“Virginia is more than fully capable of managing this important endeavor in a responsible manner,” writes Paul Spaulding, former DEQ program manager and practicing environmental attorney at Cravens & Noll PC, in an Op/Ed in Virginia Business magazine.

Mr. Spaulding argues that Virginia has the opportunity to develop a robust, model regulatory program that protects the environment and public health and allows for the development of Virginia’s largest untapped energy resource, the Coles Hill uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County.

“Virginia is capable of winning on all fronts in its decision on uranium mining,” Spaulding writes, “but only if it ends the moratorium after developing the strictest and most conservative requirements for protecting human health and the environment.”

Mr. Spaulding is particularly hopeful that Virginia will seize this opportunity to develop a “a cutting-edge regulatory funding scheme that can serve as a national model.” Spaulding says that commitments already made by Virginia Uranium Inc., the company seeking to develop the Coles Hill deposit, are cause for optimism.

“Virginia Uranium Inc. says it is willing and able to pay financial assurance mechanisms and permitting fees to support the necessary regulatory protection and oversight of its operations,” Spaulding writes. “The goal is to ensure this funding, to be paid by the regulated entity to the regulators, is fully adequate and is not subject to change based on the ultimate production or marketability of the product.”

Read the full text of Mr. Spaulding’s Op/Ed here.

Jennetta says that scientists do have the right information to assuage public concerns about the risks posed by uranium mining and other industries. Unfortunately, scientists just don’t know how to contextualize those risks in a way the public can understand. So, turned off by dense scientific mumbo jumbo, the public disengages, leaving ideological environmentalists with zero scientific background to fill the void and dominate the public debate. Here’s the full text of Jennette’s column as published in Fuel Cycle Week:

I hate the public. And I hate engineers and scientists.

As a liberal arts type who has worked in the nuclear industry for almost 25 years as a communicator of one sort or another, I have often had dealings with both. That’s why my hatred is both well-grounded and completely justified.

So imagine my frustration last Thursday night as I sat at a National Research Council public meeting in Charlottesville on the organization’s useless report on uranium mining in Virginia. The questions and the answers were equally ignorant, albeit for different reasons.

See, the majority of the “members of the public” in attendance were actually activists. Whether they were anti-nuclear/anti-uranium, anti-mining or anti-development is beside the point. They were not there to learn anything but to exert pressure and score points by clouding the air with leading questions and clueless speculation.

For example, one woman pointedly asked about “sacrifice zones” around mines, insisting the phrase is widely used in “the literature”— though none of the panelists had ever heard it. Then there was the guy who spouted off about uranium’s daughter products and “actinides,” conveniently omitting/ignoring/not knowing that not all actinides are man-made.

Meanwhile, the panelists, who were clearly experts in their various fields, said things that were factually correct but contextually useless.

A perfect example is this gem, contributed by Dr. Keith Eshleman, from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, in response to a query about whether uranium mines in other parts of the world exist in an environment with as much precipitation in Virginia: “The [Coles Hill] deposit has no analogues.”

Sure, that’s factually correct, but not helpful. His colleague, Henry Schnell, a retired AREVA employee with over 20 years of uranium mining expertise, provided an equally factual but much more useful answer, noting that all mines are unique and operate in all kinds of conditions. Had he added that monsoon rains pummel Australia’s Ranger mine every year, the answer would have been a home run. By the way, the report itself contains no such information.

Here’s another unedifying comment: “Thorium has a 77,000-year half-life.” That came from by Dr. William Field of the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health, responding to a statement from Actinide Man.

That’s when I marched up to the microphone and asked Dr. Field about the health effects associated with exposure to said thorium. He replied that, without a context, which the report charter did not request, there was no way of knowing. To which I replied, “Exactly.”

Dr. Field also kept to himself the fact that thorium occurs naturally all over the earth, even in places where people have lived for thousands of years. And that the longer the half-life is, the less dangerous the radioisotope. But he did observe that early studies of health effects of uranium on miners were inconclusive, which was thoroughly meaningless and frustrating.

I mean, miners have been extracting high-grade uranium ore at the McArthur River underground mine for more than 10 years; surely the panel could have asked about all the data on radiation exposure and dose that Canadian regulators have been gathering when they visited the Athabasca Basin mine. At Rössing workers have operated a conventional low-grade uranium mine for almost 40 years. Couldn’t any member of the panel pick up the phone and call in for health and safety data?

Then there’s the word “risk.” You and I know that “risk” means something very specific when it comes to financing mines, producing uranium or buying nuclear fuel. And it means something else, which is just as specific, to actuaries, financiers, quants, modelers and assorted scientists.

