Panel starts groundwork on Va. uranium mining study

RICHMOND

Virginia may be home to the largest untapped uranium deposit in the United States, but can it be mined and turned into nuclear fuel safely?

That is the big question facing a special state subcommittee, which met for the first time Friday.

At issue is a proposal from Virginia Uranium Inc. to mine and mill an estimated 60,000 tons of uranium from a rural site outside the town of Chatham, in Pittsylvania County. The deposit could be worth $10 billion and would bring jobs and development to a struggling part of the state, while also making Virginia an international player in the nuclear-energy field.

It would be the first uranium mine east of the Mississippi River and would occur upstream of Lake Gaston, which supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses in Hampton Roads, especially Virginia Beach.

If a storm or accident were to occur, environmentalists and scientists warn that radioactive wastes could flush into Lake Gaston and contaminate the whole system.

The city of Virginia Beach has passed a resolution opposed to the mining plan and, on Friday, director of public utilities Thomas Leahy was in Richmond to urge the subcommittee to move with extreme caution.

"When it comes to radioactive materials in our drinking water, zero is the standard," Leahy said.

The Uranium Mining Subcommittee of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy is tasked with defining the details of a major study into the environmental, safety, health, economic and social implications of allowing mining.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's administration supports the study, which would likely be performed by the National Academy of Sciences. Others wish the whole idea would simply go away.

"I just want you to know the Southside is scared, and they're outraged," said Deborah Lovelace, who lives about five miles from the proposed mine site, known as Coles Hill.

Lovelace and other opponents wore buttons with a red line crossing out a capital U, the chemical symbol for uranium. They said that once they heard a study was to be conducted after all, they collected more than 600 signatures opposed to the project - "in one day and during a downpour," Lovelace said.

State lawmakers earlier this year voted down a proposed mining study. But the coal and energy commission, using its given authority, decided to go ahead with one anyway.

Michael Karmis, a Virginia Tech professor and director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, will oversee the study as a technical adviser. It could take 18 months to complete, he said.

Expected to cost $1 million to $1.5 million, the study is expected to be paid by donations, probably from mining interests. However, the National Academy of Sciences requires some public money for its work, which means the state would likely have to pitch in.

Virginia has a $2.5 billion deficit, and there may not be much appetite for funding a uranium study.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com