations in Europe. While it seems that The Netherlands, Germany and Hungary for example would like to market pristine postcard little villages gleaming with cleanliness, it was okay for their Russian brothers and sisters to glow in the dark.

The Russian government had planned to import 20 000 tonnes of nuclear waste in exchange for over 20 billion US dollars. Potential exporting countries included: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany and Spain. The deputy head of the Mayak plant told a government commission that they could not guarantee the safety of the people in the area. How unusual? But since the Russians are fed up with it, is South Africa planning to be the next new importer of Grade A nuclear waste?

The Americans say: "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me". They also use the term "trying to pull a fast one" and the nuclear industry can certainly pride itself on trying to pull down the blinds on as many ignorant and uninformed nations in the world as possible, especially third world or developing nations, where people may not all even be literate and able to read warning signs like - "Don't pick the radioactive berries", or "No hunting for mutated animals in this forest".

Environmental groups around the world have been calling for an international convention on the dumping of radioactive waste. But the nuclear industry has very cleverly got away with this one by branding all environmentalists as "tree huggers" and "hippies". Who would possibly take them seriously?

Perhaps the victims of the Mayak nuclear complex, including: Wafir Gusmanov, a tractor driver who was forced by policemen to help clear up the contaminated banks of the Techa River, Ramzis Fayzullin who was born disabled and has yet to receive a reply from the Russian government, Kostia who has Down's Syndrome and had to have his fingers separated at birth and Luba, a kindergarten teacher where due to illness there is never full attendance and her own daughter, Regina, in urgent need of a heart operation.

Another merry addition to the coffee workshop hails from the Ukraine. Who would not want to spend a blissful holiday - basking in the waters of the sunny Ukraine? Well, it used to be beautiful. But the nuclear industry seems to have ground this nation underfoot, together with a number of others. Under the headline "Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova Choking on Toxic Waste, writers from Agence France-Presse (AFP) described the "toxic waste, water pollution and the legacy of Chernobyl" that had plunged these countries into "environmental crisis". According to a report released by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) this year, the Ukraine has "2,5 million tonnes of Soviet-era ammunition that requires disposal, including four burial grounds for radioactive waste". There are also 11 000 tonnes of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and 2 000 tonnes of DDT, both posing "a long term danger for the environment and health." Most of Ukraine's 6 000 storage sites were "inadequately built, poorly guarded facilities in a deteriorating state of repair", usually without any documentation. Water quality was also a problem as 39 per cent of waste water was estimated to be polluted and 25 per cent goes into the environment without any kind of treatment.

How about sunny Moldova? Well this nation clocks in at only "8 000 tonnes of toxic residues often stored illegally and in a disorganised fashion contributing to land and water contamination" according to the OSCE. Stricter EU environmental standards in Slovakia and Hungary resulted in attempts to export environmental problems across borders. Tsk, tsk. Naughty, naughty! Moldova's military legacy included 20 000 tonnes of arms and munitions that were hard to get rid of. "The simultaneous explosion of such quantities of ammunition may trigger an environmental and humanitarian disaster," the report warned. And they are not kidding. In Moldova, up to half of ground water is contaminated "beyond all acceptable levels". It's even worse for surface water, affected by a wide variety of pollutants including ammonia, nitrites, phenols and oil products, the OSCE said. So one would gather that the locals do not drink the water?

In Belarus, "the most serious environmental problem concerns the liquidation of armaments and munitions inherited from the Soviet Union, including toxic and radioactive material", the OSCE said. During the Soviet era, military sites covered 300 000 hectares. These had been abandonded, leaving local authorities to clean up. In Belarus, 778 million tonnes of mining waste in the Soligorsk region were exposed to wind and water erosion and experts found 8 000 tonnes of obsolete pesticides in Belarus. Only!

But all of this lovely waste was not enough for Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko who was planning to bury nuclear waste from other countries in the Chernobyl zone. The Ukrainian leader said a second storage area for Chernobyl’s nuclear waste would be put into operation in 2010. Yes, this is the Chernobyl where 30 people were killed instantly and most workers who went inside the reactor after the accident had no protective equipment - a fatal economy. Large areas of the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of 200 000 people.

After decades of research, environmental groups were slowly coming to realise that the IAEA promotes nuclear power. Last year, they protested by placing radioactive soil in the lobby of the IAEA. A 250kg concrete container containing two 1kg radioactive samples was placed in the lobby of the UN agency building in Vienna. The radioactive soil was taken from areas where people were still trying to harvest wood, mushrooms and berries. The samples were 10-25 times more radioactive than the radioactive limits set by the European Commission.

Finally, even the WHO had to admit - figures used by the IAEA concerning Chernobyl may have been somewhat selective. Zhanat Carr, a radiation scientist with WHO in Geneva said that the IAEA report was a "political communication tool". She also said that WHO did not include cancers outside Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Whereas an independent report by 52 scientists showed that 270 000 cancers and 93 000 fatal cancer cases were caused by Chernobyl. The report also concluded that during the last 15 years, 60 000 people had died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach 140 000.

