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US lawmakers warned about uranium mining

US lawmakers warned about uranium mining The Age February 28, 2009 – 1:04PMAustralian aborigines, a French physicist and a US actor joined representatives of indigenous peoples from Africa and the United States on Friday to send US lawmakers a stark warning about the dangers of uranium mining.”We want US lawmakers to understand that uranium mining is highly pollutant and that there is currently no scientific answer to the question of radioactive waste containment,” said Bruno Chareyron of France’s CRIIRAD laboratory, which measures radioactivity in the environment.”We want them to know that the information they are given by the mining companies is not wholly reliable,” he said.

Representatives of the Tuareg nomads of Niger, Native Americans and Australian aborigines told of the ravages of uranium mining on their communities.

In Niger, French company Areva has been mining uranium for more than 40 years with “no regard for the environment, people’s health, animals”, said Sidi-Amar Taoua, a Tuareg who has lived for seven years in the United States……………..Native American environmental activist Manny Pino.

“In this process of nuclear renaissance, it’s almost like the federal government is ignoring the historical legacy of uranium mining in the past and prioritising the economic benefits of nuclear power in the future at the expense of our land, our water and our people,” he said.

Mitch, an aboriginal militant against radioactive waste dumps and uranium mining in Australia, the world’s biggest producer of the mineral, said: “Short term monetary gain will leave us with long-term deadly waste for generations to come.

US lawmakers warned about uranium mining

March 2, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized