Mopping up uranium's mess
States push to clean up mine and mill sites
News - July 09, 2010 by Nathan Rice
When Sharyn Cunningham moved to Cañon City, Colorado in 1994, no one told her the groundwater was contaminated - not her real estate agent, not the county health department, not state regulators. For eight years, she and her family unknowingly used a well tainted with uranium and molybdenum from the Cotter Corporation uranium mill a mile away, a Superfund site since 1984. The mill, the only one in the state, shut down in 1989, then reopened from 2004 to 2006; now, Cotter wants to once again start operations at the site. Despite millions spent on remediation, contamination persists today.
As co-chair of Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste, Cunningham has lobbied for cleanup of her community's groundwater for the last eight years. This spring, the Colorado legislature finally heard the call. It passed the Uranium Processing Accountability Act, which mandates cleanup before Cotter can resume processing uranium ore, which it plans to do by 2014. Gov. Bill Ritter signed the bill into law on June 9.
"When we showed (legislators) the facts of all the contamination here and how long Cotter has dragged their feet cleaning stuff up," Cunningham says, "they saw there's no excuse for it. "
Resounding bipartisan support for the bill in the state house (60-3) and senate (24-9) suggests an urgency to mop up the old hot mess before a new wave of uranium production breaks ground.
Similar public sentiment has other Western states pushing back as federal support for nuclear energy propels an ensuing uranium boom. The toxic legacy of the last boom persists throughout the West as abandoned mines and tailings piles continue to contaminate groundwater and health problems plague nearby communities. Initiatives like the Colorado uranium bill and a grassroots-led uranium cleanup plan in New Mexico highlight mounting frustration at the fallout from lax regulation and lagging remediation efforts.
The new Colorado law requires Cotter to restore polluted groundwater to safe levels before restarting operations. This creates an incentive that supporters hope will motivate cleanup more promptly than current government oversight has. The bill also mandates public notification about contaminated groundwater by mill operators, improved public participation in bonding decisions, and updated licensing for mills that process alternate feeds (waste material containing low levels of uranium, such as mine tailings).
Cotter's cleanup of air, soil, and water contamination, regulated by Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and overseen by EPA, has been ongoing for 30 years. The mill, owned by General Atomics, has accrued 99 regulatory violations in the last decade. Its plans for expansion spurred campaigns by the Cañon City citizens group and Environment Colorado for legislation to accelerate the clean-up, helping lead to the new law.
Remediation of past uranium mill sites in Colorado has cost taxpayers $950 million, according to the U.S. Department of Energy -- another issue addressed by the bill, which calls for more public involvement in bonding decisions. Cotter's current bond is $18 million; the state health department has estimated twice that amount to remedy contamination at the site. In response to the bill, Cotter has stated that the cost of cleanup requirements would halt its plans to reopen the mill. Yet actually starting up the aging mill would cost Cotter at least $200 million, suggesting a wide gap between what the company is willing to invest in cleanup versus operation. Cotter vice-president John Hamrick declined further comment.
Colorado's law also applies to new mills like the proposed Piñon Ridge uranium mill in Western Colorado's Paradox Valley, but will not affect the application process now underway. Piñon Ridge would be the first new uranium mill built in the U.S. in 25 years. Public comments on the $12 million bond proposed in the application -- an amount called insufficient by mill opponents -- are being reviewed by the state. Under the new law, a similar public process will also be required annually to review (and potentially increase) the bond.
Ripple effects of the Colorado law could reach beyond state lines. In New Mexico, a General Atomics subsidiary plans to reopen a uranium mine on Mount Taylor, the designated ore source for the Cotter Mill. Without that mill in operation, however, the Mount Taylor mine could stall.
Meanwhile, a new five-year plan to remediate old uranium sites in the Grants Mineral District in northwest New Mexico is underway. The plan focuses on assessing drinking water pollution, removing contaminated residential structures and cleaning up five mill sites and over 100 abandoned mines. Most sites were left by long-defunct companies before any regulations were in place, leaving cleanup to the government. Numerous new mine and mill proposals in the state spurred the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a coalition of grassroots groups, to push state and federal agencies to get rid of old contamination before uranium booms again.
In early 2009, New Mexico legislators got on board and went to Washington, D.C., to rally federal support for a uranium cleanup plan similar to the 2008 Navajo Nation plan that pioneered the interagency model. That April, the Environmental Protection Agency began coordinating a diverse coalition of federal, state, and tribal agencies and their ongoing efforts to reclaim abandoned uranium mines and other contaminated sites. The final draft of the plan is scheduled for late summer.
