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A federal appeals court this week moved to allow uranium mining operations in Churchrock, a Navajo community just east of Gallup, New Mexico. The decision by the Federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals comes at a time of increased financial incentives for uranium mining-but also intense opposition from many communities, including the Navajo Nation, which outlawed uranium mining in 2005. "This ruling is a major breakthrough for URI and upholds the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] license that took us 10 years to obtain and as many to address in supplemental reviews and litigation," Don Ewigleben, President and CEO of Uranium Resources, said in a statement this week. "… The ruling also demonstrates that ISR technology, including the restoration process that follows mining activity, is safe and effective."

Protestors in Alice Springs say opposition is growing to a proposed uranium mine close to the town. Jess Abrahams, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, says they believe industries like cattle grazing and ecotourism will be at risk should the mine go ahead. He says they're calling on the government to reject any application for a mining lease at Angela Pamela, 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

Protestors in Alice Springs say opposition is growing to a proposed uranium mine close to the town. Jess Abrahams, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, says they believe industries like cattle grazing and ecotourism will be at risk should the mine go ahead. He says they're calling on the government to reject any application for a mining lease at Angela Pamela, 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

Local officials and citizens from Goliad County got some encouragement Wednesday in their fight against uranium mining over a south Texas aquifer. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted to allow a contested case hearing on an application by Uranium Energy Corporation to mine uranium just north of the historic mission town of Goliad. No uranium mining has occurred before in this agricultural area. "This has been such a long, long haul and it's not over yet," said local landowner Lu Ann Duderstadt, who lives near the area targeted for uranium mining. "I feel like we have a chance here and we're still going to carry this out until the end."

Protesters gathered in Helsinki and Tampere on Thursday to lend support to residents of Ranua, in Finnish Lapland, who oppose plans for uranium mining in the area. The French energy group Areva has filed an application with the Ministry Employment and the Economy for a uranium mining claim at Ranua, just south of Rovaniemi. If granted, the claim would allow Areva to carrying out prospecting in the area. According to a local activisit, Kaisa Kaikkonen, granting the claim could force residents of the area to live for decades in fear of the start-up of uranium mining.

New Mexico legislators are in Washington D.C. this week to press the federal government to help clean up hundreds of abandoned uranium mines that dot the state's landscape. The trip comes on the heels of an appropriation of $150,000 included in this year's state budget to help complete the painstaking work of assessing the extent of the problem, said Bill Brancard, director of the state's Mining and Minerals Division of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. So far, his agency has listed 259 mines that have reported uranium production at some point. And there may be many more than that, he said.

"Experts say uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County will lower property values, make it more difficult for farmers to sell their products and greatly increase residents' risks of illnesses and disease caused by living near a uranium mine. Also, the uranium deposit at Coles Hill northeast of Chatham is not 119-million pounds as mining proponents claim but just 5.5 million pounds, said Paul Robinson, research director at the Southwest Information & Research Center in Albuquerque, N.M. But another expert, Marita Noon, executive director of the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy in New Mexico, says Canada has been mining and milling uranium for years with no ill effects. "

"With Shell Oil's recent withdrawal of a water right permit application to divert 375 cubic feet per second of water from the Yampa River in northwest Colorado, one would get the impression that the bubble has finally burst on mass scale, traditional energy development in the West and that the oil industry has finally come to terms with the impact of traditional energy development on rapidly diminishing water resources. Not so in Utah. While recently briefing the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining, Dr. Laura Nelson, vice president of the Salt Lake City-based Ecoshale, for example, proclaimed that the company just completed a pilot project that produced a high-quality oil-shale product and, "we did so working closely with the Environmental Protection Agency to make an environmentally sensitive product." Similarly, the National Commission on Energy Policy - a bipartisan group of energy experts - recently stated that climate change legislation currently being considered by Congress must also spur more domestic energy production by extending the production tax credit for new reactors through 2025 and expanding the renewable energy standard to include nuclear."

"The owner of a defunct uranium mine leaking pollution along a creek that flows into a Denver Water reservoir has launched a cleanup as ordered, state officials confirmed Thursday.\n\nCotter Corp. installed a system that can pump and treat up to 50 gallons per minute of contaminated water from inside its Schwartzenwalder Mine, west of Denver in Jefferson County.\n\nWater tests in 2007 recorded uranium levels in mine water exceeding the human health standard by 1,000 times. Elevated levels in Ralston Creek also were recorded.\n\nThe Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ordered the action. State natural-resources officials also are monitoring the mine, which produced uranium for weapons and nuclear power plants."

"Groups on either side of proposed uranium-mining operations in Colorado this week will present their ideas about how companies should conduct themselves if they use water and chemicals to extract the ore. The Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board hearings begin this morning and are likely to last through Wednesday. The board will issue formal rules on in-situ mining in August. The in-situ process injects water and chemicals to free the uranium, pumps out the fluid and collects the ore. The state has been gathering information on the proposed rules since last year. The rule-making process is required under a law signed by Gov. Bill Ritter in 2008 that regulates pollution and reclamation activity for in-situ uranium mines in Colorado."