So the R400 billion question is whether South Africans think it is the role of a United Nations agency, funded by taxes, to advance the profits of the nuclear industry? Do we not have the right to expect the IAEA to focus only on the values and principles of the UN - peace, security, and human rights - and not on private industry's profits?

But back to the workshop line-up. Another country represented in Cape Town is China, where unions and labour perhaps do not have the same kind of voice that they do in South Africa. A Gansu uranium mine employee was "detained by public security police" in China in 2005 when he tried to petition officials about severe radiation poisoning." Sun Xiaodi was detained and arrested when he tried to protest that radioactive material from the uranium mine was improperly handled, so that residents near and downstream from the plant suffered cancerous tumors, leukemia, birth defects and miscarriages. After being thrown in and out of prison like a yo-yo - depending on international opinion - Human Rights in China (HRIC) learned this year that Sun Xiaodi had been released from prison so that he could go to Beijing for treatment of a life-threatening tumor. But he and his family were continually harassed and faced financial hardship.

Pakistan is also represented at the Cape Town workshop. Last year, in Pakistan a senator from Punjab accused the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) of dumping nuclear waste in a village near Dera Ghazi Khan without observing international safety standards, causing many deaths. Sardar Jamal Khan Leghari of the Pakistan Muslim League said the PAEC had been mining uranium in the village for 25 years and dumping the nuclear waste in the open. He said the dumping of the nuclear waste was affecting people from Baloch and Leghari tribes living in the area, several of whom had already died.

Mr Leghari said livestock mortality and diseases among people living in the Baghalchur village near D. G. Khan were on the rise due to uranium mining in the area. He said that life expectancy in the village had fallen to 40 years. He said some villagers had taken the matter to the Supreme Court but the court had kept the proceedings secret. After publication of such reports in a section of the press, PAEC authorities had claimed that the waste was being dumped underground in tunnels and there had been no radioactive effects. But residents said that 400 drums of atomic waste and other material were lying in the open. The District and Sessions Judges (D&SJ) had sent the application to the Law, Justice and Human Rights Commission, Islamabad.

Last year when environmentalists staged a protest in front of Germany's embassy in Moscow against shipments of German nuclear waste to Russia, Russian protesters were seized, handcuffed and hauled away by police. This year, German and Russian activists held a demonstration in front of the E.ON headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany. They protested against uranium enrichment and depleted uranium tails exports to Russia. The Russians had stumbled onto a huge government secret - the nuclear waste was not being "reprocessed" it was just being "stored" and they did not want it "stored" there anymore. The official reason for sending waste to Russia to "recover usable uranium" was no longer valid.

The Russian environmental group Ekozashchita (Ecodefense) asked a German public prosecutor "to investigate the activities of the German branch of Urenco which illegally delivers nuclear waste to Russia," a spokesman for the group, Vladimir Sliviak, told AFP. The group accused the company of transporting 20 000 tonnes of waste depleted uranium to Russia. 90 per cent of the waste uranium has since remained in Russia, the group said. Techsnabexport said it had transported "not nuclear waste, but primary materials" and was supported in this claim by the Russian nuclear authorities. So it seems one man's "waste" is another man's "primary material"?

Sliviak said: "German authorities must not take advantage of the fact that the Russian atomic industry can violate laws and ignore public opinion." According to Ecodefense, 100 000 tonnes of nuclear waste have been imported to Russia over the past decade. Up to 90 per cent is stored by Russian companies, awaiting final disposal. The radioactive material arrives in Saint Petersburg's port where it is carried by train toward the Ural mountains, and western and eastern Siberia. There is no such thing as "final disposal", since the waste will be radioactive for thousands of years - wherever it is "stored".

South Africa is now launching yet another Nuclear Industry Association (Sania), that is apparently supposed to "consider the interests of the South African nuclear industry through a collaborative approach". Of all groups, the infamous money-wasting PBMR industry has stated that this added expense of a yet another branch to their nuclear group is due to the “rapid development” of the South African nuclear sector. Ambitions of the South African nuclear programme include: a new nuclear power plant by Eskom, the PBMR, nuclear-fuel cycle and research and development by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) and uranium-mining - all highly toxic industries.

The company is moving ahead with studies into a proposed new 4 000 MW conventional nuclear plant. The nuclear industry is South Africa is still harping on its newly found environmental theme of "reducing carbon emissions" seemingly forgetting that the nuclear process includes uranium mining and milling and these equal or exceed C02 emissions by coal plants anyway. And the PBMR project continues to throw good money after bad as it asserts its commercial value - the idea of "cheap" nuclear energy has long since gone out of the window for most South Africans as they have been rudely awakened by Eskom's R400 billion plan and Minister Alec Erwin's double figure electricity bill increases.