But to the general public? It is not specific, but it is very scary— and the more the word is repeated, the scarier it sounds. For project opponents, the repetition of the word “risk” is like a silver bullet. Yet Paul Locke, a professor at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and panel chairman, dropped “the R word” so many times in his opening statement that I lost count.

To be fair, I thought the panel members did a much better job at verbally communicating the report’s findings than in writing them. While many of their answers to public questions were incomplete due to that infernal study charter, they nevertheless managed to provide far more context than the report, which is one hot mess.

And certainly much more than the accompanying press release, which was a PR setback for uranium mining in Virginia but a goldmine for lazy journalists and their editorial boards, as well as for obstructionists posing as “environmentalists.”

The non-profit electric co-op received the necessary zoning and permitting approvals from the Dendron Town Council and Surry County Board of Supervisors back in 2010; however, a court ruling last year voided those approvals, requiring the company to reapply.

The Surry County Planning Commission has scheduled the first of the public hearings for February 27th at the Surry County Government Center.

In 2008, ODEC proposed to build the $6 billion Cypress Creek Power Station to help fill the 7,200-megawatt electricity shortfall projected in Virginia by 2020. The 1,500-megawatt power plant would generate electricity for up to 375,000 Virginia homes and businesses.

The company plans to invest more than $1 billion in the latest pollution-cutting technologies to minimize the impacts on air and water quality. For example, the company has said it will install state-of-the-industry scrubbers to dramatically reduce air emissions.

Local supporters have touted the project as an opportunity for jobs and economic development in this largely rural and economically disadvantaged region. The project is expected to create more than 2,400 jobs during the 48-month construction phase and approximately 225 permanent jobs over the 40 to 60 year life of the plant.

In recent months, several major wind energy companies have scouted the area for potential sites to build large-scale wind farms. But, now county officials are considering a law that would effectively ban such development.

Floyd County is unique in Virginia as one of the only localities that does not have established rules for zoning any kind of development, commercial or residential. Typically those decisions are left up to landowners to make for themselves. However, the prospect of building wind turbines in the predominantly rural county has touched off a debate among officials and residents.

Last year, neighboring Roanoke County passed an ordinance allowing the development of commercial-scale wind farms in the county while placing restrictions on the turbines’ height, noise and proximity to residential communities. Wind company Invenergy has proposed building a 19-turbine wind farm on Poor Mountain in Roanoke County, which the company says will produce enough electricity to power more than 10,000 homes in the region.

Now the Floyd County Board of Supervisors is considering an ordinance of its own, but one that would impose much more severe – even prohibitive -  restrictions on the height of the turbines. The so-called ridgeline protection ordinance would effectively prevent the construction of wind turbines on ridge tops and adjacent valleys, the locations most suitable for capturing wind energy.

Residents gathered at Floyd County High School last night to debate the issue, with some expressing support for wind development and others backing the ordinance to block the development. Supporters argued that private property owners should be able to develop their land as they wish, and touted the economic and environmental benefits of renewable wind energy. Opponents of wind energy raised concerns about noise pollution and the obstruction of ridge top viewscapes.

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors will meet on February 14th to deliberate over the proposed ridgeline protection ordinance.

In the letter, the Senators argued that opening up the Atlantic coast to drilling would “attract well-paying jobs and hold significant promise for boosting needed domestic energy production.”

Read the Senator’s letter here.

After initially including Virginia in the Interior Department’s 2012-2017 offshore oil and gas leasing program, in late 2011 the Obama Administration reversed course and imposed a 7-year moratorium on Atlantic coast drilling.

Beyond the potential to create thousands of jobs and produce a large amount of domestic energy, Warner and Webb also emphasized the significant royalties the federal and state governments stand to gain. These royalties could serve as a “future source of funding for important state priorities such as transportation, land and water conservation and alternative energy development,” they said.

While the Senators’ letter will put a spotlight on Virginia’s offshore resources, it is unlikely to persuade the Obama administration to change course again. Interior’s 5-year plan is due to be finalized this summer, and the administration appears to be sticking to its guns.

With draft regulations and a site-specific analysis of the Coles Hill site in hand prior to the 2013 session of the General Assembly, the Governor said he would like to see legislators decide next year whether to lift Virginia’s moratorium on uranium mining.

Read the Governor’s announcement and directive to state agencies.

The working group will hold at least three public meetings throughout the year to report on its progress and hear input from the public.

The Coles Hill uranium deposit is the largest untapped deposit in the U.S., with enough uranium to fuel Virginia’s nuclear reactors for nearly 75 years. A recent socioeconomic study by the Virginia Coal & Energy Commission said the proposed project could yield more than 1,000 new jobs, $5 billion in economic benefits and more than $1oo million in state and local tax revenue.

