By Sara Peach
WHERE WE WENT:
A fuel-fabrication facility and a nuclear-plant-training center in Lynchburg, Va., both owned by AREVA, a French nuclear company. We also toured Coles Hill, a farm that may become the site of the first U.S. uranium mine east of the Mississippi.
TOUR LENGTH:
8.5 hours
TOUR LEADER:
Thomas Henry, Environmental Writer, The (Toledo) Blade. (Thanks, Tom, and thanks, Roger Witherspoon, for your work to set up the tour.)
WHAT THEY SAID:
• “If you knock out the brain, the body doesn’t have long to live.” – David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, on the danger of an aircraft hitting a nuclear plant’s control room.
• “Using the word ‘recycling’ makes it sound clean.” - Linda Gunter, Beyond Nuclear, on why she prefers the word “reprocessing” over “recycling” in discussions of the chemical treatment of spent reactor fuel.
• “This bus ride is more dangerous than mining uranium at Coles Hill.” - Jim Beard, adjunct professor of geology at Virginia Tech, on the environmental threat of open-pit mining at the historic farm.
MOMENT MOST LIKELY TO BECOME SEJ LEGEND:
The sudden announcement by AREVA officials that we could bring notepads inside the fuel-fabrication facility, but no pens. “I wasn’t expecting that,” said tour leader Tom Henry. “That was a little over the top.” AREVA officials said small pen parts posed a quality-control threat.
What did you think of the tour? Share your favorite moment in the comments.
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