New Mexico saw further progress towards cleanup in May, when the Bureau of Land Management awarded almost $1 million to state regulators for inventory of hazardous uranium mines and reclamation of the Poison Canyon mines near Grants, among others. The federal government has never regulated operating mines, leaving that work to state agencies.
"We are really trying to respond to 50 to 60 years of neglect and disinterest," says Chris Shuey, health scientist with the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque. "It's a slow process." The New Mexico five-year cleanup plan doesn't have the teeth of the new Colorado law. It's a start, says Shuey, but it does not recommend any new funding and lacks a coherent strategy for public involvement.
Back in Cañon City, Sharyn Cunningham wonders if the new law will speed Cotter's multi-decade cleanup. State regulators recently rejected the company's plan to remediate contaminated water being discharged from another of its operations, a uranium mine near the city of Golden. The company agreed to begin treating the water in July. After 16 years of waiting, Cunningham seems optimistic that her town will see progress too.
"After this bill passed, it felt like the sun was brighter here," she says. "Like there's hope."
Nathan Rice is a freelance writer in Boulder, Colo.
read more... www.hcn.org/articles/mopping-up-uraniums-mess/article_view
Hey, Come Back and Clean This Up
By Dave Rice | Published Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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General Atomics, the San Diego manufacturer of the Predator attack drone, has recently come under fire in Colorado, where its wholly owned company the Cotter Corporation operates a uranium mill. The facility produces yellowcake, a concentrated powder suitable for nuclear fuel and weapons. The mill has operated on and off since 1958, with the most recent operations concluding in 2006. Since then, the company claims to have spent $10 million to $15 million on cleanup efforts, but in 2008, Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment issued a notice of violation to Cotter, claiming the company had contaminated local groundwater.
General Atomics is privately held by Linden and Neal Blue of Del Mar. The brothers are originally from Colorado. After graduating from Yale, they tried their hand at banana farming in Nicaragua, commercial real estate development in Denver, ranching throughout the Midwest, local politics (Linden was elected and served a term on Denver’s city council), and eventually oil and gas mining. In 1986, they acquired control of San Diego–based General Atomics, a company originally created as a division of General Dynamics in 1955 for the purpose of researching peaceful uses of atomic power. In 1991 the brothers acquired and merged into their operation a floundering drone company, taking its product as the basis for the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. Linden said at the time that his interest in developing the Predator was largely linked to a desire to help friends in Nicaragua battle Sandinista communist forces.
In addition to the Cotter Corporation, General Atomics is affiliated with at least four other companies — based in Texas, Australia, and Germany — that mine, mill, or otherwise engage in the uranium business. The Texas-based company owns the largest-known uranium deposit in the United States, Mt. Taylor mine in New Mexico.
At the Cotter mill, in Cañon City, ore is crushed and ground, then subjected to leaching chemicals. The extracted uranium, the yellowcake, is usually brown or black — its name derives from the color and texture produced by early milling methods. Uranium typically makes up about 1 percent of the ore. What’s left after milling are the leaching chemicals and the radioactive tailings, which Cotter kept for decades in a tailings pond on its 2600-acre site, covered with water to contain radioactive dust.
Years before General Atomics bought the Cotter Corporation, seepage from the tailings pond contaminated the groundwater of a semirural neighborhood about a mile and a half from the mill. In 1984, the mill and the plume of contaminated groundwater were designated a Superfund site. The company built a new tailings pond with a lining to prevent leakage.
However, in 2007, a new leak was detected, and in July 2008, the state of Colorado told Cotter to fix the problem. A radioactive plume was under the nearby Shadow Hills Golf Course and was spreading toward Cañon City and the Arkansas River.
In the 26 years since the Cotter mill and the plume were designated a Superfund site, Cotter still hasn’t cleaned up the contamination. When Cotter officials announced plans in 2009 to reopen the mill in order to process ore from the New Mexico mine, Cañon City’s state representatives took action. In February they introduced House Bill 1348, which requires uranium mills and mines wishing to expand operations in the state to remediate violations before proceeding. The bill also requires operators to submit an annual status report to owners of wells within one mile of groundwater contamination, and it strengthens bonding requirements to make sure that operators can clean up contamination.
Clean up your old mess before you make a new one — sounds fair enough, right? Not in the eyes of the industry. In response to the proposed legislation, Cotter said it would force the company to abandon its plans to reopen the Cañon City mill.
That Cotter thinks compliance would be so costly speaks volumes, especially given the current political climate surrounding nuclear power. President Obama is a fan of what he calls “clean nuclear” technology, saying in this year’s State of the Union address that we need to build “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.”
He’s put taxpayers’ money where his mouth is too. Despite a history of cost overruns in American nuclear plant construction, Obama guaranteed Georgia Power an $8 billion loan to construct two new reactors at an existing facility in Burke, Georgia.
SoCal Edison, majority stakeholder in the San Onofre nuclear plant at the northern end of San Diego County, has announced no plans to expand or extend the life of its facility, currently slated to go offline in 2022. But several other projects are in the works around the country, and Obama’s 2011 budget calls for doubling the amount of nuclear loan guarantees to $36 billion.
Worldwide there are 53 new plants under construction, 142 approved and waiting for construction to begin, and 327 more in the planning stages. The U.S. is a significant uranium exporter. Average uranium prices have risen from $7.92 per pound in 2001 to around $40.75 today. Despite the coming increase in demand for nuclear fuel, Cotter said that the cost to clean up the damage the company has caused could render its operation infeasible.
In late April, Colorado’s legislature passed HB 1348, and last week the bill was signed into law. Asked whether the mill will reopen to process the New Mexico ore, Cotter vice president John Hamrick “declined Tuesday to comment on whether that project is indeed dead,” the Denver Post reported on June 9, 2010.
But Colorado activist Sharyn Cunningham believes the contamination can be cleaned up and the mill reopened. According to an April 29, 2010 story in the Pueblo Chieftain, “Cunningham said she’s confident that Cotter’s parent company, General Atomics, has the means to conduct the necessary cleanup.”
Governor Bill Ritter Signs Historic Uranium Legislation
House Bill 1348 Strengthens Uranium Oversight
CANON CITY, Colo. -- Canon City citizens gathered along the banks of the Arkansas River Tuesday afternoon to watch Gov. Bill Ritter sign the Uranium Processing Accountability Act.
The legislation requires uranium mills to cleanup existing toxic pollution before new state permits or restructuring of operations are processed.
The law also requires operators to inform residents of any threats to water if residents have wells in close proximity to known groundwater contamination.
“I think this bill does a phenomenal job of addressing issues you the community have a very keen sense of,” stated Gov. Ritter.
The Canon City Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste (CCAT) has been fighting for this kind of legislation for decades. Sharyn Cunningham, coordinator of CCAT, said it’s a relief to have it finalized.
According to Gov. Ritter, taxpayers have spent $1 billion and counting cleaning up groundwater contamination and radioactive pollution from uranium mills in Colorado alone.
NOREEN: Cañon City aglow over legislation
March 21, 2010 7:40 AM
THE GAZETTE
It won’t be long before the cherry blossoms burst out in Cañon City, adding a special glow to the place.
There’s another kind of glow the town’s residents have been trying to get rid of for years — the radioactive aura emanating from the Cotter Corp.'ss highly polluted property. The town and Fremont County are mostly unified in trying to keep the Cotter genie in the bottle by stopping it from expanding its operation at a site designated as a Superfund location by the Environmental Protection Agency long ago.
House Bill 1348, which soon will reach the floor of the Colorado House, is designed to do that. It has bipartisan support, but the issue is about more than just a badly placed nuclear waste pit in Cañon City.
As the home of increasingly valuable uranium deposits, Colorado is bound to play a role when nuclear power makes a comeback. Cotter’s safety record is dismal and the Cañon City-based Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste CCAT) succeeded in blocking shipments of nuclear waste from New Jersey.
CCAT is a driving force behind the legislation, but it doesn’t expect to shut down the nuclear power industry.
“Colorado historically has led the way in this industry, and we need to continue to do that,” said Jeri Fry, CCAT co-chair. Fry says he thinks it’s inevitable nuclear power will bounce back, “but it needs to happen smart.”
That means tracking all of the costs. Fry said the nuclear power debate often is focused on how to dispose of nuclear waste, ignoring the “front-end” costs linked to uranium milling.
“The front-end cost is never what they talk about,” she said. “We are the front end. It’s in my backyard.”
