Tag: Uranium

Clock Ticking On Benefits Deadline For Uranium Workers

Churchrock – Larry King, president of Churchrock Chapter and a former uranium worker, doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in the melting Arctic of receiving federal benefits afforded sick Navajos who worked in the uranium industry before 1971. King isn’t the only one.

Linda Evers of Milan, co-founder of the Post-’71 Uranium Workers Committee, and the group’s members also can forget about help with their medical bills unless Congress changes qualifications for the 1990 program.

This weekend, the first day dawned in the countdown to July 10, 2022, when, according to statute, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Trust Fund “terminates,” along with the authority of the U.S. Attorney General to administer the law, according to the Department of Justice.

Take Uranium Tailings Far Away From Navajo Nation

Window Rock – President Jonathan Nez has sent a letter stating the Nation wants radioactive mine waste disposed off of — and nowhere near — the Navajo Nation.

The letter is in response to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recent proposal to allow United Nuclear Corporation to transfer the waste from the Northeast Church Rock abandoned uranium mine on the Navajo Nation to the neighboring uranium mill tailings impoundment at the UNC Church Rock Mill Site. Comments are being taken until May 27.

Nez’s letter to John R. Tappert, director of the ?Division of Rulemaking, Environmental, and Financial Support Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards ?for the NRC, states the Red Water Pond Road Community and many other Navajo communities have been severely impacted by the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.

Environment Navajo nation Nuclear Waste Uranium

Inaugural ‘No Uranium In Treaty Territory Summit’ Held In Rapid City

Rapid City, SD – The first-ever No Uranium in Treaty Territory Summit is taking place on Oglala Sioux Tribal land to alert the local public about the current fights against mining companies and to share knowledge about the extensive history of uranium mining in the Black Hills. The summit has been organized by local activist groups Defend the Sacred Black Hills and Magpie Buffalo Organizing and will span two 8-hour days with over 20 presenters. The flyer for the summit described the process of radioactive decay, whereby unstable uranium atoms break down into more stable heavy metals and release high-energy particles in the process.

Environment Radioactive Waste Uranium

Southwestern Lakes And Rivers Are Radioactive

During the uranium days of the West, more than a dozen mills — all with processing capacities at least ten times larger than the one at White Canyon — sat on the banks of the Colorado River and its tributaries, including in Shiprock and Mexican Hat on the San Juan River; in Rifle and Grand Junction and Moab on the Colorado; and in Uravan along the San Miguel River, just above its confluence with the Dolores. They did not exactly dispose of their tailings in a responsible way.

At the Durango mill the tailings were piled into a hill-sized mound just a stone’s throw from the Animas River. They weren’t covered or otherwise contained, so when it rained tailings simply washed into the river.

health Mining Uranium Water

Day 9 Of Countdown To Launch: Featuring Klee Benally

By Popular Resistance. Klee Benally is a Navajo (Diné) musician, artist, film producer and activist living in Flagstaff, Arizona. He has worked on numerous campaigns to protect sacred sites and other issues. For the past three years, he has coordinated the Clean Up the Mines Campaign, which is also part of the Haul No Coalition.

There are more than 15,000 abandoned Uranium mines in the United States. They are left over from the Uranium Rush of the 1950s and 1960s. These mostly open-pit mines continue to emit radiation and toxic heavy metals that pollute the air, land and water and are causing severe health impacts such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and birth defects.

Popular Resistance has worked with Klee Benally since before the founding to create, launch and maintain the Clean Up The Mines campaign.

