Northern territory govt’s past secret plans for uranium enrichment

Plan for nuke plant NT News, NIGEL ADLAM   |  January 1st, 2013 THE
Territory Government was keen to set up a uranium enrichment plant in
the NT, according to Cabinet documents from 1982 made public today
under the 30-year rule. Paul Everingham’s administration wanted to
process yellowcake from the Ranger mine, which had opened a year
earlier. ..The project was stillborn because it failed to win Federal
Government approval.. Yellowcake is trucked 220km from Ranger, near
Jabiru, to Darwin for export.
The trade used to attract fierce opposition. Protesters often tried to
halt the shipments, which left from Fort Hill wharf until the East Arm
port was built, by climbing cranes. It would usually take several
hours for police to get them down….

Secret plans of former Queensland Premier, for uranium mining in Ipswich

The revelation came as a shock to Cr Tully, elected to the Ipswich
City Council in 1979.

Cr Tully had no inkling the Bjelke-Petersen government had Ipswich in
its sights.

“That’s news to me. It’s outrageous that any government would consider
Ipswich or any other city as a potential site and keep it secret from
the city,” he said.

Cr Tully said government documents should be released after 10 years

“What are governments thinking about now? They are talking about
uranium mining in Queensland now; will we have to wait 30 years to
hear about it?”

Papers reveal Bjelke-Petersen uranium plant plan for Ipswich
http://www.qt.com.au/news/papers-reveal-uranium-plant-plan-for-ipswich/1702063/
 Kieran Banks  1st Jan 2013
Sunshine Coast Daily Archives – 21 June 1976
IPSWICH was identified as a possible site for a uranium enrichment
plant following a secretive government investigation in the 1980s,
confidential cabinet documents reveal today.

Cabinet minutes released under the 30-year disclosure rule show the
Joh Bjelke-Petersen government had its vision for uranium exploration
in Queensland in full swing in 1982.

History of uranium mining on Navajo land

Uranium cleanup on Navajo Nation complicated by scope, history of problem   19, 2012 By MARYANN BATLLE  Cronkite News “…..

• 1940s: The mining and milling of uranium ore for U.S defense and energy begins on the Navajo Nation.

• 1952: Kerr-McGee Oil Industries Inc. acquires Lukachukai Mountains property and begins mining uranium ore.

• 1954: Kerr-McGee moves its field camp to Transfer Station 1, which includes buildings used as offices and employee housing. Uranium ore was stockpiled on Transfer Stations 1 and 2 before being trucked to a processing mill.

• 1968: Final shipments of uranium ore are removed from the Lukachukai Mountains; activity at Transfer Stations 1 and 2 is believed to cease at this time.

• 1980s: Uranium mining ends on the Navajo Reservation.

• 1993: Navajo speak at a congressional hearing that includes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies. The EPA offers to help the Navajo Nation with resources from its Superfund program, set up to address abandoned hazardous waste sites.

• 1994: The U.S. EPA conducts a study to determine human exposure to radiation and heavy metals from every abandoned uranium mine on the Navajo Nation.

• 2003 to 2004: Under its Navajo Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program, the Navajo Nation removes one to two acres from Transfer Station 1 and takes the soil back to the Lukachukai Mountains.

• April 2005: Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. signs the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, banning uranium mining and processing on the reservation.

• October 2005: The Navajo Nation EPA conducts a radiological survey of Transfer Station 2.

• August 2007: A U.S. EPA study finds 520 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation.

• October 2007: At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the issue in Washington, Navajo witnesses testify about health effects they say they have experienced from uranium.

• June 2008: The U.S. EPA, the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission release a five-year plan to clean up abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation.

• September to November 2012: The U.S. EPA cleans up two former uranium transfer stations in Cove, Ariz.  http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2012/12/uranium-cleanup-on-navajo-nation-complicated-by-scope-history-of-problem/

