Uranium industry is the latest to hop on the bandwagon taking advantage of tragedy in Ukraine
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.)
This Thursday, March 31, at 10 a.m., the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing examining the country's supply of critical minerals. The hearing should be an opportunity for Congress to determine how we can safely and sustainably secure minerals needed to power American's transition to a clean energy economy. At top of mind should be reform of our antiquated mining law, which is more than 150 years-old.
So, you might be surprised to see that one of the invited witnesses comes from the Uranium Producers of America-a trade organization for the uranium industry. As trade representatives are apt to do, we fully expect them to use this hearing and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine to plead for more taxpayer-funded subsidies, so they can ramp up production quickly and cheaply.
This may sound like an opportunistic ploy to use a brutal war as a profit-making scheme. Make no mistake, it is.
As chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, I've already set the record straight on the oil and gas industry's pleas for an all-out drilling bonanza. Before we let the uranium industry pull us into an unchecked mining spree, I think it's worth remembering that this has been their goal long before Vladimir Putin launched his deadly attack.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/uranium-industry-is-the-latest-to-hop-on-the-bandwagon-taking-advantage-of-tragedy-in-ukraine/ar-AAVGEeY
NNadir
(33,368 posts)Every lanthanide mine on this planet is also a thorium mine, so please don't tell me it's all about radioactivity.
Many oil and gas fields release considerable amounts of NORM - national occurring radioactive materials - there are flowback water sites in PA that are more radioactive than seawater outside of Fukushima.
In fact, we don't need, at least in theory, to mine uranium, a point I made here recently: Energy Content of the US Inventory of Depleted Uranium in Comparison to World Energy Demand.
I also recently commented on the "I'm not an anti-nuke" anti-nuke Benjamin Sovacool's disgusting paper in Science wherein he proposed that it might be a good idea to rip the shit out of the ocean floor to get metals for a "green" transition.
Let me open the report - in case it's behind a firewall - and quote what this asshole says about his so called "renewable energy" scheme, enthusiasm for which is delaying real action on climate change:
He doesn't know, like most "I'm not an anti-nuke" antinukes - a class to which he also belongs; I once engaged him on a blog whereupon I had the opportunity to express my contempt for his bad thinking - about nuclear reactors. Nothing at all, except he hates them.
Here's his "solution" to the cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and lanthanides (so called "rare earth elements" ) : Mine the shit out of the ocean:
Even Sovacool, a typical weak thinker of the the "renewables will save us" sort, who is willing to tear the entire planet, not only land, but the oceans to chase the useless and destructive faith based "renewable energy" scheme, understands how what he calls (absurdly) "low carbon energy" the implications of mining.
(He's also fond of what he calls "artisanal and smallscale mining (ASM)" - you know, that the cobalt warlords should free their slaves and let them dig cobalt for themselves; a 21st century "forty acres and a mule" redux. Apparently those cobalt slaves are troubling him, not so much that he's willing to change his mind.)
And yet, here and now, I am presented with a claim that so called "renewable energy" advocates give a shit about mining? Am I supposed to laugh or cry?
Again, I can't believe that there are people who think I'm stupid and uninformed so as to talk...
Uranium is not like any other source of energy since no operable forms of energy have the same energy to mass ratio - 80 trillion joules/kg - when converted to plutonium. We ignore this huge environmental advantage at a huge threat to all humanity.
The fear of uranium and the selective attention by which a fairly common and widely distributed element in the periodic table is demonized is a huge threat to humanity.