Environment health Indigenous Rights Uranium

Trump Administration Targets Uranium Mining Ban Near Grand Canyon

WASHINGTON— The Trump administration wants to roll back a 20-year ban to allow uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, according to a Forest Service report formally released today.
Under today’s recommendations the Interior Department would revise an Obama-era mining ban that sought to protect tribal resources and drinking water, as well as safeguard critical wildlife corridors and habitat threatened by uranium contamination.
“This appalling recommendation threatens to destroy one of the world’s most breathtakingly beautiful regions to give free handouts to the mining industry,”

Environment Indigenous Rights Mining Uranium

Why We’re Investigating Grand Canyon Uranium

By John Ahni Schertow and Garet Bleir for InterContinental Cry. In 2012, US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a twenty-year ban on mining surrounding the Grand Canyon National Park. It was one of the biggest wins for the environment that year. After all, 10,000 uranium mining claims threatened to turn this iconic natural landscape into a radioactive wasteland.

The moratorium put an end to all that — at least for the next 20 years.

Unfortunately, our celebration of the historic decision had consequences. It drowned out two pressing facts that the media urgently needed to focus on: there were at least four old uranium mines near the Grand Canyon that could be reopened despite the moratorium; and there were still hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on Navajo (Diné) land that needed remediation.

Environment Grand Canyon Indigenous Rights Mining Uranium

Grand Canyon Is Our Home. Uranium Mining Has No Place Here

By Carletta Tilousi for The Guardian – The Havasupai – “people of the blue-green waters” – live in Supai Village, located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Today our lives and water are being threatened by international uranium mining companies because the US government and its 1872 mining law permit uranium mining on federal lands that surround the Grand Canyon. In 1986, the Kaibab national forest authorized a Canadian-based uranium company to open Canyon mine, a uranium mine near the south rim of Grand Canyon national park. The Havasupai tribe challenged the decision but lost in the ninth circuit court of appeals. Miners were just starting to drill Canyon mine’s shaft in 1991 when falling uranium prices caused the company to shut it down for more than two decades. Havasupai ancestors share stories of the sacredness of the Grand Canyon and all the mountains that surround it. They have instructed us to protect the waters and the mountains from any environmental contamination. That’s why we stand firm against any uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region. As uranium prices began to rise again in 2007, the uranium company reopened three closed mines on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, north of the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon Mining Uranium

First Cross Border Anti-Nuclear Action

By the Intermountain West Uranium Summit. ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — Intermountain West Uranium Summit participants are inviting affinity groups everywhere to take part on July 15-16 in our first Cross-Border AntiNuclear Action (CBAN), commemorating the anniversary of the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history and the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

Members are holding events in our locales to raise awareness that the entire nuclear industry, from cradle to grave, is one deadly chain. Beginning with extraction of uranium, proceeding to refinement of yellow cake, through transportation on public routes, operation of nuclear power plants, and weapons manufacture, to waste disposal issues, the nuclear process releases lethal radiation to air, land and water. It history is fraught with accidents, illness and threats to life on earth. It must stop before it kills more humans and other living things.

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Uranium Mining In The Grand Canyon Continues Despite Resistance

By Vic Bishop for Waking Times – Sad but true, the dramatic opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota failed to achieve the result of stopping corporate and political powers from proceeding with the pipeline. Less than six months after the camp’s abandonment, the pipeline is functional and leaks are already being reported. Another, less publicized, struggle has been taking place for years around the area of the Grand Canyon, where indigenous rights and environmental activists have been seeking a ban on uranium mining in this part of America’s breathtaking landscape. Beginning in the 1950’s when a rush to draw uranium for the first generation of nuclear weapons brought mining operations to this region, opponents recently lost a bid to prohibit the mining and processing of radioactive materials near the iconic Grand Canyon. The environmental impact of uranium mining and processing is devastating, as radioactive contamination is common, affecting people as well as wildlife, springs, aquifers, and sacred sites.

