Planting Long-term Land Mines 0
Anyone who thinks permitting uranium mining in Virgina should read the recent article in the Denver Post about what uranium mines leave behind.
A nugget:
It is one of my favorite images — “Uranium Tailings No. 12,” taken at Ontario’s Elliot Lake in 1995, part of photographer Edward Burtynski’s troubling series documenting the ravages of mining. The most disturbing part of the work is the beauty apparent in all that ugliness. The molten orange of water tainted by nickel tailings, the taupe and gray shades of soil — smooth and tender looking as skin — swept clean of living mess.
Anyone who has flown over West Virginia knows the devastation of mountain-top removal (the one bright side to the comparison might be that coal at least doesn’t have a half-life).
Only the mining company will benefit. Everyone else, including likely the miners and their families, will pay for centuries the penalty for allowing the depredation.
