BY EDITOR
6th October 2013
In advanced countries with well established uranium-based energy industry and often attached to weapons industries, the problem with uranium isn’t the mineral or metal, but rather the shutting down of nuclear power stations and getting rid of uranium enrichment and processing waste.
This poses a major problem because the material does not decay and is radioactive, meaning it penetrates into anything to get the right isotopic frame, and its penetration is always destructive. It is a real vampire on other substances, endowed with huge economic use.
What worries environmental activists and many other well meaning people is that there is little indication that on the basis of current mining sector defects, like spillage of chemically nefarious gold washing mercury laden waste water into nearby rivers, we can do better in uranium mining.
While in the case of gold mining waste water the river can be treated of its cyanide wastes and its emission stopped in the gold mine after the right measures are taken, such spillage or emission is a disaster with uranium mining. It means a generation of defectively born babies if their mothers inhale radioactive waste on the river, or in the neighbourhood of such activity, and there is little reason that this isn’t going to happen. It means that we aren’t prepared for uranium mining on account of dangers.
Yet there is a different dimension to the problem, and that is the use of minerals for much needed government revenue, and to an extent, some auxiliary industries one of which, to start with, should not be the generation of nuclear power.
This matter has been raised by corporate sharks always out for the next megabillion shilling tender with executive bodies of this or that sort, in which case they seek to create local ‘value chains’ in uranium mining, whereas this should be avoided like the plague in our current conditions.
We need not seek enrichment or even cleansing of uranium at this stage, unless a major foreign company wants to make Tanzania the hub of uranium-based industrial activity of one kind or another, not something simply pushed for the same of benefits of the chain.
That means we have a choice about mining on the basis of current infrastructure and realize the dangers that experts are warning about, and avoiding the mining entirely to stem such dangers until a later date, which is unlikely to be taken up by the government as no country has the revenue it needs for urgent projects.
The richest country in the world, the United States is facing a shutdown on account of disputes on budgeting, part of the problem being finding the money for a universal health care programme rejected by the Republican majority in the lower house of Congress. We cannot be criticized for wishing to add uranium to the country’s revenues, now.
Yet the choice isn’t quite as devilish as most activists make it to be, despite that this is finally the major axis on which the issue stands, to mine or not to mine.
Even where it is agreed that mining can be done with the right precautions, there is still a devil’s choice lurking, as to how far our usually confident, even at times arrogant public agencies will accept the idea that they do not measure up to nuclear mining supervisory and inspection regime, and they need to step aside and leave it to other people.
This will sound an insult to many of them because they believe supervision is a matter of education, a master’s in engineering or something, and this is what can lead to disaster. Were it that qualified managers from institutions like the Japanese, and even the Russians as they also have vast experience in the field are left to work alone, it could work.
But if the government insists on massive taxation to optimize or maximize benefits from uranium, this could push investors to economize on safeguards, which thus leads to disaster. So the problem is whether we shall be humble in mining uranium, or taxing, arrogant.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
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