So where does South Africa plan to dispose of all its nuclear waste. And will imported nuclear waste from foreign nations also be included in the "radioactive deposit"? Once again, PBMR are the spokesmen, stating that a "deep geological repository" for high- level waste from nuclear reactors (South African) would be constructed at Vaalputs, south-east of Springbok. Thus far, this waste site has only taken low or medium level nuclear waste. Suddenly we need a "deep geological repository" and interestingly enough, this has been what the United States, nations around Europe and Asia have been looking for as well - a place to dump all their nuclear waste...

And, although Eskom is forging ahead with Environmental Impact Assessments on sites identified for nuclear reactors all along South Africa's hitherto pristine coastline, the "strategy for the disposal of high-level waste" is "still being prepared". Apparently although South Africa has high level nuclear waste, there is as yet "no disposal methodology or facility for dealing with this category of waste from Koeberg, Necsa or the PBMR". So we are still talking about South African waste - right?

What does this repository involve? Just some really deep mining in a "geologically stable rock formation". Sounds very much like the one the United States planned for Yucca Mountain. But protests have prevented this from going ahead since residents in the area don't want it buried there and people who live along the transport route don't want high level waste toted through their towns.

Koeberg's waste is currently "stored underwater in the power station's fuel storage pools" which must be comforting for the people of Cape Town - to know it has been there all this time and as to where the water that is used for cooling this highly radioactive material comes from and where it goes to? This apparently is the beauty of coastal nuclear reactors like Koeberg - they use the sea water, which gives new meaning to the surfing term, "catching a wave".

Strangely though, the one and only South African nuclear reactor currently in existence and the proposed PBMR reactors have the capacity to store high level waste "on site". So who is the deep repository for again? Internationally, the idea of shipping radioactive waste to other nations in the world has been going on and on and around and around - it is just a matter of what some countries are prepared to accept.

There is the interesting Japanese story, where in 2005 a Japanese industry shipped soil contaminated with uranium to the United States for "disposal". Interesting because the US is also trying to "dispose" of its waste. The Japanese corporation had abandoned 16 000 cubic meters of waste soil where it had dug up uranium and residents demanded that the waste soil be removed. The corporation asked local governments to accept the radioactive soil but they refused. But in the United States, a company planned to "dispose" of the soil at a cost of about $6 million. In Washington, the deputy port director said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had determined that the soils did not require a special import license.

However some countries entered into fierce parliamentary debate as to what would be best for their people. In Canada, the parliament debated the "importation of radioactive waste act" . Charlie Penson said: "One of the questions I want to address is one with which I think Canadians are concerned: Will Canada become the garbage bin of the world for nuclear waste? We certainly hope not. I am concerned to learn that there are over 400 commercial nuclear reactors in the world and many more small nuclear reactors in universities, on ships and in submarines. All of these reactors need a place to dispose of their radioactive waste, waste which remains highly toxic for thousands of years... There are groups who might be willing to take a time bomb off the hands of other countries, especially those countries which have the ability to pay and pay handsomely. This thought is deeply disturbing to me. It has been a challenge for us to find suitable locations for our own nuclear waste. We certainly do not need to take on the radioactive waste of other countries, and there is certainly lots of it out there...The United States will be looking to dispose of 50 tonnes of plutonium over the next 25 years. Russia has another 50 tonnes. My colleague from Fraser Valley East tells me that at the Hanford site in the United States there is enough high level waste to fill 86 football fields one metre deep. It will cost $57 billion just to dispose of the waste from that site...Canada is a beautiful, wide open country with lots of forests, lakes and streams. Let us keep it as clean as we can and as waste free as possible. Let us not allow Canada to become the nuclear garbage bin of the world".

South Africans might be singing a similar song. Another Canadian Monique Guay said: "Clearly, Canada is not yet equipped to receive foreign countries' radioactive waste. Since Canada does not know yet what to do with its own waste, how could it deal with, dispose of or store other countries'?.. the Prime Minister of Canada gave his support to a feasibility study to import into Canada plutonium from Russian and American nuclear warheads...that is about one hundred tonnes of plutonium...But once this plutonium is burned, it produces highly radioactive waste. How many bundles will be added to ours, to the 4 million bundles expected by the end of 2033? This roundabout way for foreigners to dispose of their plutonium waste raises some serious questions...Spent fuel is and must be considered extremely toxic".

Good argument. Here's another. Canadian Keith Martin said: "Sustainable development is not bringing somebody else's waste to Canada's shores...We should not be bringing their nuclear waste to Canada. It is not our responsibility to do that. We would be abrogating our responsibility to the health and welfare of Canadians if we brought these highly toxic, carcinogenic and teratogenic, mutagenic substances to our soil... It is also important to dispel the myths put forth...saying that we are against the importation of nuclear materials for technology and medicine...The bill deals with waste, waste, waste. It deals with nuclear waste, not nuclear material effectively used in industry and in the world of medicine...We do not need to bring in literally thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear rods and nuclear materials out there looking for a home. .. I was at a meeting with a number of scientists from Russia who said they had to decommission over 100 nuclear submarines within the next few years... The response of the Russians has been widespread dumping on the Kola Peninsula, widespread dumping in northern Russia.

