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There's no legal problem here, officials with the U.S. Department of Energy say. Storing mercury at a federal site south of Whitewater won't violate the terms of an agreement the DOE signed with Mesa County more than a decade ago, a top official with the agency said. Well, that's a relief, at least to federal officials eager to find a permanent disposal site for thousands of tons of mercury. But it's not very reassuring to Mesa County residents who believed they had a commitment from the DOE years ago to keep the site near Whitewater free of additional hazardous wastes. That desert disposal site, originally known as Cheney Reservoir, was created to store millions of tons of low-level radioactive waste in the form of mill tailings from uranium milling that occurred in Grand Junction in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.

Now, like a conductor, he directs the efforts of more than 150 people at the Moab tailings project and Crescent Junction Disposal Site, and 25 more at the Department of Energy's office in Grand Junction, Colo., where he makes his home. The goal is overwhelmingly simple on its face - the removal of 16 million tons of mining waste - but deceptively complex because of the risk to workers and the community due to the waste's radioactive nature.

Motorists whipping past along I-70 see only the turnoff for Moab at the sign that says Crescent Junction. But a little to the north, a train sits on the railroad tracks, and oversize trucks unload rail cars. From there containers of the radioactive waste that are the legacy of a bankrupt uranium mine are unloaded one after the other, filling up a disposal cell that will trap the tailings for years to come. Much was celebrated Monday to the south on the outskirts of Moab at the former Atlas mine site, where full-time operations to remove the waste have been under way since mid-April.

Monday is moving day for the Atlas Corp. tailings pile outside of Moab. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and representatives of four congressional offices assembled in Moab for a ribbon-cutting for the uranium waste removal project. Huntsman called it a great day. "The people of Moab and Grand County made it their priority." They dogged every federal official who came to town, the governor said. "For them, it was a matter of pride, for them, it was a matter of health and the environment." Moving the 16 million tons of uranium processing waste is expected to cost around $1 billion and to take at least 10 years. The pile is being hauled by rail 42 miles north to a specially constructed landfill north of Interstate 80 at Crescent Junction.

After decades of controversy, a huge pile of radioactive waste near Moab is finally on the move. A train load of waste is expected to pull out of Moab Monday evening -- the first of thousands of trains over the next decade or two. The pile of red dirt blends into the red rock scenery so well, it's hard to make out how big it is, but "big" is the word. There are 130 acres of uranium mill tailings, 16 million tons of radioactive waste. Many Moab residents will be glad to get rid of it. "This is one of the happiest days in our town's history, actually," said Mayor David Sakrison. The waste is being loaded into sealed containers and hauled by truck to a nearby railroad. Trains will haul the waste 30 miles north, nearly a train a day for at least 10 years. Near Crescent Junction on Interstate 70, the radioactive red dirt will be placed in a covered disposal cell.

"The first million tons of uranium tailings have been taken away from a huge pile near Moab. The U.S. Department of Energy says the milestone was reached this week as part of an ongoing project to remove 16 million tons of radioactive waste from the shores of the Colorado River. The waste is being loaded on trains and shipped to a disposal site 30 miles to the north. The Energy Department is overseeing the work. Crews began loading railroad cars in April and hauling the waste to a series of cells at Crescent Junction designed for long-term storage for hazardous waste. The project is expected to cost around $1 billion."

"BHP Billiton says it will step up security at an old uranium testing site in Kalgoorlie after concerns children are accessing the area. Labor's candidate for the federal seat of O'Connor, Ian Bishop, says damage to a security gate has allowed children to enter the site at Hannan's north on dirt bikes. More than 5,000 tonnes of tailings from the Yeelirrie uranium deposit, near Wiluna, were buried in the area after BHP stopped testing ore-processing there in the 1980s."

When the EPA evacuates your town for Superfund cleanup, what happens to the people left behind? After decades of uranium mining turned the tiny town of Church Rock, New Mexico, into a Superfund site, in August the EPA moved seven resident Navajo families to Gallup apartments, where they'll wait for five months while the EPA scrubs their town of radioactive waste. But as the EPA hauls away the uranium tailings and radium-infused topsoils that have been permanent fixtures since mining ceased in the 1980s, Church Rock's remaining residents are asking why they have been left behind. In 1979, the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history occurred in Church Rock when 94 million gallons of mine waste were accidentally released into a stream. Children swam in open pit mines and the community drank water from local wells as recently as the '90s. (Now they haul in drinking water.) Cancer rates and livestock deaths remain higher than they should be. As for the families who remain, Church Rock evacuee and local activist Teddy Nez says the agency "drew an imaginary line in the sand" that excludes a residential area half a mile west of the Superfund site.

When the EPA evacuates your town for Superfund cleanup, what happens to the people left behind? After decades of uranium mining turned the tiny town of Church Rock, New Mexico, into a Superfund site, in August the EPA moved seven resident Navajo families to Gallup apartments, where they'll wait for five months while the EPA scrubs their town of radioactive waste. But as the EPA hauls away the uranium tailings and radium-infused topsoils that have been permanent fixtures since mining ceased in the 1980s, Church Rock's remaining residents are asking why they have been left behind. In 1979, the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history occurred in Church Rock when 94 million gallons of mine waste were accidentally released into a stream. Children swam in open pit mines and the community drank water from local wells as recently as the '90s. (Now they haul in drinking water.) Cancer rates and livestock deaths remain higher than they should be. As for the families who remain, Church Rock evacuee and local activist Teddy Nez says the agency "drew an imaginary line in the sand" that excludes a residential area half a mile west of the Superfund site.

