The Dirty, Deadly Front End of Nuclear Power--15,000 Abandoned Uranium Mines
By Josh Cunnings and Emerson Urry
EnviroNews, Friday, March 11, 2016
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35179-nuclear-power-in-our-world-today?tmpl=component&print=1
Editor's Note: The following news piece represents the first in a 15-part
mini-series titled, Nuclear Power in Our World Today, featuring nuclear
authority, engineer and whistleblower Arnie Gundersen. The EnviroNews USA
series encompasses a wide span of topics, ranging from Manhattan-era madness
to the continuously-unfolding crisis on the ground at Fukushima Daiichi in
eastern Japan. The transcript follows the video below:
TRANSCRIPT:
Josh Cunnings (Narrator): Welcome to the EnviroNews USA news desk. I'm your
host Josh Cunnings. In this first episode of a unique 15-part mini-series of
short-films, we are going to explore Nuclear Power in Our World Today.
Our journey extends outward from a bombshell interview conducted by
EnviroNews Editor-in-Chief Emerson Urry, with the esteemed nuclear expert,
whistleblower, and expert witness Arnie Gundersen. Gundersen is a nuclear
engineer, as well as a former power plant operator, and trade executive,
whose own life, for a good amount of time, was ruined by the nuclear
industry after he exposed radioactive safety violations. So to get this
series rolling, here's what Gundersen revealed to Emerson Urry.
Emerson Urry: We're here with Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds. How are you
doing today?
Arnie Gundersen: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad I'm here.
Urry: Thank you for taking the time to be on the show with us. What can you
tell us about your background?
Gundersen: Well, I started as a nuclear engineer in 1972 and I was
absolutely committed. I thought that nuclear was going to save the
world--and the issue in '72 wasn't global warming so much as it was we were
running out of energy. So, I became a senior vice president, and about 1990
discovered license violations and told the president of the company. He
fired me. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) knowingly botched the
inspection and was taking bribes. John Glenn came to my rescue. Senator John
Glenn came to my rescue, and I was exonerated in Congress. But Maggie and I
lost everything. We lost our house, our pensions. We were sued for a million
and a half dollars. It was a terrible time. You know, you make lemonade out
of lemons, and we've moved on now. So, Maggie opened a firm--Fairewinds
Associates, that does paralegal work and expert witnessing--and that's what
we do now.
Cunnings: Now, when Gundersen says Senator John Glenn--THE Senator John
Glen, this is who he's referring to.
Voice of 1960s Television Narrator: Actual pictures of Glenn in the capsule
will give scientists the opportunity to study his reactions as he passes
over the Canary Islands, Africa, the Indian Ocean, Australia, back across
the Pacific, and over the United States. He speeds at 17,500 miles an hour,
reaching a high point of 160 miles, and a low altitude of 99 miles. Each of
the three orbits takes about 90 minutes. Three times the Colonel sees the
sun rise within the period of 4 hours and 56 minutes. Three times around the
globe for a trip of 81,000 miles before he reenters the earth's
atmosphere--a shield protecting the astronaut from the intense heat.
Voice of President John F. Kennedy: John Glenn throughout his life has
eloquently portrayed these great qualities, and is an inspiration to all
Americans.
Cunnings: That's right, this man, Senator John Glenn of Ohio--one of the
first men in space--and certainly a legend in his own right. This highly
celebrated man, [was] paraded around the country by John F. Kennedy
himself--literally. The astronaut-senator had to compassionately come to Mr.
Gundersen's aid, after he was attacked by the nuclear industry--ganged up on
by the likes of a vicious cabal for disclosing safety violations to the
president of his own company.
The educational short series we're about to bring you spans a plethora of
nuclear-related topics, but maintains a special focus on the myriad nuclear
problems still festering right here in the US In this series, we will also
explore with Gundersen, critical and downright disturbing details from the
ongoing, ever-unfolding, nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi in eastern
Japan.
Some of the segments in this series are very short and feature raw interview
excerpts, while in other episodes we dive deeper into the content discussed
between Gundersen and Urry.
But before going around the world to talk about the incredible state of
despair, still palpable on the ground in Japan, we're going to start this
series right here on US soil--at the beginning where all nuclear
complexities commence--we begin with the aftermath from the mining and
extraction of the naturally occurring radioactive element uranium--a mineral
with a four-and-a-half-billion-year half-life that presents very little harm
when safely sequestered in the earth--but all that changes when it's mined
and brought to the surface.
Voice of 1950s Pro-Nuclear Film Narrator: The awesome power of a nuclear
explosion has been harnessed, and is being used to benefit all our lives.
Nuclear power plants, fueled with uranium, are already producing electricity
for millions of Americans--and many more of these plants will be built in
the future. Our country is dependent upon the uranium industry, and the
uranium miners for a continuing adequate supply of this magic element. The
magic of uranium stems from its property of radioactivity. It is this same
property however, that endangers the health of workers who mine and handle
uranium. Therefore, special precautions must be taken to protect uranium
miners from exposure to excessive radioactivity. That's what this film is
all about.