After the Three-Mile Island accident, U.S. demand for yellowcake, the raw material used to fuel nuclear power plants, dropped as some plants closed and no new plants were built. To survive, Cotter’s Cañon City operation looked for other things to do, including getting into the nuclear waste disposal business.
By 2006, the Cotter plant stopped making yellowcake entirely. In the meantime Cotter fought protracted battle over trying to move radioactive waste from Maywood, N.J. The company saw nuclear waste disposal as a natural side business — after all, some waste from the Manhattan Project had found its way to Cañon City many years before.
Cotter hopes to reopen the uranium mill in 2014, accepting ore from the Mount Taylor uranium mine in New Mexico. Fry and her allies are hoping to at least delay that move by forcing Cotter to clean up first.
A Fremont County employee, Fry acknowledged that her efforts to rein in Cotter “has turned into a lifestyle.”
CCAT has received awards for its activism, but more importantly, it has established credibility with lawmakers who appear poised to remove that unwanted glow.
Link to article: www.ncbr.com/article.asp
NCBR Article
Uranium milling bill aims to protect groundwater
By Steve Porter
April 23, 2010 --
Colorado legislators are poised to require uranium milling operations are cleaned up before operators are allowed to expand their activities.
And while the new law likely would not affect a proposed uranium mine in Weld County, its goal is to protect the state's groundwater from a reviving domestic nuclear industry -and prevent Colorado taxpayers from paying for inadequate cleanup.
House Bill 1348 was introduced by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo, and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins. Bacon said the bill anticipates a possible 2014 reopening of Englewood-based Cotter Corp.'s Canon City uranium mill, one of only four in the nation.
"It probably only affects Cotter at this point," Bacon said of the bill's Colorado impact.
But a company based in Ontario, Canada, Energy Fuels, is also working to get a permit from the state to open a proposed uranium mill in western Montrose County. The company said it hopes to begin milling at the Pinon Ridge site in late 2011 or 2012. If approved, it would be the first new mill in the United States in 35 years.
Mills process ore dug from mines, breaking up and removing the target mineral from the material containing it. The in-situ process, proposed for use in a uranium mining operation west of Nunn, injects a solution into a hole in the ground that loosens the uranium and brings it to the surface.
"We don't mill," said Richard Clement, president and CEO of Vancouver-based Powertech Corp., which is planning the Weld County operation. "We run it through a water treatment plant."
Clement said Powertech has closely studied HB-1348 and doesn't see any impact from the bill, which is expected to pass a Senate vote soon. The bill sailed through the House, finding bipartisan support in a 62-2 vote.
"We don't believe there's any (impact)," Clement said. "We've gone through the language of the bill pretty thoroughly to make sure there's no conflict with other bills connected to in-situ uranium mining."
Bill a 'poison pill'
Energy Fuels President George Glasier said he doesn't expect HB-1348 to affect the operation of Pinon Ridge, which is expected to eventually process up to 1,000 pounds of uranium ore daily.
But Cotter spokesman John Hamrick said in hearings on the bill that it was a "poison pill" that would force Cotter out of business and hamstring an industry that's just starting to make a comeback. Nuclear power fell out of public favor after a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania in 1979, which was followed in 1986 by a catastrophic radiation release at Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union.
While no new U.S. nuclear power facilities have been built since Three Mile Island, many plants have been constructed around the world and the Obama administration has signaled its support for nuclear energy as a way to cut greenhouse gases and reduce reliance on foreign oil imports.
Matthew Garrington, spokesman for Environment Colorado, said HB-1348 is an insurance policy as the nuclear power industry begins to rev up again.
"House Bill 1348 is about enforcement," he said. "Unfortunately, we have a system that rewards failure and allows uranium mills to expand despite having multiple toxic emission issues."
Garrington noted that Cotter's Canon City mine, closed since 2005, has had 99 violations for polluting the environment in the last decade. "If Cotter is the example of what this business means for the uranium industry, we're in trouble," he said.
It's estimated that taxpayers have spent nearly $1 billion in cleanups of Colorado uranium mines with several still under way.
Carrot-and-stick
Garrington said current state law on uranium cleanup has been weak and "letting polluters off the hook" for their responsibilities.
"Under (HB-1348), mills could not accept ore from new sources or expand unless they clean up," he said. "I look at it as a carrot-and-a-stick. If you want to do business in Colorado, great. But clean up what you already have first."