Mining Uranium

Haul No! Awareness And Action Tour

By Haul No! Haul No! is an awareness & action tour that will be held in Spring 2017 along the proposed uranium haul route of the Canyon Mine (owned and operated by uranium production company Energy Fuels Inc.). We intend to spread awareness and stimulate action to ensure sacred sites, the Grand Canyon, and our communities are safeguarded from this deadly toxic threat. The Canyon Mine is a uranium mine located near Red Butte, a sacred mountain and Traditional Cultural Property only six miles from the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Canadian company, Energy Fuels, is currently sinking the mine shaft and plans to extract uranium in early 2017. The company is operating under a Plan of Operations and Environmental Review that date to 1986, and the Forest Service failed to properly consult with the Havasupai Tribe before allowing the mine to operate.

health Indigenous Rights Mining Uranium

Energy Fuels Completes Drilling Near Grand Canyon

By Klee Benally for Haul No! GRAND CANYON, AZ — Energy Fuels Inc. recently reported that it has completed drilling of it’s uranium mine shaft at Canyon Mine, which is located just miles from the Grand Canyon. The company is now creating a plan based upon results of the drilling before it can resume construction at the site. They have also temporarily fired most of their workers.

Energy Fuels threatens that uranium ore extraction could begin at Canyon Mine as early as June 2017.
“Energy Fuels is violating Mother Earth, desecrating sacred Red Butte, and now bringing poisonous water laced with uranium out of their mine near the Grand Canyon. It is an outrage to witness careless mine workers spray radioactive pollution over these sacred lands.” stated Klee Benally, a coordinator with Clean Up The Mines and volunteer with Haul No!, “That they are also transporting millions of gallons of this toxic contaminants through Diné Bikeyah (Navajo Nation) without our informed consent, where our communities continue to suffer the effects of the nuclear industry’s deadly legacy, is an outrage.

Indigenous Rights Mining Sacred sites Uranium

Native American Uranium Miners & Trump Budget

By Robert Alvarez for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – For minimum wage or less, they blasted open seams, built wooden beam supports in the mine shafts, and dug out ore pieces with picks and wheelbarrows. The shafts penetrated as deep as 1,500 feet, with little or no ventilation. The bitter-tasting dust was all pervasive, coating their teeth. They ate in the mines and drank water that dripped from the walls and, sometimes, developed chronic coughs. And much worse. Native American uranium miners were essential to the United States’ efforts to create a nuclear arsenal. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Indian people dug up approximately four million tons of uranium ore—nearly a quarter of the total national underground production in the United States used in nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump Mining Native Americans Uranium

Protesters’ Outcry Against Live-Fire Bombing In Hawai’i

By Shauna Krystin for The Fifth Column News. Kailua, Hawaii (TFC) – Activists on Hawai’i Island are asking for the end of live-fire bomb training at Pohakuloa Training Area. One primary concern is the use of depleted uranium (DU) in on-going military training is polluting the air and making Hawaiian residents sick. Background levels of radiation are considered safe and range from about 5-20 ppm. One activist with a radiation meter saw levels as high as 70ppm while standing near the main gates to the training area. According to activist Lindafaye Kroll, of STOP Bombing Hawaii, the “elevated radiation is from a U.S. military source.” While government and military officials claim that depleted uranium has a low-level radioactivity and is safe, activists are concerned about its toxicity and half-life of 4.5 billion years. Military testing in Hawai’i has been ongoing since the end of World War II; the island of Kaho’olawe was bombed to such a point that locals began to call it “Target Island,” and is uninhabitable thanks to a cracked water table and a proliferation of undetonated explosives.

Hawaii health Nuclear Weapons Uranium Wars and Militarism

Grand Canyon Uranium Mine Filling With Toxic Water

By Alicyn Gitlin and Leona Morgan for Sierra Club. TUSAYAN, Ariz. – The controversial Canyon Mine, located just six miles from Grand Canyon’s South Rim, is filling with surplus water after a wet winter. In an effort to dispose of the water from the bottom of the mine shaft, mine owner Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc. is trucking the contaminated water to the White Mesa Mill uranium processing facility near Blanding, Utah and spraying it, into the air and on the adjacent Kaibab National Forest, in an attempt to evaporate it. The Plan of Operations requires that all excess water be retained in holding ponds and be treated on-site. Simultaneously, Energy Fuels has allowed state environmental permits intended to help protect groundwater to expire.

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