nuclear-news

Effects of Bootheel uranium search costly
columbiotribune.com By KEN MIDKIFF Friday, November 21, 2008 Something’s going on down in the Bootheel. At this point, it is all still pretty much a mystery, but if all comes together, it is likely to be an environmental disaster.All that is known at this point is that a consulting firm – Gustafson Inc. of Boulder, Colo. – is doing some exploratory work for the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bendix Corp. Apparently, the engineers and geologists at Gustafson think that underneath all that rich topsoil deposited over thousands of years by flooding from the adjacent Mississippi River, is uranium………………………The legacies of uranium mining in the western states are abandoned, unsafe mines and several radioactive dumps that will cost millions of taxpayer dollars to cover or move. The uranium boom quickly went bust, and once-thriving towns ceased to exist or were greatly diminished.

The Midwest, not having very many public lands, was not part of the uranium boom. So, what has changed?

That question is essential because the Gustafson group is actively looking on private lands in this state and several surrounding states – Kentucky, Arkansas and Kansas. As usual, those interested in establishing uranium extraction sites are promising landowners that they will become rich, taking vacations in the Bahamas. But, as usual, the money resulting from any uranium that might exist will go to Bendix, and landowners will be left with – well, the shaft.

Note that this does not involve mining but rather “uranium extraction,” and therein lays the problem. Although folks out West will complain of the unsafe holes in the ground left by uranium mining, the method proposed for Mississippi County is “in situ leaching.”…………………..

Immediately, several problems arise with this method. First, the sandstone in the Bootheel is permeable, and it is likely that groundwater – drinking water – in the area will be contaminated with dissolved radioactive metals.

Second, the process, although effective, does not remove all of the uranium – some remains underground; some remains in the wastewater. Third, any discharge of radioactive and heavy metal waste will flow into area creeks and then into the Mississippi River…………………Polluted groundwater, discharge of radioactive waste into local creeks and national rivers – the costs of these issues will be borne by everyone. Just ask folks in Utah dealing with the “Moab pile”, where the uranium boom left a massive radioactive dump that is polluting the nearby Colorado River. Moving the radioactive materials to a site where it will cause much less harm will cost taxpayers millions.

The “external costs” turn out to be very costly.

More from the oxymoronic “Ethical Corporati0n”
Resources slump: Why oil and mining must garner social capital

By Rob Foulkes and Daniel Litvin Nov 24 08 well-focused sustainable development programmes and other relationship-building activities – which typically cost a small fraction of overall capital expenditure for a project – may be a worthwhile investment. Doing the right stakeholder engagement work is equivalent to buying an option to reopen projects, or at least lower the risk of future backlash.Past turbulenceWhen it comes to their treatment by foreign extractive companies, governments and populations in resource-rich countries tend to have long memories, and in many parts of the world feel that the multinationals have historically paid scant attention to their needs.
The oil and mining nationalisations that swept the developing world in the 1960s and 1970s were in part a response to decades of perceived exploitation, a belief – fair or not – that foreign companies had treated host countries as cash-cows to be milked or discarded as required without sufficient consideration for the human consequences……………………………………….The financial value of trust

In terms of the management of individual projects during investment delays, our research suggests that the way socio-political issues are handled can significantly affect the support a company enjoys from its hosts when conditions improve and it seeks to re-launch.

Allowing relationships with key stakeholders to deteriorate, for example, or failing to pursue valued community projects, can undermine local and national support that may have taken years to build up, and will increase the risk of delays or backlash when prices pick up.

The case of Jabiluka, an Australian uranium project acquired by the mining company North in 1991, illustrates at least an aspect of this. Stalled at that point by a national policy limiting uranium mine development, the project did at least have the formal consent of the local Aboriginal community. Yet by 1996, when a new government revoked the policy, community opposition had intensified. Hundreds of people were arrested during protests over the next two years and the mine became a national controversy.

Perceptions of social and environmental problems around its nearby Ranger mine (whether these were fair or not), and Aboriginal concerns that re-launching Jabiluka would mean more of the same meant that any local support the company had once enjoyed was severely eroded. Rio Tinto, which acquired North in 2000, has since agreed to mothball the project until the local community reaffirms its consent, which some of its leaders insist it will never do………………………….a sensitive but strategically designed approach to stakeholder relations can help extractive companies soften the impact of project delays on the way they are viewed in resource-rich countries. Maintaining sufficient levels of contact with host governments and communities, and responding wherever possible to their needs during periods of project delay (including through continued, even if pared back, sustainability programmes) is a critical element of this……………………companies may do well to pay at least some attention to public and political perceptions of what constitutes a ‘fair deal’ for the host country.

Resources slump: Why oil and mining must garner social capital (Translation – we’d better get better at conning the public?)
Ethical Corporation (now THERE’s an oxymoron) 24 Nov 08 Many oil and mining companies are slashing investments as commodity prices collapse. For their own sake, the socio-political fall out will need to be sensitively managed
By Rob Foulkes and Daniel Litvin
Companies focused intently on cutting costs may be tempted to treat management of socio-political and sustainability issues as a luxury which they can live without while projects are on hold.

Clearly, legal requirements in this area need to be met: complying with environmental regulations for mothballed facilities, for example. But is there any sense in going beyond this – for example investing in community projects or stakeholder engagement programmes – while other investment is frozen?

In fact, while waste should be cut back in this area as elsewhere, strategically protecting key relationships during this period actually may be more important to companies’ long term success than any short term cash savings.

A feeling among host communities and governments that they have been cast aside by multinationals in the past has bred suspicion and resentment of foreign business in resource-rich developing countries. These feelings have underpinned successive waves of resource nationalism at great cost to the companies involved.

Research based on Critical Resource’s LicenseSecure™ methodology, which rates the health of the ‘socio-political license to operate’ of resource projects, suggests that frequently it is a foreign company’s handling of social and political concerns during a delay to a project that shapes the way the business is seen and treated by its hosts in the future.