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Vested interests controlling study on uranium mining impacts?

Virginia currently has a moratorium on uranium mining and milling.

Tobacco Commission Gets Process Rolling For Socioeconomic Uranium Mining Study The Gazette Virginian, JOHN R. CRANE/Danville Register & Bee. 20 April 2010 The process has begun for the second part of a study focusing on the socioeconomic impacts of uranium mining and milling in Virginia. The Virginia Tobacco Commission’s executive committee voted Thursday during its meeting in Roanoke to recommend the commission supply up to $200,000 to the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission’s Uranium Mining Subcommittee to pay an entity to perform the socioeconomic study.

“We want to make sure that there was independent funding so this would have validity,” Tobacco Commission Executive Committee Chairman Delegate Terry Kilgore said Thursday.The Tobacco Commission will meet April 29, said Kilgore, R-1st District, who also heads the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission…………….

Virginia Uranium Inc., which seeks to mine and mill a 119-million pound uranium ore deposit at Coles Hill near Chatham, is paying for the study’s first part emphasizing the technical and scientific aspects of mining and milling. The National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council are performing that study, which is expected to be finished in the fall of 2011.

Virginia currently has a moratorium on uranium mining and milling.

Patrick Wales, VUI geologist and spokesman, praised the vote as the first step toward completing the mission that the Coal and Energy Commission assigned to the uranium subcommittee.

Eloise Nenon, a mining opponent and founding member of Southside Concerned Citizens in Chatham, said the decision was “great” but added public participation in the study should be allowed. The study should also examine the threats uranium mining and milling could pose to the area’s history, agriculture, air, water and public health, Nenon said. Tobacco Commission Gets Process Rolling For Socioeconomic Uranium Mining Study

April 20, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | antinuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, uranium