"We have seen much about Chernobyl. We have heard much of the problems associated with this disaster. However the Chernobyl reactor is just one of many other reactors that exist in Russia today. There are literally dozens and dozens of leaky nuclear reactors in Russia that will produce other Chernobyls in the near future".

Okay - who saw that one coming? More Chernobyls? But then they did want to build that nuclear reactor on an earthquake site in Belene, Bulgaria.

Bob Ringma of Canada said: "Worldwide there are 413 commercial nuclear reactors, an untold number of small research reactors at universities and other reactors on ships or submarines. Together they have generated and will continue to generate enormous amounts of highly toxic nuclear waste, waste that will be deadly for 10 000 years...Canadians in general do not want radioactive waste in their backyard. It took eight years and $20 million for the siting task force struck by the Minister of National Resources to find a place for our low level radioactive waste...this does not cover high level radioactive waste...It should be self-evident to most that the import of radioactive waste should be banned.

"We already have 22 000 tonnes of high level waste in Canada stored on sites of over 22 nuclear reactors. This includes 78 tonnes of plutonium. By the year 2025, we will have 58 000 tonnes...The United States alone has an enormous high level waste problem. Because of that, there is an enormous profit potential in it. The U.S. Hanford site has enough waste to fill 86 football fields one metre deep. It will cost $57 billion to dispose of that. It is estimated that the clean-up cost in the United States alone will total a staggering $230 billion. The problem continues to grow. The U.S. has a total of 77 000 tonnes of waste to bury".

And so the radioactive merry-go-round has come to South Africa. And if South African people are not informed, the nuclear waste of the world will become our problem. South Africa has always prided itself on being a healthy nation - with a beautiful environment, outdoor living people and amazing wildlife. But the government's aggressive nuclear programme can change all of that in an instant and South Africans will be left suffering the agonies experienced by nations around the world and the contamination of such basic necessities of life as water, air and earth.

In South Africa, nuclear agencies from Necsa to PBMR and now the proposed Sania, are multiplying like a plague and will have a deadly effect on health, finance and the stability of the South African economy. There are alternatives - but unfortunately renewable energy sources like solar, wind and biomass have not received the same amount of attention or funding as the nuclear lobby. It is time for nuclear proponents to stop advertising themselves as an energy solution so that government can devote funds to renewable energy groups that are actually "safe, clean and cheap" as opposed to the nuclear option that is life-threatening to vast areas, riddled with poisons and so expensive that without government funding - that is the taxpayers' money - they cannot survive. But taxpayers must realise that if they do not speak up now - they will end up paying for it later - in every way.

Yours sincerely

INGELA RICHARDSON

DON'T DRINK THE RADIOACTIVE WATER

2007-08-20T00:36:00.000+02:00

DON'T DRINK THE RADIOACTIVE WATER

In South Africa, CEO Neal Froneman has boasted that his uranium mine in Klerksdorp could rival BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam mine in Australia. Does he mean "rival" Olympic Dam as a water waster? Or poisoner? Since uranium mines are highly effective at both. This is unfortunate for the people of Klerksdorp and for the people of Beaufort West, since Brinkley Mining acquired rights to five farms with uranium prospects there.

Beaufort West is only 40km away from Brinkley's uranium mining project and this company says: "There is plenty of water if you drill for it, as the water table is close to the surface".

Australians have found to their cost that the whole uranium process uses a great deal of water. Water is used with sulphuric acid to dissolve out the uranium. This process also extracts other contaminants including arsenic and lead.

In 2005, BHPB demanded 120 million litres of free water in addition to their daily extraction of 33 million litres. David Noonan from the Australian Conservation Foundation said the Olympic Dam mine was the largest single-site industrial user of ground water in the southern hemisphere.

Uranium dams kill wildlife that drink or swim in them. In 2004 hundreds of birds and other wildlife were killed at Olympic Dam in one mass poisoning incident. Tailings dams also contaminate local ground and surface water through leaks and overflows during rain and dam failure, as has been seen in Wonderfonteinspruit's sad story in South Africa where children have suffered the consequences of contamination.
Other examples of uranium contamination include a tailings dam at Church Rock in Arizona that collapsed and spilled 370 000 m3 of radioactive water, and 1 000 tonnes of contaminated sediment in the local river and 110m downstream. To this day it is too dangerous to use the water. At Stava in Italy, 200 000 m3 of tailings flowed 4.2 km downstream at a speed of up to 90 kmh, killing 268 people and destroying 62 buildings. The total surface area affected was 43.5 hectares.

Slow leaks are more common - and there have been many. Olympic Dam uranium mine tailings dams were discovered to have been leaking, for as long as two years, releasing five million m3 of contaminated water into subsoil. More than 10 million tonnes of tailings are dumped in ponds near the mine each year.

