Antinuclear

Digging dirt with a sledgehammer

The weapons manufacturer who converted Labor’s staunchest opponents to nuclear development has a controversial past, write Nick O’Malley and Ben Cubby…………………………….

………………..Neal Blue’s single-mindedness emerged during the battle over a Blue-owned uranium processing plant on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.

After a series of radioactive spills a nine-legged frog was discovered outside the yellowcake factory.

A government investigation eventually established the company had known for years that radioactive material was leaking and that radioactivity in water around the plant was at levels 35,000 times higher than US federal laws permitted………………………………….

As General Atomics grew, Blue kept an eye on Australia. One of his former employees recalls that in the late 1980s Blue was sure the future was nuclear and Australia was going to be a key part of it.

He went about buying pastoral leases sitting on uranium deposits in South Australia and the Northern Territory, gambling that bans on uranium would one day be lifted.

He was right. In 1990 Blue established Heathgate Resources to operate the new Beverley uranium mine, near Lake Frome in South Australia……………………..The South Australian Government has recorded 59 spills of radioactive material on the surface at the site,……………..

there is no requirement it decontaminate the site when mining ceases.

The environmental impact assessment for Blue’s nearby Four Mile mine, approved this month by the federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, similarly carries no such requirement.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/digging-dirt-with-a-sledgehammer-20090729-e1lj.html

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