The bill has new requirements for licensing only applicants who are not in violation of any laws. It also requires detailed plans for transportation, storage, handling, processing and disposing of radioactive material. The bill further requires annual reports from processors that have caused a release that exceeds groundwater standards, and annual reports on their financial condition to make sure they have enough money to clean up their sites.
Bacon said that's critical as the state prepares for more uranium mining and processing. "Should the groundwater become contaminated, it would force them to pay for the cleanup so it doesn't become an (EPA) Superfund site," he said.
As recently as earlier this month, a defunct uranium mine in Jefferson County owned by Cotter Corp. was found to be contaminating a stream that empties into Ralston Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to Denver and Arvada.
Bacon acknowledged the bill isn't a magic bullet for protecting the state's groundwater. "There are very few guarantees in this life, but it's an attempt to make things safer and not continue the pollution of the groundwater," he said.
Seeking to alter opaque, unresponsive corporate culture
Sharyn Cunningham and her family bought five acres in Cañon City’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1994, and for eight years they used a drinking water well contaminated by the nearby Cotter uranium mill.
They only discovered the toxic minerals in their drinking water after Cotter was purchased in 2000 by General Atomics – makers of Predator drones and a major player in the nation’s nuclear industry – and promptly announced plans to begin storing radioactive waste from an EPA Superfund site in New Jersey.
Cunningham says she and her family suffered various illnesses resulting from the contamination of their well but decided not to sue, even as other area residents fought Cotter in a pair of class-action lawsuits. She refuses to discuss her health problems because she wants to focus on legislatively changing Cotter’s corporate culture.
Because Cunningham said the real estate agent and seller of her property did not reveal the well’s contamination – and because health officials and Cotter were not compelled to notify them – she is now putting her considerable energy into a bill currently working its way through the state House.
Choosing a new law over a big settlement
HB 1348 (pdf), scheduled for a second reading in the House today, would require Cotter and other operators of uranium processing facilities to send an annual letter notifying residents with water wells near groundwater contamination.
Spending more than a decade in court for an undisclosed settlement would pale in comparison to lawmakers requiring that letter, Cunningham insists, again declining to address her own health concerns.
“I really don’t want to go into all of that because mainly we want this letter. We do not want people exposed to something without their knowledge,” Cunningham said in a recent phone interview.
Juries found for the plaintiffs in two separate class-action lawsuits dating back to the 1990s, but the awards were kept confidential as part of the settlements.
“People may have been compensated – we don’t’ know to what degree because all of that was sealed – but it didn’t change Cotter’s corporate behavior and it didn’t cause them to use expensive new technology to clean it up quickly, and that is why we focused on the cleanup part of the bill,” Cunningham said.
The bipartisan bill, sponsored in the House by Rep. Buffie McFadyen (D-Pueblo West) and in the Senate by Sen. Ken Kester (R-Las Animas), would also require uranium mill operators to clean up existing problems before applying for expansion permits; allow more public input during the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s annual cleanup reviews and require state licensing when companies accept “alternate feed,” or toxic waste from outside industrial or medical sources.
Cotter has revealed plans to refurbish the Cotter Mill, located about a mile from Lincoln Park, where approximately 6,000 people live between Cañon City and the Arkansas River in unincorporated Fremont County. The company hopes to resume full operations in 2014, processing uranium ore from mines in New Mexico.
Amory Quinn of General Atomics’ Uranium Resources Group did not return a phone call requesting comment for this story.
Cotter has a long legacy of contamination violations in the area, dating back to the state’s first big uranium boom in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War and dawn of the atomic age.
The new nuclear age
Federal lawmakers, including Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, have introduced legislation to spark a nuclear renaissance as part of a comprehensive energy strategy to reduce dependence on foreign fuel and scale back greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal and natural gas. Uranium mining claims and milling and processing proposals in Colorado are on the rise as a result.
At a Montrose County hearing last summer on a proposed mill near the Utah border, a Cotter official said technology has improved so much that it’s apples to oranges to compare the toxic legacy of the past to industry practices today.
“They may be asking for the sins of the fathers to be forgiven, but that doesn’t mean that problems at the [Cañon City] facility don’t persist,” Environment Colorado’s Matthew Garrington said.
Cunningham says impoundment ponds for storing toxic waste that were unlined in the 50s are now lined, but that the only real change in recent years is the EPA now prohibits the ponds from being more than 40 acres compared to the 150-acre pond Cotter built in 1979 and now leaks.