Nuclear power plants also contaminate water sources and put health and food sources at risk. In January 2006 the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) petitioned the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do something about thousands of millions of litres of radioactive water leaking from the nations' nuclear power plants. In South Africa, the NNR has also been petitioned by local communities to clean up radioactive contamination after a Water Research Commission report revealed the problem. They have yet to respond to this emergency.
In South Africa, Eskom is proposing to build a 4000MW nuclear plant with provisions to expand to 8000MW. This is five times the size of Chernobyl which was a 1600MW nuclear power station. Since Koeberg needs 8 000 m3 of water per day, the new plant's water requirements would be 16 000m3 per day.

In Connecticut (US) three nuclear power plants were shut down after 29 years of unreported and underestimated contamination of local water. The Connecticut Attorney General said the local pollution from the plants was so severe that, "The goal is no longer to decommission a nuclear power plant, but rather to decontaminate a nuclear waste dump".

In Mississippi, a nuclear reactor accidentally dumped 190 thousand litres of radioactive waste water into the Mississippi River that feeds the drinking water system. In Normandy, the dairy industry and Champagne's wine industry were both put at risk by leaks from French nuclear reactors. A nuclear dumpsite in the Champagne region of France had leaked radioactivity into groundwater.

In 1978, Dr William Lochstet of Pennsylvania State University stated that the operation of a single uranium mine could result in 8.5 million deaths over time through local water contamination. This was substantiated by US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Birth defects in Shiprock, New Mexico were also linked to tailings piles.

For the sake of the children of South Africa and a healthy nation, communities must protest uranium mining in South Africa and plans to build up to 30 nuclear reactors by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa). There are other, healthier alternatives for this country.

Yours sincerely
INGELA RICHARDSON

Geiger Counters Instead of Kitchen Clocks

2007-08-20T00:34:00.000+02:00

GEIGER COUNTERS INSTEAD OF KITCHEN CLOCKS

In January this year, Minister van Schalkwyk approved the production of nuclear fuel in South Africa and the building of another nuclear reactor - the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). In the process, he also approved the transport of this fuel and its "raw material". The question is whether towns and ports along this route know they will be endangered by the transportation of radioactive/hazardous material and if they have emergency plans in place?

The nuclear fuel would be manufactured at Pelindaba near Pretoria. The "raw material" - also known as enriched uranium, or old Russian warheads, depending on the source - would be transported to Pelindaba from Durban, and the fuel transported from Pelindaba to Koeberg. So this transport route happily includes the whole of South Africa in the grand nuclear plan.

It seems that all protests made by the public in regard to the PBMR and production of nuclear fuel in South Africa were summarily dismissed by Minister van Schalkwyk, including: long-term storage of highly radioactive waste, safety and accidents, the fact that the taxpayer would pay for everything and the de-linking of the fuel plant and the PBMR. According to Minister van Schalkwyk, the fuel plant and PBMR it supplies are similar, but different. How different? The minister says they are in different places, different in nature, and have "vastly different" environmental risks. Does this environmental difference compare Pelindaba to Koeberg? Does it include people, or not?

And while some South African ministers may be dizzy with their nuclear plans and all the millions this budget brings, taxpayers might be interested to know that South Africans are perhaps the only nation that has been brainwashed into taking on an entire nuclear financial burden alone - without the help of private investment. This does not happen in the UK or USA or any other nation that pro-nuclear people or even couch potato people might look to for comfort. Even Mr Tito Mboweni of the SA Reserve Bank is alarmed. If Eskom has its way, SA will give new meaning to the word "inflation" and Minister Alec Erwin's happy plan to increase electricity bills by double figures will put everyone across the breadline from "just coping" to "not coping at all" - everyone except government ministers of course.

It is also interesting to note that according to those people who spread the nuclear joy - the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA): "each year the world´s 441 nuclear power reactors create enough spent fuel to fill a football field to a depth of 1,5 metres. That´s about 10 500 tonnes of heavy metal. This waste is thermally hot and can stay radioactive for thousands of years. Because it is solid and does not readily dissolve in water, the fuel wastes are typically stored in water pools on site at the nuclear reactors for many years".

So all of this nuclear fuel and waste would be in South Africa for a very long time. There is no such thing as "disposal" of nuclear waste. The radioactive material is simply moved around from pillar to post, or stored on site - while local residents keep Geiger counters instead of kitchen clocks.

And while every minute ticks away - that nuclear waste is building up. And up and up and up.

Yours sincerely
INGELA RICHARDSON

Uranium is Folly

2007-08-19T21:17:00.000+02:00

Uranium is Folly
By Maya Abermann

Quote: Carbon dioxide is produced at every step in the nuclear fuel cycle, except fission. If nuclear energy grows, so will carbon emissions
The current unfounded hype about new nuclear energy expansion and the wonders of uranium calls for a focus on some of the less-publicised facts about this element. Supplies of uranium ore are insufficient to fuel current demand for nuclear energy.

http://free.financialmail.co.za/07/0629/opinion/bopinion.htm

The excess demand, of about 37%, is met by stockpiles accumulated before 1980. These stockpiles are derived in part from the conversion of old nuclear weapons. Within 10 years these stockpiles will be exhausted. According to information presented in parliament by Prof Eugene Cairncrosse of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, if current demand (assuming no significant increase in nuclear power capacity) is to be met, new production will have to be increased by about 50%.

