No hurry on uranium vote

Executives with Virginia Uranium Inc. could learn something about patience from the company's namesake.

It takes 9 billion years for uranium to turn to lead. But Walter Coles Jr., executive vice president of the company, can't even wait a few months for the results of a study that will determine if a deposit in Pittsylvania County can be mined safely.

Coles told investors recently that his company will press the General Assembly to end a moratorium on uranium mining when it convenes in January 2012, according to The Associated Press. That's just a few weeks after the anticipated release of the feasibility study being conducted by the National Academy of Sciences. Coles reported that his company is already lining up legislators to sponsor the bill, and he declared the commonwealth to be "fairly pro-nuclear."

Virginia Uranium has been vigorously cultivating a "pro-nuclear" commonwealth. The company has donated more than $55,000 to political parties and candidates over the past three years and had 15 lobbyists on retainer during the 2011 legislative session, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Cole's haste has now forced the company into damage control as Japan struggles to address the failure of safety systems at its nuclear power plants following last week's earthquake and tsunami.

Certainly, there is a difference between operating a nuclear plant and digging uranium out of the ground. But both efforts carry risk, and any project involving nuclear energy demands a cautious, even plodding, assessment of the benefits and dangers.

Virginia Uranium officials pooh-poohed a Virginia Beach study that concluded a severe storm could wash contaminants into Kerr Reservoir, which feeds Lake Gaston, and then into a reservoir in Hampton Roads that supplies Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Initial findings suggest that drinking-water supplies could be disrupted for months.

That study was more relevant to the mining proposal, but worldwide attention to the crisis in Japan has caused Virginia Uranium to tone down its rhetoric.

"We're going to be prepared for when and if the legislature is ready to take some action," Patrick Wales, project manager for the company, said this week in an interview.

State officials would be wise to give themselves a full year to absorb the implications of the NAS study. The analysis will not only assess the safety of mining uranium in a rainy climate, it will detail the new demands on state mining, environmental and health agencies.

Public concerns may well necessitate a slower speed, regardless of Virginia Uranium's wishes. Sen. Frank Wagner, one of three legislators flown to France last year by the company to view mining operations, said he wants to be satisfied the NAS study has fully addressed water quality issues before he will support an end to the moratorium.

Perhaps even more pertinent to Virginia Uranium's future is the impact of the Japanese disaster on the market for uranium. A decline in market prices during the 1980s helped to shelve earlier plans for a mine in Pittsylvania.

Wales acknowledged that short-term market fluctuations may be inevitable, but he said it's too soon to speculate on long-term impacts.

"We need to wait on the science and see what the experts and the scientists come up with in response to Japan," he said.

That's good advice. Wales and his colleagues would do well to heed it themselves.