Pittsylvania County farmer takes uranium mining debate to heart

Uranium mining is likely to be the hot button concern when Virginia lawmakers begin work in a couple of weeks up in Richmond.A suggestion to lift a statewide ban on the mining of the radioactive mineral is polarizing and individually impactful.

Consider the case of a 200-year-old farm near a planned uranium mine site in Pittsylvania County.The 104 acre farm has be in farmer Byron Motley's family for seven generations."It was a tobacco farm for many years and then when they bought the tobacco allotment out I turned it into a hay farm and I'm just raising hay," Motley said.

But keeping his possessions up to par isn't what's waking him up in the middle of the night, it's worrying whether he'll get to keep it. Assorted and his family live about two miles from the proposed uranium mine site at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County.Part of his property falls under, what current studies have called, a contamination or condemned zone.

Thorium pushed as uranium alternative

A SCIENTIFIC movement to promote thorium as a nuclear fuel, due to its plenty and improved safety, is developing around the world and Australia could lead the way the Sydney scientist Reza Hashemi-Nezhad has argue for additional than a decade for the benefits of thorium when used in an accelerator-driven nuclear reactor that operate at subcritical conditions.'

'You cannot have an accident like to Chernobyl,'' Dr Hashemi-Nezhad, the director of the Institute of Nuclear Science at the University of Sydney, said, ''It does not make weapon-grade materials and the nuclear waste is much less toxic than beginning a standard reactor.''

With the world's major reserves of the radioactive mineral, Australia could be a leader in increasing and adopting the technology,''It is completely proven and feasible,'' Dr Hashemi-Nezhad said, ''the only thing necessary here is government acceptance.''