In 2002, Cunningham helped form Coloradans Citizen Against ToxicWaste, a nonprofit advocacy group that successfully got the state to reject Cotter’s bid to store the radioactive waste from New Jersey at the Cañon City mill.
“If you look at the amount of money that our government subsidizes this [nuclear] industry and the amount of money that’s been spent cleaning up these sites … and if you look at the costs versus the benefit – and nobody’s doing that in an honest way – the nuclear renaissance is going to be very questionable as to how beneficial it will be,” Cunningham said.
Nuclear Industry Spent Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Over the Last Decade to Sell Public, Congress on New Reactors, New Investigation Finds
The nuclear industry claims that there is increased public support for nuclear power as a solution to climate change, and some members of Congress are arguing that massive incentives for new nuclear reactors are critical to passing a climate and energy bill. Today, the Obama administration is expected to propose tripling the amount of loan guarantees to the industry to $54 billion and there are proposals in Congress to add billions more through a new "clean" energy fund and other incentives to support nuclear power expansion.
Where did all this support for new nuclear reactors come from? Let's follow the money.
Growing support for new nuclear power comes after an extensive decade-long campaign in which companies and unions related to the industry have spent more than $650 million on lobbying and campaign contributions from 1999 through 2008, according to a new analysis by former Los Angeles Times reporter Judy Pasternak, now with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. In the first three quarters of 2009 alone, the nuclear energy industry spent $84 million lobbying Congress.
read more... www.ucsusa.org/news/media_alerts/nuclear-industry-spent-millions-to-sell-congress-on-new-reactors-0343.html
Proponents back legislation requiring radioactive site clean-up
By Diana Armstrong
Citizen staff writer
January 28th, 2010
CLEAN WATER, CLEAN IMAGE – Royal Gorge Anglers owner Bill Edrington addresses the crowd gathered at the Fremont County Courthouse Tuesday. Edrington said his business in Canon City is just one of the many businesses that are dependent on keeping the river, and its image, clean. For story, click on “News” button at left. (Citizen staff photo by Diana Armstrong)
A new state legislation campaign that prevents uranium processing facilities from starting new milling operations while still cleaning up past contamination sites was announced by its proponents outside of the Fremont County Commissioners Office Tuesday, Jan. 26.
The proposed Uranium Processing Accountability Act requires operators to comply with all cleanup orders before new applications are processed.
Rep. Buffie McFadyen (D-Pueblo West) and Senators Ken Kester (R-Las Animas) and Bob Bacon (D-Fort Collins) are sponsoring the state legislation, which is expected to be introduced in the house later this month.
Under the new legislation, operators also would be required to notify residents about threats to their water if residents have registered wells in close proximity to known groundwater contamination.
If a facility is considering accepting new sources of alternate feed such as radioactive toxic waste from other industrial or medical operations, it would have to amend its operating license.
Fremont County has been the site of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund cleanup site at the Cotter Corporation’s uranium milling facility since 1984. Last year, Cotter announced it is planning to start milling uranium again and be fully operational by 2014.
Fremont County Commissioner Mike Stiehl spoke in support of the new legislation.
“We need to be protecting long-term investment opportunities in Fremont County like tourism and recreation,” he said. “Having a uranium facility with ongoing pollution problems can harm other parts of our economy.”
Stiehl said he has worked for a long time with Cotter on clean-up plans, and although he appreciates their efforts, there needs to be a high standard when it comes to radioactive, toxic uranium pollution.
Sharyn Cunningham of Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste (CCAT) spoke about her experiences living in Lincoln Park about a mile from Cotter’s uranium mill.
She said that for eight years she and her family were drinking and bathing in well water that was being contaminated by uranium from Cotter Corporation. Even though Cotter is a superfund cleanup site, the wells are still contaminated.
“I have two wells that are as contaminated today as they were in 1989,” she said.
According to U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in Colorado alone, taxpayers have spent more than $1 billion cleaning up past uranium milling sites from uranium milling facilities that have gone bankrupt.
Matt Garrington, an advocate with Environment Colorado, said, “Taxpayers have given uranium companies a $1 billion bailout. If uranium companies want to operate in Colorado, it can’t be at the expense of taxpayers and our air and water.” read more... www.florencecitizen.com/news.htm
Environmentalists push for uranium cleanup legislation
Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste seeks to preserve clean air, pure water and scenic landscapes.
By TRACY HARMON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
CANON CITY - Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste has teamed with other state conservation groups to push for 2010 legislation that would require the cleanup of Cotter Corp.'s uranium mill.