A separate study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) determined that although the industry posed environmental risks in its early days, the experience of Canada, Australia and the western states over the last 3o years has demonstrated that uranium mining can be been done safely and with minimal impacts to the environment. The working group will likely draw from many of the international regulatory standards and industry best practices identified by the NAS study.

“The study shows that major technological and regulatory advances over the past 30 years have dramatically improved the environmental and public health performance of the uranium mining and milling industry,” said Virginia Uranium, Inc. project manager, Patrick Wales.

Virginia Uranium is seeking to develop the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States located in Pittsylvania County. A 30-year-old moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia requires state agencies to develop a regulatory and permitting program for the industry before development can proceed. The issue is expected to be a major issue in the General Assembly this year.

VEIA Chairman Ray Ganthner responded to the study saying, “by requiring the adoption of the best practices [identified in the study] and applying the lessons from the industry’s past, the VEIA believes Virginia is fully capable of developing our uranium resources in a safe and environmentally responsible way.”

The NAS study identified many of the best industry practices and regulatory requirements adopted over the last 30 years to address most of the environmental issues associated with the industry. The management of tailings, the non-uranium material leftover from the milling process, has been a particular environmental concern for residents in the surrounding area.

Addressing the issue of tailings management head-on, the NAS concluded that “to date, modern tailings disposal cells have been effective at preventing groundwater contamination.” The report went on to say that “significant improvements have been made to tailings management practices to isolate mine waste from the environment, and below-grade disposal practices have been developed specifically to address concerns regarding tailing dam failures.”

“If uranium mining, processing, and reclamation are designed, constructed, operated, and monitored according to modern international best practices,” the report predicted that “near- to moderate-term environmental effects specific to uranium mining and processing should be substantially reduced.”

The NAS went on to explain that modern tailings management sites are designed to withstand severe weather events such as hurricanes and earthquakes, and are have been successful at preventing contamination of air and water in communities surrounding operations. The study acknowledged numerous other improvements by the industry in recent decades in the areas of worker safety and groundwater protection.

The NAS study particularly focused on industry practices and regulatory models from Canada, where uranium mining and milling has occurred for more than 50 years with a fairly exemplary record for environmental performance. The study pointed to the McLean Lake and Rabbit Lake operations as good examples of how rigorous government oversight and advanced technologies have been effective at protecting water quality and other environmental factors.

The study concluded that “best practices, if properly implemented in association with rigorous monitoring, should address or allow the site operator to take action to mitigate the majority of short-term environmental effects from routine uranium-specific mining and processing activities.”

Virginia Uranium Project Manager Patrick Wales said the company is committed to adopting “the best practices and regulatory requirements identified by the NAS as essential to protecting the environment and public health.”

The NAS study also emphasized that Virginia Uranium would have to navigate a lengthy regulatory process, involving intensive review by multiple regulatory agencies, before a single shovel would enter the ground at the Coles Hill site. If the moratorium is lifted in 2012, the NAS said, operation of a mine would not take place for another 5 to 9 years.

Other studies focusing on the socioeconomic aspect of uranium mining in Virginia by the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission and the Research Triangle Institute have highlighted the significant economic impact of the proposed Coles Hill project, including more than 1,000 jobs and $135 million for Virginia’s economy each year.

As we approach the end of 2011, the debate concerning uranium mining in Virginia is reaching a crescendo as those in favor and those opposed anticipate that a bill to overturn the existing moratorium on uranium mining will be introduced into the Virginia General Assembly in 2012. While this is an important issue, especially to those who live in Southside Virginia and in other parts of the commonwealth that might host uranium deposits, the implications extend far beyond the question of whether or not to exploit the largest unmined uranium deposit in the United States.

The broader and more important question concerns the future that we, as residents of the commonwealth and citizens of the United States, want to forge for our children and their children and grandchildren. America is in decline because we have become dependent on others to provide all of the resources and gadgets that we have become accustomed to, and which lead to the high standard of living and quality of life that Americans enjoy.

The United States became a great nation because for the first two centuries of our existence we were mostly self-sufficient in terms of energy and raw materials needed for manufacturing. We produced tangible goods that not only provided jobs to Americans, but also provided income as those goods were sold at home and abroad. Today, we produce little in the way of tangible goods in this country, as iron and steel, furniture, textiles, electronics, and most other types of manufacturing activities have moved to other countries.

This loss of domestic productivity comes at a great cost. In 2009, the United States spent $309 billion to import oil, enough to hire all of the 14 million unemployed at an annual salary of $22,000. Much of this oil was imported from countries that are openly or covertly working toward the our destruction.

