Uranium in Virginia – ain’t happenin’
By Brian Kirwin | Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 | Energy independenceI’ve been watching and listening to legislators and activists talk about the proposal to mine uranium in Virginia. I’ve consulted lawmakers on options. I’ve listened and watched and read as they sponsor a trip to France to visit a closed plant (and most of the ones who went aren’t voting to overturn the mining ban in a zillion years – great expenditure, guys!)
And I’m supremely confident that the ban on mining uranium is staying in place.
I don’t think it’s any anti-nuclear stances or anti-uranium thoughts that drive this debate. I don’t think it’s macro energy policy. The Virginia Uranium movement focuses on all the benefits this could have nationally and the benefits it could have economically in southside.
But how does it benefit a legislator’s district? What does Chesapeake have to gain? Why would Virginia Beach want this? Why would Norfolk support it? Pick any district in Hampton Roads. How would lifting the ban directly benefit these localities or districts?
It’ll make some people millionaires. It may even create jobs 200 miles away. It may help the national energy movement and might even wind up being safely done.
But the basic political equation that is not remotely balanced is that Hampton Roads could carry an inordinately high amount of the risk while receiving an inordinately low amount of the benefit.
Whacko liberals try to make that case for EVERY energy production proposal, but they’re usually wrong, and the fact that their mantra might coincidentally luck into being right this time is no great accomplishment. Drilling for oil and natural gas is routinely done safely. Wind energy development as well. Mining for uranium isn’t something that’s on most people’s list of urgent needs.
And if the lobbyists favoring this want to swerve support of elected officials, they better come up with a menu more appetizing than jobs for other regions, money for other people and all the risk for us.
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About the author
The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled.
Comments
14 Responses to "Uranium in Virginia – ain’t happenin’"
Brian,
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Let me state that 1. I am not in favor of opening up any portion of the Virginia which is included in the watershed that drains into Lake Gaston unless it can be done safely. 2. I am in favor of increased offshore drilling. 3. I am in favor of increased use of nuclear power.
But I will note that it seems to almost be an amazing coincidence that shortly after President Obama announced areas off Virginia’s coast would be opened up to drilling, we had the BP/Gulf oil spill. It was almost spooky how quickly it happened. Then we had the tsunami and Japan that caused the major nuclear power incident. No major coincidence in the timing there however the Obama administration has supported increased usage of nuclear power and government subsidies of the industry.
The point I am trying to make is that the arguments that some environmentalists make are not without merit. I believe that they can point to incidents on all three issues that prove such sources of energy do not come free of risks. Personally, I disagree with many environmentalists on the issues (however not all of them, many environmentalists support increased nuclear power usage, even if only reluctantly for example) however I do not call them wackos. I still respectfully disagree with them even after God (or fate if you prefer) provided proof that these efforts will not come to us risk free.
LD- as for the coincidence…there is no safe form of energy. There are risks associated with every form of energy from coal to oil to natural gas to wind to nuclear to solar.
The environmental commumity A- is very bad at assessing risk. Fewer people have been killed in the entire history of the nuclear power industry than in coal mines in the last ten years. B- harps on the known dangers. We don’t have enough experience yet with some of the renewables to know exactly what the dangers are. I suspect that one danger wwe will find with both wind and solar is that they require extensive use of batteries to store generated power. Batteries are by nature hazardous, they use dangerous chemicals. They present disposal problems to prevent those chemicals from getting into ground water. We’ll have to find a way to minimize those risks if those are going to be major energy sources.
There’s no free lunch on energy.
We’ve got to find a way to determine what we feel are acceptable risks (I’m pretty sure not too many nuke plants are going to be hit by a tidal wave and an earthquake back to back) and what are unacceptable risks (the chance of an oil spill off Va. Beach, ruining one of the state’s major tourism assets).
Analysis is “spot on”…Reality is that even among the “Counties” in Virginia, I would think that there is little interest in supporting something that may benefit one or two counties. Granted Pittsylvania County has very little going on these days, since the demise of the textile industry…However, the potential for negative side effects that would impact other communities hundreds of miles away with no tangible benefit. While I know that there is plenty of minable material there, there are far more cost effective opportunities for us to pursue for energy independence.
Steve,
My point is that if one is willing to deal with environmentalists honestly and respectfully, they will be open to listen to your point of view. Occasionally you will be able to convince them and by gosh, occasionally they will be able to convince you.
On both sides of the aisle, there seems to some driven by a secret agenda, and the motivation does not seem to be altruism. Other times, altruism is the motivator however disagreement remains on what is best for not just oneself, but everyone else as well.
If everyone was motivated by the Golden Rule, we might not have much of a problem.
The problem always is… which group of environmentalists do you attempt to reason with? There are the bomb-throwing anarchists who have co-opted part the environmental movement for political gain in order to tear down western civilization. Then there is the carbon crowd which has a new carbon-based economy they are trying to convince us to accept using bogus science and by making doomsday movies. There are politicians who fall in with either the anarchists or the carbon crowd, depending on who their audience may be and what speech they are making. We have the conservationists who are a more reasoned group that look at cause and effect relationships between options and tend to be more pragmatic in assessing environmental stewardship rather than blame. Then we have the internationalists who are attempting to establish the premise for a world government using a combination of the above in order to pick and choose who benefits and who is punished. All of the groups have their own constituencies, funding, Kool-aid drinkers and agendas so how do you transcend all of these self interests so that “they will be open to listen to your point of view.”?