Eleven uranium-producing countries have exhausted their uranium reserves. Only Canada has uranium ore deposits that have uranium content of more than 1%. The ore located in many other countries contains only 0,1% uranium. More than two-thirds of all ore deposits have less than 0,06% of the nuclear fuel.

The energy demand for uranium mining is almost directly inversely proportional to the ore grade. Thus the energy demand for mining ore of 0,05% grade is 23 times greater than for mining a 1% ore. At an ore grade of 0,01%- 0,02%, as much energy is used to produce the uranium as would be produced by converting it to electrical power.

As more and more marginal deposits of uranium ore are exploited, it is not simply the energy demand of mining that climbs, but also the energy demand for fuel fabrication, including uranium enrichment.

This reality casts further aspersions on the false claim by the nuclear lobby that it offers us a climate-change saviour. In fact carbon dioxide is produced at every step in the nuclear fuel cycle, except the actual fission in the reactor.

Fossil fuels are used in the mining and enrichment of the ore, in the fuel can preparation, station construction, handling of the spent waste and its re processing, and in digging the hole in the rock for its deposition. Uranium enrichment, in particular, is incredibly energy-intensive. If nuclear energy generation is to expand, demand for uranium will increase and lower and lower grades of this ore will be used. This will result in an increase in carbon emissions.

It is likely that in the near future (to 2020) it will be difficult to meet even existing demand for uranium. It thus seems almost impossible that we will be able to fuel the hypothesised huge nuclear expansion programme planned by our cabinet and corporations around the world. A report by the Energy Watch Group contends that: "The proved reserves and stocks will be exhausted within the next 30 years at current annual demand. Likewise, possible resources - which contain all estimated discovered resources with extraction costs of up to three time higher - will be exhausted within 70 years."

These realities about uranium imply not only that we are rapidly approaching uranium peak, but also that nuclear plant life-cycles are shorter than we may have imagined and that the fuel cost for this energy-generation technology is likely to be higher than uranium vendors ever dreamt of.

Committing SA to investment in a recently estimated R400bn nuclear energy expansion programme is foolhardy. Apart from the obvious, we also risk the opportunity cost. Putting 10%-20% of our eggs into the renewable energy basket now, rather than sighing over the broken eggs in the nuclear basket in 10 years, seems the sensible option. Managing risk should mean using mature, tried and tested, clean technologies where there is a reliable fuel source.

Aberman is campaign co-ordinator at Earthlife Africa

Uranium: The Deadliest Metal

2007-08-19T20:56:00.000+02:00

Uranium: The Deadliest Metal

by Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), 1992
Canada is the world's largest producer and exporter of uranium, yet most Canadians are entirely unaware of our involvement with this "deadliest of metals."

There are only two commercially important uses for uranium: nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. The ultimate products of the uranium industry are therefore bombs and radioactive wastes.

As early as 1546, and for centuries afterwards, it was reported that underground miners in Schneeberg, Germany, suffered an unusually high incidence of fatal lung disease. In 1879, it was demonstrated both clinically and anatomically that about half of these miners were dying of lung cancer. This was a much higher incidence of lung cancer than that found in the general population. The same grim statistic -- 50 per cent mortality from lung cancer -- was later found among the miners in Joachimsthal, Czechoslovakia. The ores in question were particularly rich in uranium.

Similar excesses in lung cancer incidence have occurred among iron, lead and zinc miners in Sweden, in fluorspar miners in Newfoundland, and especially among uranium miners in all parts of the world. Scientific papers published in the 1930s, even before the outbreak of World War II, clearly indicated that airborne radioactivity in the mines was the most likely cause of this lung cancer. The principal culprits are radon gas and its solid by-products, the so-called "radon daughters."

Uranium is a naturally-occurring radioactive substance, very widespread in the earth's crust, but concentrated in certain hard rock formations. As the uranium atoms slowly disintegrate over billions of years, a host of radioactive by-products are formed: thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222 and the infamous "radon daughters," including lead-210 and polonium-210.

As the miners dig the uranium-bearing ore, they inevitably release large quantities of radioactive radon gas into the mine atmosphere. Radon has a relatively short half-life (3.8 days); before long, the air in the mine is heavily contaminated with radon daughters. Adhering to microscopic dust particles, these tiny, pernicious particles are breathed into the miners' lungs where they lodge delivering a massive dose of alpha radiation to the sensitive lung tissue. The result is an extraordinarily high incidence of lung cancer, fibrosis of the lungs, and other lung diseases, all of which take decades to become manifest.