The Church Rock uranium disaster continues

The Curse of the Yellow Powder, Bacon’s Rebellion, by Rose Jenkins   December 2, 2012 Is it possible to restore a landscape damaged by uranium? Ask the Navajo in New Mexico.
This fall, near Teddy Nez’s house on the Navajo reservation near Gallup, N.M., men in earth-moving equipment were scraping away the topsoil, up to three feet deep, which had been contaminated by radioactivity from abandoned uranium mines. In earlier phases of this project, starting in 2007, crews had torn out 100-year-old junipers and piñon pines and had clawed earth away from the remainingtrees, which weakened them, even after replacement soil was trucked in. The machines had flayed hillsides, whose cover of flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs has yet to grow back. “It looks like a B-52 hit it,” Nez told me, recalling an image from his service in Vietnam.
On our way to his house, Nez pointed out a notch in a bank of yellow grassland at the head of an arroyo. That’s where the Church Rock uranium mill tailings dam broke in 1979, releasing over 1,000 tons of radioactive wastes and millions of gallons of highly acidic water into the Puerco River, an intermittent stream that flows toward the Colorado River. The Church Rock dam failure was the largest radioactive release in U.S. history, by volume — larger than the Three Mile Island disaster the same year.
Nez’s house was upstream of the breached dam but the ground around it was contaminated by dust drifting off of the mountainous piles of waste rock from two nearby uranium mines, which have been out of production for almost 30 years. Nez believes that the continuous exposure has made him and his family sick. His whole family suffers from respiratory problems, he says — himself, his five children, and his seven grandchildren.

For years, he and his neighbors fought for a clean-up, he says, but nothing happened. Finally, in 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informed them that their situation was an emergency. Radiation levels at Nez’s home measured up to ten times higher than normal background levels for the area……
what I saw in Navajo country made me wonder how much you can really clean up after uranium, if contaminants get into the soil, the water, the air, the plants, the animals……http://www.baconsrebellion.com/2012/12/the-curse-of-the-yellow-powder.html

Queensland’s sordid history of uranium mining

Queensland Forgets Its Uranium History http://newmatilda.com/2012/10/24/queensland-forgets-its-uranium-history Jim Green, New Matilda, 24 Oct 2012 The Queensland Government is unwise to reverse the ban against uranium mining and there is no stronger reason than the industry’s sordid track record in the state.

Bukit Merah’s history of pollution from rare earths processing

Some of the surviving residents of Bukit Merah are still plagued with severe health problems. Until this very day, the Malaysian authorities refuse to acknowledge that the radioactive waste was responsible for the sudden escalation of health problems among the residents

Today, the government is the official custodian of this repository in Bukit Merah. This site in Bukit Merah is declared as a restricted and dangerous dump site for radioactive materials but a curtain of official silence has descended on it. Has the government not learnt from Bukit Merah?

The Lynas project is likely to be a replay of the ARE fiasco but on a much larger scale.

The benefits gained by Malaysia from the Lynas investment are very little relative to the risks involved. Whilst the profits of the project go to Lynas (untaxed) and the few Malaysian companies that are involved in the construction of and the provision of supplies to the Gebeng rare earth plant, the radioactive waste will remain in
Malaysian soil for hundreds of years.

Lynas issue: Not learning from bitter experience —The Malaysian Insider,  Richard Pendragon, April 12, 2012 “……..Bukit Merah The history of the rare earth industry in Malaysia is little known to most Malaysians. Most Malaysians in fact think that the Lynas project in Pahang is the first time Malaysia has been associated with this industry.
Few Malaysians actually know that there was a rare earth plant in Bukit Merah, Perak, which has been closed some 10 or more years ago, following a ruling by the High Court of Malaysia that the company involved was in negligence, and that the radioactive waste generated by the plant was dangerous and had to be removed and secured in a safe
place away from people for hundreds of years.

Czechoslovakia’s horror history of uranium mining

Around 80,000 people are believed to have been sentenced to work in the uranium mines by the Czechoslovak communist regime 

A cheap and plentiful source of labor was concocted by the communist regime as it turned on its real and imaginary enemies after taking power…. Brutal conditions in the mines and the camps

Czech historian produces death tally for communist uranium camps Czech historian says he has drawn up the first accurate death tally for the former communist regime’s uranium labor camps Czech Position.com Chris Johnstone | 05.04.2012 A Czech historian has drawn up the first list of prisoners who perished in the Czechoslovak communist regime’s infamous network of uranium mining camps.

Patrice Lumumba’s assassination: the involvement of uranium mining

Congo’s production of weapons-grade uranium vastly raised the stakes for the United States, which had used Congolese uranium to build the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945…….

War-crimes charges to be filed 50 years after Lumumba’s assassinationm Google hostede news, The Canadian Press:, By Slobodan Lekic (CP) – 18 Jan 2011, BRUSSELS — Activists plan to file a civil suit alleging war crimes by a dozen former Belgian officials they say participated in the assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba 50 years ago, a Brussels lawyer who heads the legal team said Monday.