IN A DINE CREATION STORY, the people were given a choice of two yellow powders. They chose the yellow dust of corn pollen, and were instructed to leave the other yellow powder-uranium-in the soil and never to dig it up. If it were taken from the ground, they were told, a great evil would come. The evil came. Over one thousand uranium mines gouged the earth in the Dine Bikeyah, the land of the Navajo, during a thirty-year period beginning in the 1950s. It was the lethal nature of uranium mining that led the industry to the isolated lands of Native America. By the mid-1970s, there were 380 uranium leases on native land and only 4 on public or acquired lands. At that time, the industry and government were fully aware of the health impacts of uranium mining on workers, their families, and the land upon which their descendants would come to live. Unfortunately, few Navajo uranium miners were told of the risks. In the 1960s, the Department of Labor even provided the Kerr-McGee Corporation with support for hiring Navajo uranium miners, who were paid $1.62 an hour to work underground in the mine shafts with little or no ventilation.

In a move which could bring cheer to the country's nuclear establishment grappling with shortage of uranium, the Meghalaya government has said it has no problem in mining for the mineral in the state provided the Centre takes care of health and environmental hazards resulting from radioactive emission from mines. "Our main concern is health hazards to the people which may arise due to the uranium mining. If the Centre takes care of that, we have no problem in allowing uranium mining in our state," Meghalaya Chief Minister Donkupar Roy told PTI. According to an estimate of Uranium Corporation of India Limited, there could be 3,75,000 tonnes of uranium deposits in West Khasi Hill district of Meghalaya.

Western Australian Opposition Leader Eric Ripper says Labor will continue to oppose uranium mining in WA, even though the State Government formally lifting the ban on mining the resource today. Premier Colin Barnett says the removal of the ban will take immediate effect and any new mining leases will not have the standard clause that bans uranium mining.

A few years ago, Ward wrote for Tomdispatch about various plans to dump radioactive waste, including 40 years worth of "spent fuel rods" from nuclear reactors, in his Utah backyard. People who lived downwind were alarmed. They had been exposed to radioactive fallout during the era of atomic testing in the 1950s and feared more of the same -- cancer for "downwinders" and obfuscation and denial from federal regulators. Since Ward wrote his account, local activists have successfully blocked the projects. Score one for the little guys.

The town of Ault joined the long list of opposition against a proposed uranium mine Tuesday. At it's meeting Tuesday, Ault's town board passed a resolution opposing any uranium mining in northern Colorado. Powertech Uranium Corp., a Canadian-based company, owns the mineral rights to more than 5,700 acres of land in Weld County near Nunn and wants to mine for the mineral. Ault Mayor Brad Bayne said the board heard presentations Tuesday from Powertech and Coloradans Against Resource Destruction -- a group that opposes uranium mining in the area.

The Northern Territory Government says it will speak to mining company ERA and the office of the Commonwealth Supervising Scientist about contaminated water leaking from the Ranger Uranium Mine. About 100,000 litres of contaminated water is seeping from a tailings dam at the mine every day. Environmentalists are calling for the mine's planned expansion to be put on hold.

A French physicist and a US actor have joined representatives of indigenous peoples from Africa, Australia and the United States to send US lawmakers a stark warning about the dangers of uranium mining. "We want US lawmakers to understand that uranium mining is highly pollutant and that there is currently no scientific answer to the question of radioactive waste containment," Bruno Chareyron of France's CRIIRAD laboratory, which measures radioactivity in the environment, told AFP Friday. "We want them to know that the information they are given by the mining companies is not wholly reliable," he said. Representatives of the Tuareg nomads of Niger, Native Americans and Australian aborigines told of the ravages of uranium mining on their communities.

The Nunn town board has passed a resolution opposing a planned uranium mine near the northern Colorado town. The board voted 4-2 Thursday for the measure. One trustee abstained. The resolution can't prevent Powertech Uranium Corp. from building its mine. But the mine's opponents hope it will affect state decisions on the project. The Canadian company has proposed a $20 million uranium mine about 70 miles north of Denver. It has bought mineral rights and applied for permits. Powertech plans to use a process called in-situ mining, which involves pumping treated water into uranium-laced deposits to dissolve the mineral so the uranium can be pumped to the surface.

Two environmental groups are trying to block Utah's first new uranium mine in three decades. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Uranium Watch want the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to rethink its approval of the Daneros Mine, located about 10 miles from Natural Bridges National Monument. The groups also want the federal agency to stop Australia-based White Canyon Uranium from mining its Daneros claim until BLM's Utah director, Selma Sierra, determines whether her agency studied the environmental consequences sufficiently. "There are a lot of issues associated with uranium mining that were not adequately assessed before the permits were issued," Liz Thomas, an attorney for SUWA, said Friday.

Several proposed uranium mining projects in Wyoming and across the West will be delayed due the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's recent decision requiring a more thorough site-specific analysis for each project. The NRC will require a supplemental environmental impact statement for each mining project rather than a more simplified environmental assessment, which the agency had considered. Some officials in the uranium industry claim the NRC overreacted to a groundswell of public concern that they say comes from either ignorance of the in-situ leach mining process or a desire to block uranium mining. Industry officials have also told the Star-Tribune they worry that investors are losing patience. However, those who scrutinize the emerging next generation of uranium mining say both the industry and government regulators have a history that deserves skepticism. Shannon Anderson, community organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, said she has researched dozens upon dozens of spills and excursions documented by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. The Star-Tribune has also reviewed DEQ documentation describing dozens of violations related to in-situ recovery of uranium in the state.

The Navajo Nation's anti-uranium mining ban scored a victory April 17 when the 10th Circuit Court upheld federal, rather than state, control over a permit for a proposed in situ leach uranium mine in a mixed-ownership area of northwestern New Mexico. Hydro Resources Inc. asked the federal appeals court to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency determination that HRI's proposed mine near Church Rock was in "Indian country" as legally defined and therefore must be permitted by EPA and not by the state.