The carcinogenic effects of radon daughters have been studied for many years. The medical evidence is overwhelming and indisputable: radon (with its daughters) is one of the most potent carcinogens known. A 1982 study published by the Atomic Energy Control Board (Ottawa) revealed that workers exposed to the present maximum permissible levels in Canadian uranium mines for a 30-year period would experience about four times as much lung cancer as non-miners. Instead of 54 out of every thousand males dying of lung cancer (Ontario statistics for non-miners), we would expect over 200 out of every thousand miners to die of lung cancer -- more than one in five!

In 1974, the Ontario Royal Commission on the Health and Safety of Workers in Mines pointed out that the Elliot Lake uranium miners had already experienced twice as many lung cancers as expected. In 1980, the British Columbia Medical Association published a hard-hitting 470-page report entitled "The Health Dangers of Uranium Mining." The BCMA Report warns of a "gradually flowering crop of radiation-induced cancers" among Canadian uranium miners, adding that "We are aware of no other carcinogen which is permitted at levels close to the doubling dose for humans." A total of 81 Canadian uranium miners had died of lung cancer by October 1974. At the end of 1977, the number was 119; at the end of 1981, 174; at the end of 1984, 274.
At Elliot Lake, about a ton of ore is required to extract two pounds of uranium. Huge quantities of pulverized rock (called uranium tailings) are left over from the milling process. The tailings contain 85 per cent of the original radioactivity in the ore: they contain thorium-230, radium-226, and all the other uranium by-products. The tailings also give off at least 10,000 times as much radon gas as the undisturbed ore. (When radon gas is produced inside hard rock, it has little chance to escape; but when the rock is pulverized, radon escapes easily.)

In the Southwest U.S. and in Port Hope, Ontario, many homes and schools were built using the sand-like uranium tailings as construction material. As a result, some of the buildings ended up with levels of radon gas and radon daughters even higher than those permitted in the mines. Similar (though less severe) problems arose in Florida and Newfoundland when phosphate tailings were used for construction, and in Oka and Varennes (just outside of Montreal) when other mine tailings were used in construction. In each case, the original ore was rich in uranium, so the tailings gave off high amounts of radon.

In 1975, St. Mary's School in Port Hope was evacuated because of extraordinarily high radon levels. Radioactive fill had to be removed, at public expense, from hundreds of homes and gardens. Even today, there are over 200,000 tons of radioactive debris lying about the town of Port Hope in open ravines, easily accessible to children and to pets. Eldorado Nuclear Limited, the crown corporation whose radioactive wastes had been generously donated to the eager townsfolk for construction purposes many years earlier, has recently promised -- under the prodding of the Ontario Environment Department -- to finish cleaning up the mess sometime during the next few years.

According to all scientific evidence, there is no such thing as a "safe dose" of radiation. Every dose of radiation will cause a corresponding increase in cancers and other diseases. Spreading a given dose out to a larger number of people -- so that each individual dose is smaller -- does not reduce the number of resulting illnesses. In fact, in the case of alpha radiation, there is very strong evidence from many different quarters that spreading a dose out among more people actually increases the total number of cancers and other diseases. Uranium and most of its by-products, including thorium, radium, radon and most of the radon daughters fall into this category of alpha-emitting substances.

Since the town of Port Hope had been thoroughly contaminated with alpha- emitting radioactive substances, the Canadian nuclear authorities had to make a political decision back in 1975: What was an acceptable level for radioactive contamination in a private residence?

And so a standard for an "acceptable level" of radon contamination in a private home was set at about 20 times the normal background levels of radon, to guide the cleanup operations at Port Hope. Before long, that same standard was being used for the construction of whole subdivisions of new homes in Elliot Lake in the late 1970s. Radon levels in these new homes were so unacceptably high that fans had to be installed under the floorboards to blow the radon out of the house. Sometimes two fans had to be installed to bring the contamination levels down to the"acceptable" level.

In testimony to the Elliot Lake Environmental Assessment Board in 1978, mortality figures published by the Ontario government were used to show that even the "acceptable" levels of radon contamination in homes would result in an extra 17 lung cancer deaths per thousand people chronically exposed to such levels. In other words, instead of 54 lung cancers per thousand, one would expect 71, a 31 per cent increase. In light of this evidence, the Board recommended that the radon standard for homes be reassessed. But no such reassessment has taken place.

Since 1980 the B.C. Medical Association has published a slightly higher risk estimate and has condemned the radon standard for homes "as tantamount to allowing an industrially induced epidemic of cancer." A 1982 report published by the Atomic Energy Control Board concurs, estimating a 40 percent increase in lung cancer among those living in homes contaminated to the "acceptable" radon level.
Radon gas is also given off by phosphate fertilizers (since phosphate ores are rich in uranium). When tobacco crops are so fertilized, radon gas accumulates under the thick canopy of tobacco leaves, and tiny dust particles impregnated with radon daughters adhere to the sticky, resinous hairs on the underside of each leaf. When harvested, the tobacco contains high concentrations of radioactive lead-210 and polonium-210. Cigarette smokers breathe these radon daughters into their lungs with every inhalation.
Some of these radioactive particles lodge in the lungs of smokers, as confirmed by autopsies. Others enter the bloodstream along with oxygen and carbon monoxide. Radioactive deposits of this kind have been found in plaque removed from sclerotic arteries. Many researchers now believe these excessive concentrations of radon daughters are responsible for most of the 135,000 deaths each year in the U.S. from lung cancer, strokes and heart disease which the American Medical Association attributes to smoking.