Many of those who oppose uranium mining claim that cheaper and higher-grade sources of uranium are available from stable overseas producers. This is true to some extent, but many of the people who suggest that we should import this valuable energy resource are the same people who have bumper stickers on their cars that read “Buy Local.” Perhaps they mean that we should buy local if it benefits them, or at least doesn’t inconvenience them or expose them to risks.

Many of those who oppose uranium mining oppose any and all types of mining or infrastructure development. Some of these people will drive their gasoline-powered cars to town hall meetings to oppose offshore drilling for oil, or use their computers that contain copper and gold and many other metals to send out emails opposing development of copper mines. Some go to rallies to oppose building nuclear power plants and then return to their air-conditioned homes and watch TVs that are powered by electricity generated by a nuclear reactor.

There are many reasons to support the mining of uranium in Virginia, if it can be shown through rigorous scientific studies that it can be done with minimal and acceptable risk to the environment and to human health. Most Americans enjoy the many benefits that mining and other types of resource extraction provide, and it is not morally or ethically acceptable for Americans to expect others to face potential risks and inconveniences associated with producing those resources if we are not also prepared to accept some of the risks ourselves.

Let us stop being a country of elitist hypocrites who oppose anything that might inconvenience us while at the same time demanding the many benefits that resource extraction and manufacturing provide.

I grew up listening to parents, grandparents, and friends who lived through both world wars and the Great Depression, and the important lesson learned was the shared sense of responsibility that this generation espoused: the willingness to sacrifice for the common good.

That sense of shared responsibility is lost today in America, and I fear that the bright future that my parents and their parents built for my generation through their sacrifices will not be there for my children and their children and grandchildren.

Saying “yes” to mining and producing a valuable non-carbon-dioxide generating energy resource within the commonwealth can and should be the first step toward re-establishing our energy independence and helping to build a brighter future.

The study showed that Virginia and Southside would benefit economically from the Coles Hill project while having negligible impacts on the environment, tourism and agriculture industries, and the health of community residents.

The study found that the proposed Coles Hill uranium mining project in Pittsylvania County would produce over 1,000 jobs annually, with more than half in the economically distressed Southside region. Over the 35-year life of the operation, the Coles Hill project will generate almost $5 billion in revenue for Virginia companies and more than $112 million in state and local tax revenue, according to the study.

Of the approximately 325 workers that would be hired directly by the mining company Virginia Uranium Inc., 97 percent would be hired from the Southside region, the study said.

Click here to read the full study.

“Uranium mining and milling represents a clear path toward the jobs and economic opportunities Southside’s residents and businesses so desperately need,” said Virginia Energy Independence Alliance Chairman Ray Ganthner.

In a region that has been hit hard with factory closings and huge job layoffs this report offers hope for Southside residents for a brighter economic future with long-term job opportunities and new revenues for local companies.

“The study clearly demonstrates the enormous positive economic impact our project will have on businesses, families and communities throughout the Southside region and validates what our company has been all about from the very beginning,” said Virginia Uranium, Inc. project manager Patrick Wales.

The study also found that the local agriculture and tourism industries would be unaffected by the project.

“This study should reassure farmers, educators and the entire business community they can coexist safely and thrive together with uranium mining,” said Wales.

Another study by the National Academy of Sciences on the public health and safety impacts of mining is due to be released within days.

“While we are awaiting the results of the National Academy of Sciences study of environmental and public health and safety considerations, this study illustrates the enormous economic benefits Virginia can look forward to if the Coles Hill project comes to fruition,” said VEIA Chairman Ray Ganthner.

The two reactors have been shut down since the August 23rd 5.8 magnitude earthquake tripped them offline.

The company has begun the restart of unit 1 which will be at full power by midweek. Dominion will restart unit 2 next week.

Eric Leeds, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation said, “The earthquake shook the reactors more strongly than the plant’s design anticipated, so Dominion had to prove to us that the quake caused no functional damage to the reactors’ safety systems… We’re satisfied the plant meets our requirements to restart safely.”

The North Anna Power Station produces power for approximately 450,000 homes. Overall, Dominion serves 2.3 million customers in Virginia.

Governor Bob McDonnell commented on the restart saying, “Dominion and the NRC have ensured that every possible precaution was taken prior to returning the facility to normal operations.”

Dominion has been purchasing replacement power from other sources since the August shutdown and estimates the cost to be as much as $1 million to $2 million a day. The company has spent over $21 million for post-earthquake inspections, tests and analyses to ensure the plant is safe to restart.

While many across the state are glad to see the reactors restarted Jerry Rosenthal of People’s Alliance for Clean Energy is frustrated the plant was allowed to restart without being upgraded to sustain higher magnitude earthquakes. Rosenthal said, “The bottom line is it’s money. They are putting profits in front of safety.”

The company said it will take about four days to get unit 1 from a cold shutdown to being online and producing electricity for the grid.