On the Navajo Nation, almost everyone you talk to either worked in uranium mines themselves or had fathers or husbands who did. Almost everyone also has multiple stories of loved ones dying young from cancer, kidney disease and other ailments attributed to uranium poisoning. The effects aren't limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families are usually affected as women washed their husbands' contaminated clothes, kids played amidst mine waste and families even built homes out of radioactive uranium tailings.

On the Navajo Nation, almost everyone you talk to either worked in uranium mines themselves or had fathers or husbands who did. Almost everyone also has multiple stories of loved ones dying young from cancer, kidney disease and other ailments attributed to uranium poisoning. The effects aren't limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families are usually affected as women washed their husbands' contaminated clothes, kids played amidst mine waste and families even built homes out of radioactive uranium tailings.

Over the last 2 1/2 years I have been talking about the dust problem that would accompany the opening of an open-pit uranium mine in Pittsylvania County. I have spoken about the low-level radioactive dust that would come with the blasting and the tailing piles. (Low-level radiation accumulates in the body). I have spoken to the supervisors probably a dozen times, with absolutely no results. Phil Lovelace has spoken more often than I have about leakage of radioactive water from the holding ponds. He also has received dumb looks from the supervisors. * In fact, one of them sometimes looks as if he is asleep. In my opinion five of the supervisors have paid so little attention that it appears they work with Virginia Uranium.

Over the last 2 1/2 years I have been talking about the dust problem that would accompany the opening of an open-pit uranium mine in Pittsylvania County. I have spoken about the low-level radioactive dust that would come with the blasting and the tailing piles. (Low-level radiation accumulates in the body). I have spoken to the supervisors probably a dozen times, with absolutely no results. Phil Lovelace has spoken more often than I have about leakage of radioactive water from the holding ponds. He also has received dumb looks from the supervisors. * In fact, one of them sometimes looks as if he is asleep. In my opinion five of the supervisors have paid so little attention that it appears they work with Virginia Uranium.

"The Danville Regional Foundation (DRF) announced Friday it has received proposals from two nationally-known groups, Resources for the Future and RTI International, to conduct an independent socioeconomic study on the regional impact of uranium mining. Abstracts of these proposals can be found online (http://danvilleregionalfoundation.org/Uranium/uranium-proposal-abstracts) and available for public comments for 30 days through DRF's Uranium Blog (http://danvilleregionalfoundation.org/Uranium/). Registered public comments submitted online will be reviewed and used in selecting the organization to conduct the study. Selection is expected to be announced in August with the final study due by year-end 2011, according to a DRF news release. The proposed study will examine the potential effects of uranium mining and milling, and long-term waste management on people, institutions and economies within 50 miles of the proposed site. Specific means of determining the socio-economic benefits and risks, such as impact on property values, taxes and institutions, are outlined in the abstracts, the release stated. In the state of Virginia, there are currently four uranium mining, milling and tailings storage studies currently under way or planned. Each has different purposes, it continued. A brief summary is online (http://danvilleregionalfoundation.org/news/documents/Uranium-Studies-FINAL.pdf) "

After decades of delay, the U.S. Forest Service is seeking public comments about a slow-motion contamination risk - the radioactive dirt piles left over from now-abandoned uranium mines in the Young Ranger District along popular Workman Creek in the Sierra Anchas. During the boom years of uranium mining in the 1950s and 1970s, mining companies dug "dozens" of mine shafts following veins of the naturally occurring, radioactive mineral. Most of the once-sealed mine shafts are now open after vandals pried loose the timbers and tore down the warning signs. The mine shafts still have radiation levels that could cause cancer and other health problems.

"I carry clean [drinking] water with my truck to the villages upstream almost on a daily basis. I was born here and I remember that in the past the road on this side of the river was closed to traffic. They say that was because of some mines and radioactive waste tailings," Bakyt told IRIN in Kairygach, about 10-15 minutes' drive from Mailuu-Suu.

It's late summer in Washington at the tail end of a lame duck presidency. And that means one thing for Beltway insiders: open season for lobbying. The nuclear energy industry is one group in a good position to take advantage of the changing of the guard. And one of its biggest guns--former New Jersey Gov. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman--is drumming up publicity for what might be a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. within the next few years.

The tailing pipes carrying the radioactive and toxic slurry from the mills of the Uranium Corporation of India (UCIL) burst Saturday night(16/8/2008) in the Dungridih village under the Jadugoda police station of Potka block of East Singhbhum in Jharkhand State of India, spewing the village with uranium waste.

MONTICELLO - Cancer victims and their families here have launched a new phase of their campaign for recognition of the cruel legacy left by a government uranium mill. Steve Young, organizer of the Monticello Victims of Mill Tailings Exposure, encouraged his neighbors to push the federal government for a long-term program that would help pay for cancer screening and expenses related to the old mill.

MEMRAMCOOK - About 75 people filled the Abbey-Landry School auditorium in Memramcook last night, anxious for assurances that uranium mining in their midst would not be a threat to their health and the environment. The people, like those at similar meetings held elsewhere in the province in past weeks, are worried about the long-term effects of mining the radioactive material and of the disposal of the mine tailings which remain a hazard to air, soil and water sources for a very long time.

Balloons representing more than 500 local residents who have battled cancer in recent years were released after a presentation by the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) about cancer rates in the Monticello area.