In addition to killing uranium miners and those living in contaminated homes, each uranium mine is, in effect, a "slow bomb" -- spreading deadly radioactive poisons over vast areas of the earth, as surely as the Chernobyl disaster did, as surely as atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons have done, but at an insidiously slower rate. Radon gas can travel a thousand miles in just a few days, with a light breeze. As it travels low to the ground (it is much heavier than air) it deposits its "daughters" -- solid radioactive fallout -- on the vegetation, soil and water below; the resulting radioactive materials enter the food chain, ending up in fruits and berries, the flesh of fish and animals, and ultimately, in the bodies of human beings.

On February 25, 1986, the Wall Street Journal printed a front page story that portrayed the 220 million tons of uranium tailings in the U.S. as an ecological and financial time bomb. (In Canada, we have about 150 million tons of such tailings.) Everyone agrees that these materials are too dangerously radioactive to leave on the surface of the earth, yet no one has devised a satisfactory method for permanently containing them. Even at a very modest rate, say $10 per ton, it will cost billions of dollars to dispose of these wastes.
The tailings will remain dangerously radioactive for millions of years. Thorium- 230, itself a by-product of uranium, is an alpha-emitter with a half-life of almost 80,000 years. It continually replenishes all the other radioactive by-products of uranium in the abandoned tailings piles. Radium-226, a bone-seeking alpha-emitting carcinogen which is at least 20 times as harmful as strontium-90, is blown in the wind, washed by the rain, and leached into the waterways from the tailings piles, where it re-concentrates by factors of thousands in aquatic plants and by factors of hundreds in land plants. It has a half-life of 1,600 years. When the levels of radium increased in Canadian rivers as a result of uranium mining activities, the nuclear establishment obligingly increased the standard for an "acceptable level" of radium in drinking water by a factor of nine.

(The B.C. Medical Association refers to radium as a "superb carcinogen." It is known to have killed many of the women who patriotically painted radium on the dials of military instruments during World War II so that the readings would glow in the darkness of a ****pit or battlefield.)

In addition, the radon gas emissions from abandoned tailings can cause radioactive contamination on a continental and even on a global basis. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated that radon emissions from uranium tailings in the Southwest U.S. can be expected to cause over 3,000 cancer deaths per century over the North American continent. Many researchers believe that this death toll is underestimated by at least a factor of ten, even if we ignore the fallout of solid radon daughters on leafy vegetation as the radon gas passes overhead, and even if we assume that the tailings are not blown by the wind, washed by the rain, or spread through the food chain, thereby distributing the source of contamination over a much wider area.

The legacy of uranium is truly a devastating one. Miners and smokers dead and dying, vast reservoirs of tailings releasing radioactive poisons into the biosphere, radon daughters accumulating in buildings and in the food chain -- and all for the sake of building more bombs and nuclear reactors. The radioactive fission products that were released into the atmosphere from Chernobyl -- iodine-131, strontium-90, cesium-137, and the rest -- are all the broken pieces or uranium atoms left over from the fission process. Even the extraordinary toxicity of plutonium can be rightfully attributed to uranium, since plutonium is created by transmutation of uranium through the absorption of neutrons.

Because Canada is the world's largest uranium producer and exporter, Canadians have an important role in halting the widespread use of uranium. If we do not come to grips with the Pandora's box of problems which it spawns, and soon, our children and grandchildren may find that we have left them with a burden too great for them to bear.

Deadly waters price of gold

2007-08-19T20:34:00.000+02:00

Deadly waters price of gold
http://www.sowetan.co.za/article.aspx?ID=522403

Our leaders have betrayed us in the name of political and financial expediency.

The constitution guarantees all South Africans an environment that does not damage their health. But millions of people in Gauteng and North West are being exposed to a chemical witch’s brew that the gold mines spew each day into our waterways.

This stuff is so toxic it threatens all life. Dams have accumulated so much uranium in their waters and sediments that they should be declared nuclear sites.

But officials and politicians are so worried about offending investors and mining magnates that they have done precious little to enforce the laws that supposedly protect us from the worst excesses of a capitalism gone mad.

The price of the luxury estates of mining magnates and their co-opted BEE partners will be paid mostly by the poor, especially those in informal settlements squatting alongside the contaminated waterways.

Official nonchalance by the so-called National Nuclear Regulator, the Department of Minerals and Energy, the Department of Water Affairs and the Department of Environment and Tourism, as well as their minions in provincial and local government, will be paid for in the souls of the rich and poor who succumb to this poisonous broth.

Researchers have been warning about the danger for decades, but almost nothing has been done to curtail it.