Already nuclear reactors worldwide need 180 million pounds of uranium, almost twice as much as is produced currently, and the price of uranium has increased from $7 a pound in 2001 to $33 recently. This expanding nuclear program will impact the Intermountain West directly with the return of uranium mining, which ceased in the early 1990s.
Colorado mining resumed in 2004 and Utah is gearing up to do the same. The two states have issued 8,500 new mining claim permits and are the only states operating mills that refine the ore into uranium oxides called yellowcake.
Mining in the past has produced disastrous results for many underground uranium miners. Those who worked during the 1940s through the 1960s often developed lung cancer and nonmalignant respiratory diseases related to work exposures in the mines. Many of these workers and their survivors were later afforded compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
Health studies published during the early part of the nuclear era showed that radiation standards governing exposures were not stringent enough to adequately protect workers. During the early 1970s these standards were revised so that radiation exposure limits in underground mines were cut two-thirds.
However, in 1980, researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducted a review of more recent studies and found that the new standard, based upon cumulative career exposures, still posed substantial risk of developing lung cancer.
In 1987 NIOSH recommended that the Mine, Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) further reduce exposures to a level that would be one-fourth of the 1970 standard, but this proposal was never enacted, leaving new workers who enter the profession today at substantial risk.
On April 29, the Navajo Nation Council voted for a resolution to not resume uranium mining on Navajo lands because of the severe health impacts Navajo workers have already incurred and the feeling that uranium mining is still not safe enough.
Policymakers have not addressed the reduction in working levels proposed by NIOSH. There is no evidence that the Bush administration is suggesting that more stringent exposure standards should be required for underground uranium mining.
In addition, an appropriations bill will likely be considered this session by Congress to research the feasibility of the nuclear bunker buster bomb and to ready the Nevada nuclear test site for possible resumption of nuclear testing.
Utah downwinders and workers have experienced disastrous past impacts from nuclear testing.
Our concern is that health and safety concerns will again take a back seat.
---
Susan Dawson and Gary Madsen are members of the faculty in the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology at Utah State University.
