Va. Tech professor urges end to Virginia uranium mining moratorium
Robert Bodnar, a distinguished professor of geochemistry and geology at Virginia Tech, calls for an end to the 25-year-old moratorium on Virginia uranium mining in an Op Ed in the Altavista Journal today. The largest untapped uranium deposit in the United States is located in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. The uranium contained in the Coles Hill deposit could single-handedly fuel Virginia’s entire nuclear demand for more than 65 years and America’s for more than 2 years.
Dr. Bodnar draws attention to the urgent need to reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of uranium and points to the Coles Hill deposit as part of the solution. He points out that America already imports more than 90% of our nuclear fuel from foreign countries. Unless America boosts domestic production of uranium, our dependence will only deepen as the U.S. increases nuclear generation by more than 20% in the next 20 years.
The largest untapped uranium deposit in the U.S. is found on the pastoral Coles Hill farm.
Why the Virginia legislature should lift the moratorium on mining uranium
By ROBERT BODNAR
Altavista Journal
Wednesday, July 14, 2010In 1982, the Virginia legislature enacted a moratorium on uranium mining in the commonwealth. It is time for the legislature to revisit this issue and overturn the moratorium to allow uranium exploration and mining.
Today, over 50 percent of U.S. electricity is produced by coal-burning power plants, and in 2008, the nation’s coal-fired plants generated over 2.1 billion metric tons (approximately 4.7 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide emissions.
Some have argued that the increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are responsible for global warming, and this had led to calls to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For purposes of this discussion, it matters not whether carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere are responsible for global warming. What matters is that governments worldwide are or soon will be assessing “carbon taxes” on entities that exceed allowable carbon dioxide emission levels, and eventually coal-fired power plants may be required to capture their carbon dioxide emissions and sequester the carbon in geological reservoirs. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is expected to increase the cost of electricity by 20-50 percent, and the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that with CCS the cost of electricity would be $114 per megawatt-hour (compared to $63 per MWh without carbon capture). This translates to an increase in the cost of electricity of $0.04 per kilowatt hour or an increase of about $440 in the annual cost of electricity for the average household.
One solution to the increased carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants is to increase our dependence on the so-called “green energy” resources. Green energy resources include solar, wind and nuclear. Of the three, nuclear is the only one capable of producing sufficient and continuous amounts of electricity to meet base load needs.
The United States is experiencing a renewed interest in nuclear energy that is codified in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (House Resolution 6). In a speech at the Sandia National Laboratory announcing the signing of this act into law on August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush stated, “We will start building nuclear power plants again by the end of this decade.”
The recognition that nuclear energy must be an important component of our energy future has continued under the Obama administration, and in February 2010, President Barack Obama announced an $8.33 billion loan guarantee for two new reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia.
Many Americans are rightfully concerned that the U.S. now imports about 57 percent of its crude oil at a cost of about $190 billion in 2009. However, few Americans are aware of the fact that the U.S. produces only about 9 percent of the uranium needed to fuel its nuclear reactors, with over 90 percent coming from foreign sources. While much of our uranium comes from currently friendly countries, including Canada and Australia, we must remember that Venezuela was once a friendly country that provided a not insignificant portion of our oil imports. Venezuela quickly became an “unfriendly” under Hugo Chavez, and has threatened to stop oil exports to the U.S.
It is clear that the proportion of nuclear-generated electricity will expand over the next decades, and Virginia is well placed to be a leader in this “nuclear rebirth.” Virginia has a varied geology that includes rock types often associated with economic occurrences of uranium, including the largest unmined uranium deposit in the U.S. And Virginia contains abundant granitic rocks that have been shown previously to contain uranium. These rocks are similar to those that have been mined for uranium in France and elsewhere, but the Virginia locations have not yet been investigated in detail to determine if they contain sufficient amounts of uranium to mine economically. Minerals exploration is expensive, and companies often invest many millions of dollars drilling exploration holes, doing mapping, and conducting geological, geochemical and geophysical surveys to prove the economic viability of a deposit. While most minerals exploration companies are willing to risk this investment if there is the possibility that the resource can be mined if it is economic, few if any will invest such large amounts of money if there is no possibility to mine the resource after discovery.
Lifting the moratorium on uranium mining will encourage mining companies to explore for uranium in Virginia, and this could lead to Virginia becoming the “Saudi Arabia of nuclear fuel” and contribute significantly to Virginia’s and the nation’s economy and to national security by eliminating our foreign dependence on uranium.
Robert Bodnar, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor and C.C. Garvin Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, is an expert on the formation of mineral deposits and has supervised graduate student research at the Coles Hill uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County. He was recently recognized as Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist 2010 by Gov. Bob McDonnell and the Science Museum of Virginia.