Jeff Parsons of the Western Mining Action Project said he believes Colorado taxpayers should not foot the bill for cleanup of "bad uranium operations."
"It is common sense to require all uranium operations to clean up their toxic messes. Period," Parsons said.
read more... www.chieftain.com/articles/2010/01/16/news/local/doc4b517b0292247389283014.txt
'Pre-emptive strike' against uranium
1/13/2010
Inspired by a proposed new uranium mill in western Montrose County - the first of its kind in a quarter-century - another bill targets uranium mill operators who pollute the groundwater.
If passed, the bill could have a direct impact on Powertech USA's Centennial Project should the company decide to construct a uranium mill near its proposed in situ leach uranium mine between Wellington and Nunn, said the bill's Senate sponsor, Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins.
The bill, sponsored in the House by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Denver, would prevent a Cotter Corp. uranium mill in Fremont County from further polluting the groundwater. Mill operators would be required to prove they won't contaminate groundwater before they can begin or continue uranium milling.
Bacon said the Cotter mill has been polluting the water near Cañon City for years and the bill will prevent the contamination from getting worse.
"Should they receive any additional (uranium) shipments, then they need to ensure they don't have a Superfund site forever," he said.
He called the bill a "preemptive strike" against the Montrose County mill and any effort on the part of Powertech to build a mill as part of the Centennial Project northeast of Fort Collins.
"If a milling operation would be at Nunn after they have leached the uranium out of the soil, then this would be the requirement," Bacon said.
read more... www.coloradoan.com/article/20100110/NEWS01/1100304/Politicos-choose-priorities-as-new-legislative-session-begins-Wednesday
EXPERTS: THREE LATEST INDUSTRY SETBACKS FURTHER DIM NUCLEAR “RENAISSANCE,” TAXPAYER-BACKED LOAN GUARANTEES CAN’T FIX FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS WITH NEW REACTORS
Rejection by Private Financing, Skyrocketing Cost Projections, Falling Demand, and Faulty Reactor Designs Can’t Be Solved With U.S. Shifting to “Nuclear Socialism” to Bail Out Industry.
WASHINGTON, DC.///December 16, 2009///The beleaguered nuclear power industry is now the “public option” of U.S. energy, unable to move forward without a bailout in the form of taxpayer-backed loan guarantees involving a high risk of default.
Citing three recent negative developments for the nuclear power industry, that warning was issued today by a group of leading experts: Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, and author of “The Economics of Nuclear Reactors: Renaissance or Relapse?” (2009); Stephen Thomas, professor of energy studies, University of Greenwich, London, and member of the editorial boards of Energy Policy, Utility Policy, Energy and Environment, and International Journal of Regulation and Governance; and Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, and author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free:A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (2007).
Cooper, Thomas and Makhijani held a news conference today amidst speculation that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) could announce its first loan guarantee for a new reactor before the end of 2009.
The expertshighlighted three recent setbacks for the industry: the recent $4 billion price hike for two proposed new reactors in Texas; a major new report from the financial world that concludes that only nuclear socialism (in the form of massive government financing) will allow the industry to expand; and major safety concerns cited by U.S. and European regulators about the two most popular proposed reactor designs in the United States.
Though $18.5 billion in loan guarantees are currently authorized and under discussion for new reactors, the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (S.1462), which has been passed out of the Energy Committee, authorizes unlimited loan guarantees. The recently unveiled Kerry-Graham-Lieberman "framework" for climate legislation also includes nuclear loan guarantees. The Alexander-Webb bill calling for 100 new nuclear reactors features $4 billion in new nuclear subsidies and an additional $10 billion that could leverage between $100 billion and $1 trillion in loan guarantees, depending on the subsidy cost. The nuclear power industry is on record calling for a miniscule 1 percent subsidy cost, which would result in the $1 trillion scenario.
Cooper, Thomas and Makhijani also stressed that the enthusiasm and optimism shared by some in Washington for nuclear power is not borne out by the facts on the ground.
Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School: “2009 was the seventh year of the so-called ‘Nuclear Renaissance,” but it looks a lot like the U.S. nuclear industry of the 1980s, a decade of no new orders, multiple delays and cancellations, hefty defaults, and emerging cheaper alternatives.Of 26 new nuclear reactor license applications submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2007, 19 have been cancelled or delayed and every private sector project has suffered a downgrade by credit rating agencies. The reality is that capital markets will not finance new reactors because demand growth has slowed, reactors cost much more than available alternatives and they face too many technology, marketplace, and policy risks; so nuclear advocates have demanded a massive increase in direct federal subsidies to bail the industry out. What we are looking at is the prospect of ‘nuclear socialism’ that could only go farther if it involved outright state ownership of the industry.”