Cunnings: There was a huge rush for uranium in the 40s and 50s, driven by a
lust for nuclear bombs. Many of those bombs required plutonium--an element
produced in nuclear energy reactors powered by uranium fuel, and
subsequently harvested as a byproduct of the nuclear fission process itself.
While for many years nuclear power rode under the guise of the so-called
"peaceful atom," the industry has been chastised for being a friendly cover
for the bomb fuel business.
Voice of 1950s Pro-Nuclear Film Narrator #2: Information about the
beneficial uses of atomic energy knows no national boundaries. The facts are
available today, for nuclear energy isn't waiting to help people everywhere
in some brave new world of the future--the peaceful atom is here now--to
serve what President Eisenhower has termed, "the needs, rather than the
fears of mankind." Nuclear reactors, or atomic furnaces, like this one,
provide the product that makes possible practical applications of nuclear
energy. That product is the radioisotope--the atomic tracer--a common
element tagged with radiation like a sheep with a bell. And because they are
tagged, they can be traced, thus giving scientists, engineers and doctors
worldwide an invaluable tool for research and money-saving applications into
biology, medicine, health, agriculture and industry. In the past eight
years, the United States has made more than forty-seven-and-a-half-thousand
shipments of radioisotopes to more than 2,000 users in this country, and
almost 3,000 shipments to 53 countries all over the globe, at or below cost.
In the 40s and 50s, America was pillaging uranium out of the earth as fast
and furiously as possible in a rush for both electricity and bombs--but it
turns out that many of those mining messes weren't cleaned up very well--if
at all.
The perplexing problem of these open, deadly, toxic messes was discussed
between Urry and Gundersen. Take a listen.
Urry: I want to go back for a minute to the uranium. We were talking about
Fukushima and obviously the myriad isotopes that are put off as a byproduct
of the nuclear fission that is happening in the reactor. It all starts there
with the uranium, and there was quite a rush for that, and now we have all
of these situations. To our understanding there are about 15,000 abandoned
uranium mines that have been left in complete ruin with very little cleanup
or remediation at all, just in the western United States. This has happened,
by-and-large, because of an antiquated mining bill--the 1872 Mining
Bill--still affecting these situations today--that kind of allowed miners to
just walk away from these situations--but yet, they remain in the open
leaching off tailings--blowing around radioactive dust. I think there's
about 4,500 of these exposed mining sites just in Navajo country--another
2,500 or so in Wyoming. How do we deal with that situation? What does the
future hold in those regards, and quite frankly, are we all being poisoned
by these mines?
Gundersen: I'll give you another example of the same thing, and I would say
"yes" to everything you said is the quick answer. There is a mill-tailings
site in Moab, Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the owner of the
site that they needed to set aside six million dollars to clean it up. Well,
the actual cleanup is a billion dollars. What did the owner do? They
declared bankruptcy and walked away.
Urry: And it wasn't bonded? No bond?
Gundersen: Right. It wasn't bonded. You know, if you bonded uranium mining,
you wouldn't have uranium mining.
Urry: Because nobody would probably...
Gundersen: The way our system is set up is that you take the profit early,
and then when everything is done you walk away and the government takes the
risk. So, we've socialized the risk, and the capitalists make the profit
early on and the rest of us pick up the cost afterward. And that's
historically true on the Navajo reservation especially--but you get in the
Black Hills and the Lakota Sioux... We had a member of our board go out to
South Dakota and sample a dried riverbed, and the bottom of the riverbed had
as much uranium in it as a mine--from runoff from uphill mines. We have a
legacy that we're really not admitting exists. Thousands and thousands of
these mines--mainly on the Native American property, but not entirely.
Voice of 1960s Pro-Uranium Film Narrator: Royalties from the uranium mines
are providing much needed cash for the Navajo prospector, and for the tribe.
Many of the Navajo men are employed in the uranium mines, where they are
valued as conscientious workers.
Cunnings: When Gundersen said the brunt of these mines are on Native
American lands, he wasn't kidding. And speaking of South Dakota, the Sioux
Tribe and uranium mines, we want to introduce you to a lady named Charmaine
White Face--one of the top Native American activists in the battle to clean
up these deadly mine sites. Here's what she had to say in one of her group's
videos:
Charmaine White Face (excerpt from Defenders of the Black Hills video): Dr.
Lilias Jarding in her research that she completed in 2010 called Uranium
Activities' Impacts on Lakota Territory talked about, not only what was
happening on the Northern Great Plains, but also in Colorado. All of these
are abandoned open-pit uranium mines. 397 in Montana, 2103 in Wyoming, 113
in North Dakota, 272 in South Dakota, and 387 in northern Colorado, for a
total of 3272.
