3.25 #NuclearIsDirty Webinar: Canaries in the Uranium Mine: The Abandoned Uranium Mine Crisis and the Campaign to Clean Them Up | Registration

As part of our #NuclearIsDirty roll-out series, NIRS is hosting a webinar on a vast but little-known environmental justice problem: abandoned uranium mines, or AUMs. There are 15,000 abandoned mines throughout the Midwest and Western U.S., disproportionately on or near First Nations communities and their drinking water supplies.

On Friday's webinar, we will hear from indigenous activists about the toxic wastes of uranium mining, the environmental justice and public health impacts, and their efforts to remediate these sites and protect their communities: 

Klee Benally, Diné - Clean Up the Mines organizer 

Charmaine White Face, Lakota - Defenders of the Black Hills 
Petuuche Gilbert, Acoma - Laguna and Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment 

Last week, we featured a briefing on the Church Rock mill tailings disaster, the largest single radiological release in U.S. history. Listen to or share the recording here: 
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/week1-briefing-churchrock-20160317.mp3 

But Church Rock was not an "accident" because it is just the tip of the dirty, radioactive iceberg. Uranium extraction is an inherently dangerous and destructive industry, creating vast amounts of radioactive and toxic waste before a single fuel rod ever goes into a reactor.  

First Nations communities in the rural Midwest and Western US have habitually been targeted for uranium and other dirty mining and resource extraction. In some communities, ambient radioactivity is as high or higher than in Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones. Communities are fighting back. Navajo have won and defended a ban on uranium mining on their territory for over 10 years. And now Diné, Lakota, Acoma, and other First Nations activists are leading the Clean Up the Mines campaign. The goal: to remediate the 15,000 abandoned uranium mines and protect communities and their water.

Registration


#NuclearIsDirty ... From the Start! In the first "episode" of the rollout series we are focusing on the roots of nuclear power, the problems that are the very foundation of the nuclear industry: 
- Uranium mining and the mountains of waste generated just to produce nuclear fuel.
- Environmental justice, and the targeting of vulnerable communities throughout the fuel chain.
- The dangers of radiation exposure, and its disparate impacts on women and girls...

more: http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/t/0/blastContent.jsp

'No other water' — Navajo drinking from uranium-contaminated wells

WASHINGTON – Longtime Sanders resident Wayne Lynch was told in July that the water on his ranch contained dangerously high amounts of uranium, yet he is still using it.

“There’s no other water source we have,” Lynch said this week. “There’s no other well that they could tap in to.”

Lynch said the problem extends to the Sanders community, including nearby schools, which have no choice but to use contaminated wells.

“People are always getting cancer,” he said, naming his mother, an aunt and a grandmother among those who have been diagnosed with the disease.

Lynch’s case was just one of the stories brought to Washington last week by Clean Up the Mines, a group that highlights the detrimental effects of abandoned uranium mines, especially those on and near reservations.

According to government data, there are about 15,000 uranium mines in the West, with 75 percent of those on federal or tribal lands.

Clean Up the Mines was in the capital for a week, working to spread awareness of what it calls an environmental crisis, even as the nation is focused on the lead-contaminated water crisis in Flint, Mich.

Their trip included a Thursday protest outside the Environmental Protection Agency building...

more: 'No other water' — Navajo drinking from uranium-contaminated wells