Stephen Thomas, professor of energy studies, University of Greenwich, London, said: “Reactor design and construction problems have vexed the industry for years. In Finland, the Olkiluoto plant was expected to take four years to build but after four years of construction in May 2009, it was still nearly four years from completion and about 75 percent over budget. The vendor and the customer were countersuing each other for compensation for these delays. In France, the country often held up by nuclear advocates as the example others should follow, its Flamanville EPR was more than 20 percent over budget after only a year of construction ... It is now clear that unless electricity consumers are required, as they were in the 1970s and 1980s, to bear all the economic risk – if costs went up, consumer electricity bills went up – nuclear power plants will only be built if governments grant major taxpayer subsidies, such as a guarantee on the electricity price nuclear power plants will receive and loan guarantees so that if the project goes wrong, taxpayers will ensure banks do not lose their money. Paradoxically, the worse the economic case gets for nuclear power, the more determined governments seem to be to force nuclear programmes through and the higher the level of taxpayer support is promised.”
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said: “No one should be surprised to see the latest accounts of multi-billion-dollar projected cost increases for the South Texas Project. In fact, in March 2008, I estimated costs two to almost three times higher than those advertized by NRG, the project’s developer; and my estimates are the projected costs today, even if there are no delays and other problems. In the late 1970s and early 1980s when the industry consistently overstated likely demand and underestimated costs, which resulted in dozens of cancelled plants and huge debts. The difference today is that the government is willing to underwrite this risky nuclear adventure that is likely to come to no good and waste billions of taxpayer dollars.”
RECENT COST OVERRUNS IN TEXAS
Plans for two new nuclear reactors are in jeopardy in Texas due to a projected $4 billion cost overrun. As the Wall Street Journal reported: “Spooked by escalating costs, a city-owned utility in San Antonio is considering backing out of a venture with NRG Energy Inc. to build two next-generation nuclear reactors in Texas. CPS Energy is expected to make a final decision next month, after it gets an updated cost estimate from Toshiba Corp., which will oversee construction of the two reactors. The project is one of the furthest along in a new crop of nuclear proposals, but it is proving unpopular with city officials. The cost of the reactors, estimated at $10 billion to $12 billion before financing costs, is causing concern at a time when the utility is making big investments in renewable energy and pollution controls. Nuclear-reactor costs also look high right now against competing types of generation, such as gas-fired plants.”
The Journal continued: “The San Antonio city council was poised to approve a $400 million bond issuance in late October, but held back when new numbers came to light that indicated the nuclear project could cost more than expected. Like most municipal utilities, CPS has an appointed board that reports to elected city officials, whose approval is needed for rate changes or bond issuances ... City officials say the cost estimate from Toshiba for the two-reactor project ballooned to $12.1 billion last summer from a preliminary estimate of $8.6 billion in 2007, catching them off guard. Utility documents show its board was working with a figure of $10 billion. NRG says that it is confident it will be able to get the cost below $10 billion, before about $3 billion in financing costs are added. … Even if the final cost is about $10 billion, some city officials feel the project is too costly. ‘Based on the numbers I've seen, I don't think it's the right decision to proceed,’ said Councilman Reed Williams. He said it made economic sense for CPS to build gas-fired plants or buy electricity from others … CPS's skittishness about the cost of nuclear energy is understandable. The first two units at South Texas Project were supposed to cost less than $1 billion but ended up costing more than $5 billion. With that history seared into its memory, San Antonio officials have been sensitive to anything suggesting they could, again, get blindsided by escalating costs.” (See Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125997132402577475.html.)
A similar cost overrun situation is now unfolding in Georgia, at the Vogtle nuclear plant project, which is a finalist for the current round of DOE loan subsidies. Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) reports: “The proposed construction of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro could likely have cost overruns and possibly face delays, according to testimony released by the Georgia Public Service Commission. The group monitoring the progress of the new reactors is also being denied access to crucial information about the process, and Georgia Power is not revising economic evaluations based on a variety of factors that include a reduced demand for electricity and cheaper alternatives to nuclear energy, the document says.”
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