This is an abandoned open-pit uranium mine on the southwestern edge of the
Black Hills. Here you see it again, and back here you can see the Black
Hills. This is called the Darrow Pits Mine. If you put it all together in
one box, it would be about a mile-square. The thing about the Darrow Pits
Mine is that they are only 40 miles from Mt. Rushmore. Millions of tourists
travel to Mt. Rushmore every year not knowing that they are breathing in
radioactive dust, and the water that they drink in the motels in Rapid City
contains uranium.
This mine, if we could go behind this wall, it's called the Riley Pass Mine,
and we're standing facing the Riley Pass Mine, which is behind here. But I
wanted to show you this because all of this is radioactive overburden. It
was pushed off. This whole rimrock was about this high, but they pushed it
off as they were trying to dig out the uranium, and a lot of radioactive
material went off in the overburden, but what they didn't consider was that
this was also a sacred site. There were burial sites there. There were
sacred sites there. There were spirit writings on all of these petroglyphs.
A warning sign at the Riley Pass Mine says, "Caution. Radiation Area.
Radiation levels in this area are elevated. No more than one day within a
one year period should be spent in this area. No camping."
Recently, March 2013, the US Forest Service finally issued a public safety
closure order because of the dangers to human health. Among the particles
that are in there are arsenic, molybdenum, thorium, radium and uranium.
These are all in the form of dust or runoff, and they are picked up by the
wind. So, when we are in there--when we are standing over by that sacred
site praying, we are breathing in a lot of these harmful materials. But the
wind doesn't just stop at the end of South Dakota. These harmful materials
are traveling all over the country. Our levels were very very high compared
to Chernobyl.
Dr. Kearfott with her students came out and started doing some readings in
our treaty territory, and this is what they found: "The radiation levels in
parts I visited with my students were higher than those in the evacuated
zones around the Fukushima nuclear disaster." Higher. Fukushima radiation
levels were higher than Chernobyl. The Northern Great Plains' levels are
higher than Fukushima--and these are not from nuclear power plants or from
an atomic weapon, or atomic bomb being exploded. These are from 2,885
abandoned open-pit uranium mines and prospects, and we are subject to that
radioactive pollution constantly. We, the people of the Great Sioux Nation,
we are the miner's canary. We are the miner's canary for the rest of the
United States. We have the highest cancer rates now. We never gave
permission for uranium mining to occur in our treaty territory. It's not
just the nuclear power plants that people have to be afraid of. All of these
abandoned open-pit uranium mines in the Northern Great Plains are affecting
everyone, but they are genocide for the Great Sioux Nation--for my people.
This is genocide.
Contact your congressman, your senators. Ask them to pass a bill to clean up
all the abandoned uranium mines in all of the United States--to clean up all
the abandoned uranium mines and prospects, with no new mining--no new
uranium mining until all of these abandoned mines are cleaned up.
Gundersen: Our system has allowed the owners to take the profit and run. As
a country, we have to face this legacy. We have to cleanup both the
backend--places like Hanford--places like Paducah--and all the contaminated
backend of the plants, but we also have to clean up the front end. We've got
all these uranium mines scattered in places--people don't even know where
all of them are, and that cost is extraordinary--and I really don't think
there is the political will to do it right.
Urry: What can be done? What could be done to move things in a positive
direction there? We know that Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona has
actually proposed legislation regarding the 1872 Mining Bill to kind of
allow cleanup to start happening in some of these situations. But the
uranium problem is obviously only a corner of that. There are about 500,000
mines that were left in ruin total--and even a lot of those like ones we've
looked like out in Nevada--it may be a gold mine, but it's very likely
leaking off uranium tailings as well.
Gundersen: Yeah. The Mining Bill is so entrenched in the corporate culture
of the West, and there are so many corporations that would fight to the
death to make sure that that mining bill doesn't change. I don't have a lot
of hope that Congress will change it, and that's unfortunate. It would take
a huge uprising of the people in the western states, and not just the Native
Americans, but the people who vote more frankly, to turn that around. With
the mining interests saying, "oh you're going to lose your job if we have to
comply with a tougher regulation," [it] really becomes I lose my job today,
or I contaminate the earth forever--and unfortunately, the balance is, I
don't want to lose my job today.
Cunnings: The 1872 Mining Bill is indeed still on the books to this day.
Although there was a mining reformation bill in 1977 that implemented
remediation and stricter cleanup standards going forward, it wasn't
retroactive in cleaning up any of the messes that had already been made.
And so the miners, parties like Exxon, BP and the US Government, all rode
off in the sunset, and remained in the dusk with their loot to boot--leaving
behind a landscape littered with open uranium messes--literally radioactive
earth-sores that, due to uranium's extraordinarily long half-life, will
remain toxic and mutagenic to all life for, oh, only about the next 45
billion years or so--unless they are cleaned up and dealt with in some
fashion that is. We are all left to wonder: how might that ever be
accomplished?
Tune in tomorrow for the second part of fifteen in this EnviroNews
special--Nuclear Power in Our World Today. For EnviroNews USA--Josh
Cunnings.
Emerson Urry is a reporter for EnviroNews.
Josh Cunnings works for EnviroNews.
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