Tim from your own post I would say the conservationists would be a good first step.
Steve Vaughan writes that there is no safe form of energy. Would he care to back that up? Let’s make it easy.
Can he explain the dangers inherent in solar energy or geo-thermal energy? I’m considering these systems for my home and would love to hear the dangers of these energy systems.
Personally I figure the main reason that solar and wind are not being pushed in the Corporate United States of America as opposed to the rest of the world is that the corporations haven’t figured out how to charge us for the sun or the wind energy.
I also don’t understand why nuclear energy continues to be touted since it cannot survive in the free market without government welfare and the rest of us taking on the payment for the consequences if something goes wrong….especially since the safer form of nuclear energy is never put on the table it seems that there’s a covert agenda behind the nuclear energy push that is not in my best interests.
Personally I think after more than 60 years it’s time to take nuclear energy off the nipple and let it sink or swim in the free market on it’s own with no government subsidies. We could save some of that funding and divert some of it to the truly green energies of the future. (And I bet they will take off within twenty years instead of continuing to flounder and continue to need government subsidies hundreds of years down the road).
I no longer live in Tidewater but if I did I’d be seriously concerned about my drinking water and seriously hope that some contenders run in the Republican primary to consider un-seating Senator Wagner who appears more interested in representing uranium interests instead of his constituents in Virginia Beach.
Hope all is well down there in Tidewater aka Hampton Roads!
Star Womanspirit,
Wagner has got to go!
I considered solar energy myself, however it was unaffordable. I didn’t have enough roof on my house to provide all of my electricity needs even with net metering. I then considered installing enough to meet half my electricity needs but came to the conclusion it was a poor investment.
As demand for solar goes up the prices go up. This is not due to the limited availability of manufacturing capabilities but because of the limited availability of poly-silicon the main raw material in solar panels. However the prices of this material has recently plunged because the speculative bubble burst.
Little David–I’ve only seen you online today on this blog article and I must say I really do like your drift! You rock little david and hopefully we’ll be talkin’ some more sometime.
I don’t know about others but I’m tired of the name calling and labeling that corporations and their mainstream corporate media tries to get all of us to do.
How about we are all people and caring citizens and let’s dialogue about ideas and facts and leave the labeling and divisive name calling out of the equation? I believe this would help our democratic process instead of dividing the people so the corporations and corporate media can push their agendas down our throats.
Anyway you cut it, we should be focused on 1) ending our dependence on foreign oil, 2) reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and 3) developing domestic renewable energy resources. It seems to me that the billions of handouts going to the energy extractive industries should instead be devoted to developing domestic renewable energy. Nuclear will play into the mix but mining the SWVA is a loose-loose for those of us not directly employed by it. What would be the benefit to the average citizen of Virginia? What are the risks? It’s loose-loose.
Powering our homes, businesses, and factories is the easy part. The challenge lies with switching personal vehicles from gas to any other fuel source. Despite the many challenges facing the USPS, they would a great test bed for new fuel sources.
There are finite amounts of extractable energy and they’re getting costlier, in dollars and risk, to extract. Why not make a bigger investment in an economy that cannot be shipped overseas?
@ Steve,
Don’t think about batteries, think about energy storage. Chemical batteries are just one of many ways to store excess energy. While batteries are certainly a useful technology to store small quantities of energy for our personal needs and may come to play a role in the future to store excess I wouldn’t look to them for large scale energy storage. More reliable technologies exist such as pumping water uphill and releasing it when demand is higher than production capabilities or compressed air.
ToR and Woman: the batteries were mentioned as an example of safety risks that we don’t know about yet with alternative forms of energy because we haven’t used them enough. When the internal combustion engine was invented, nobody thought then about the enivornmental consequences. The point was that all energy sources have their potential risks and we need to think more clearly when we’re assessing risk.
The risks are too high and if the moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia is lifted, it will no longer just be a worry for the residents of Pittsylvania and Halifax counties of damage to their air, land and water but it will become a reality for the whole state of Virgina. We have enough cancer and pollution already. Leave the uranium in it’s natural form, imbedded in rock in the ground. Haven’t we learned anything from Chernobyl and the recent nuclear disaster in Japan? It rained for 4 straight hours in Halifax County yesterday with heavy downpours. Flooding at Coles Hill(the site of the potential uranium mining operation in Pittsylvania County) happened as recently as last year and the road going there was covered by water. There is no shortage of uranium in the world. The climate here is not (and never will be) suitable for a uranium mining and milling operation. Once the water table, air & land are contaminated and human health is jeopardized it will be too late to say “I wish we had left the moratorium in place”. The bottom line is that a few people would get rich, a few people would get short-lived jobs and the taxpayers of Virginia would be left to deal with the ruination of communities and monitoring of the toxic tailings left behind forever.
Actually solar power does not suffer from the need for backup as heavily as does, for example, wind power. Think about it, when is the heaviest demand for electricity from the power grid? Peak demand is mid-day during summer months when the sun is shining brightest and everyone’s air conditioning is running full bast.
If someone has solar panels on their roof, when is the output from them the highest? During that same time period. If it is a cloudy day, heat from solar radiation is lessened and their would be an accompanying decrease of demand for electricity.
Solar power passes the common sense test as long as prices come down to where it is affordable.
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