Dr. Kevin Weiland breaks this story right here on the blog!
You trust your doctor, right? Well, your doctor is telling you, Don't mine uranium! Dr. Weiland responds to my post about PowerTech's proposed in-situ uranium leach mine in the Black Hills:
If this goes through, the promise of jobs will turn out to be more like Job Security for the folks in my profession.
I attended the South Dakota State Medical Association SDSMA) meeting on Friday, September 20th. Our District 9 (Black Hills District) presented a proposal asking the SDSMA take a position in opposition to Uranium mining. It unanimously passed and a press release will go out today or Tuesday sometime. The medical community is weighing in on this issue as well [Kevin Weiland, comment, Madville Times, 2013.09.23].
Note the contrast here: Canadian corporation PowerTech and its South Dakota flunkies Mark Hollenbeck and Larry Mann stand to make a lot of money if we permit them to dig for uranium in the Black Hills. They're telling you to back their plan. Dr. Kevin Weiland could make more money, too, by seeing more patients made sick by uranium contamination. But he tells you don't do it! Whom do you trust?
I trust Kevin, of course! And he is absolutely right.
Uranium power production is wrong way to go. Thorium salt systems need to be developed. We have the Uranium systems because of Admiral Rickover wanting nuclear weapons from results of Nuclear power plant waste. That never was a good reason for abandoning Thorium research and it is even more irrelevant today...except that huge corporations are wedded to obsolete, dangerous and failure prone technology.
Douglas, remind me: is thorium easier, safer, and/or cheaper to obtain than uranium?
IF the dug for the uranium might be ok. But pumping water in to the ground through one well and pumping it out of an other well, hoping to flush it out necessarily flushes some out the other well and also flushes some down into the aquafer. Unless they can stop gravity from sucking water down to the aquafer, they are poluting the whole aquafer. That is the same uranium that makes people sick in fracking. Some day when your gas tank glows, you will understand if you still have a working brain, after all that uranium poisoning that you will have from your car buring uranium laden gas.
The wheel is fixed.
To flee or not to flee, that is the question for Black Hills residents like me.
Mr. G, if you flee to the deeper boonies I hope you will leave open the ability to publish from your warren and perhaps receive postal mail.
Thank you so much. I've just finished my documentary "Hot Water" which covers uranium mining in the Black Hills and the extraordinary levels of contamination left behind. And supposition that this can be done safely is delusional.
Grudz, I won't stop publishing till I die ... And maybe not even then.
I guess every place has its ups and downs.
Driving up Nevada Gulch to Terry Peak is a real downer now. Makes me conclude that THIS WHEEL IS FIXED.
Liz, I hope your doc will become available soon. I'd love to see it.
I have friends in the Slim Buttes area. We've taken 4-wheeler excursions to their favorite spots. They've pointed out many uranium exploration holes left from the 50s-60s. Companies brought in backhoes, dug holes, and tested for uranium. There wasn't enough to make mining feasible, so they walked off, leaving the open holes. My friends told me that they've had those holes tested for radiation emissions and got positive results from each one. They asked the government on all levels to close those holes up. Got no help.
I'm sure Liz knows more details about that than I do. In the meantime, the locals avoid those carcinogenic holes.
Deb
Are you talking about the Slim Butte's are on the Pine Ridge Reservagtion?
http://uranium.sdsmt.edu/
"Douglas, remind me: is thorium easier, safer, and/or cheaper to obtain than uranium?"
I don't know if Thorium systems are easier, but they are much simpler to make much safer. decay products are easier and safer to handle. Thorium is very available in several western states. The Thorium salts will just dump out of the reactor if system "overheats". There have only been a few tests of the systems, but government money went to the Uranium systems. I will have to dig back into the books I bought. Search Dakota Today for Thorium and a number of posts with relevant links should still turn up. Colleges and universities in this region should be pressing for research money for these plants. GE will never build them as long as they can milk their Uranium systems. The Thorium plants can be sized smaller or larger without the complexity of the Uranium plants.
Sorry Roger, I just noticed your question.
No. I'm talking about the Slim Buttes north of Newell and west of Bison.They are crossed by state highways 79 and 20.It's a state park. I don't know if similar land in Harding County is called Slim Buttes, but it's park land too. Bears a resemblance to the Badlands and much of the land on the Pine Ridge, but less grass.