Professor John Robertson OBA
As Donald Trump‘s push for increased uranium production stirs up community media across the USA, a reminder of the risks in Scotland too.
From In These Times, yesterday, the above and:
When the uranium market dried up, companies simply abandoned the mines, a phenomenon so common there’s a term for it: AUM, or “abandoned uranium mine.” Now, the mines stand as toxic monuments to America’s nuclear weapons and energy programs. People are still dying, and the abandoned mines are still not remediated. Yet the United States is pushing ahead with a $1.7 trillion plan to expand and “modernize” nuclear weapons, and the Trump administration is trying to restart uranium mining in New Mexico — near Navajo territory.
How might Scotland be affected?
In Investing.com, two days ago, the above graph and:
When the U.S. government announced an $80 billion commitment to build new nuclear reactors, Cameco Corp (NYSE:CCJ) became the talk of Wall Street. The stock skyrocketed 20% in a single day, adding $9 billion to its value and reaching an all-time high of $106.91. Analysts gushed. Investors piled in. It was the obvious winner.
But here’s what almost nobody noticed: America is about to need far more uranium than it can get, and the companies actually building the mines to supply it are trading like the party hasn’t even started. https://www.investing.com/analysis/the-uranium-rush-nobodys-talking-about-200669260
Why should this worry us?
Well, Labour has the very same plans to build new nuclear power stations, including in Scotland.
Where might the UK government look for that uranium?
Orkney has deposits and a Labour UK government authorised a search there in 1975.
Here’s what happened then.
In 1975, not much reported at the time, as far as I can remember, the residents of the Orkney Islands faced and fought off a dark threat. From Beyond Nuclear International in April 2021:
The Orkneys were being surveyed for a potentially valuable deposit of uranium ore. The South Scottish Electricity Board had already persuaded local farmers, unaware of the health risks, to allow bore hole drilling on their land. By 1977, the entire local population on Orkney opposed uranium exploitation there. Among those opponents was Max [The composer Maxwell Davies]. A Public Examiner was appointed to examine both sides of the case for and against uranium mining in Orkney.
The Public Examiner recommended the plan be abandoned. As Bevan, [Islander Archie Bevan] who died in 2015, recounts it, the Orkney population universally opposed the uranium plan “not only from the fear of pollution itself, with the gravest consequences for the second principal town of the islands, but also from the point of view of the psychological damage and disastrous social and economic implications of uranium extraction on Orcadian fishing, dairy farming and tourism.” 1
What was the risk to locals who might have worked in uranium mines?
There are now many high quality research reports on the risks to uranium miners but Lifetime excess absolute risk for lung cancer due to exposure to radon: results of the pooled uranium miners cohort study PUMA published in January 2024, based on seven cohorts from Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, and USA, is ‘gold standard.’2
The report is highly technical and with unclear, to me, measures of the cancer death rate of uranium miners. However, it does list simply the number of miners in each cohort and the number of cancer deaths
The average, across all the cohorts, from the research data: 1 in every 15.4 miners died from lung cancer.
Let’s be sure we learn this lesson from history.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I well remember my dad attending the public meetings in Kirkwall. There was a real sense of dread and concern at the time. Incidentally, 13 year old aspiring artist me designed the first logo for Orkney’s No Uranium campaign!
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Looked at from Mr Milliband’s exoensive London home, Orkney is far away and the people are some kind of Viking Jocks so, uranium mining is not going to affect the ‘Home Counties’.
And, if small modular nuclear reactors are built in Jockland, the uranium will not have to travel through England to get to the power stations. So, it is a ‘win win’ for Westminster.
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