By Peter Galuszka
Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe has made one of his first pronouncements and it is an important one: he will veto any law the General Assembly passes to lift the decades-long ban on mining uranium in Virginia.
The bigger question is whether he was start disassembling the energy-industrial complex that outgoing Gov. Robert F. McDonnell had put together that tended to serve such large-scale energy firms and utilities beholden to fossil fuels and nuclear power.
One unsavory part of McDonnell’s plan to make Virginia “The Energy Capital of the East Coast” was that he packed his study commissions with lobbyists and Big Energy types (no environmentalists or independent citizens’ groups need apply) and then shielded them from the state Freedom of Information Act. When he held energy fairs, they typically were dominated by oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power representatives with only a token showing from wind, solar or other renewables.
McAuliffe’s stance is not unexpected but he did seem to wobble a bit about nuclear power in the campaign. Curiously, when Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling started his personal revolution about a year ago, knowing he was being shown the door by the tea party hardliners within the state GOP, he dramatically came out against ending the uranium moratorium.
About that time, a McDonnell study commission headed by Cathie J. France was finishing its work just before the moratorium issue was to come up before the General Assembly. Plans were afoot to develop state mining and milling regulations.
What then happened? When it looked like the moratorium bill was dead, it was quickly withdrawn. Now McAuliffe says there’s no need for state uranium regs because they won’t be needed if the moratorium stays. As for Ms. France, she’s off at Williams Mullen, the lobbying firm, of course, but says she won’t handle uranium.
A few weeks ago, state environmentalists were afraid that Attorney General and failed gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli was setting things up for Big Nukes by expressing in an opinion requested by Del. Donald Merrick of Chatham that localities could not have the power to set up laws banning uranium mining if it came to that because the the Dillon rule that has it that localities have only the power that the General Assembly lets them have.
I’m not a lawyer, but I have to say that Cuccinelli’s giving the straight stuff on the Dillon Rule, which should be dumped because it has screwed up so many things in Virginia that localities can do better than the state.
Cuccinelli’s opinion seems moot anyway if the mining ban stays. But there’s a much bigger reason why the issue is going nowhere. Global uranium prices are trading at roughly $35 a pound. When the Coles Hill Farm project was proposed back in 2007 or so, prices were at least four times as high.
The spike collapsed thanks to the global recession and the Fukushima disaster in 2011. While nuclear stations are being planned in Asia, they are getting nowhere in this country because they would need huge federal loan supports from Congress. Utilities are less likely to push for them if they can use cheaper and plentiful natural gas which results in large part from fracking.
I realize that fracking has its own dangers but one can’t deny how the energy mix works. If one reads the typically clueless Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page, they would assume that McAuliffe won’t give on uranium because of the oodles of campaign dough he got from the green movement and from people Tidewater cities fearful that mining uranium in Pittsylvania will contaminate their water supplies.
These are real concerns, but the kicker and killer is the global price of uranium ore.
