Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Dr. Gavin Mudd


Dr. Gavin Mudd PhD spoke at the Fort Collins senior center Tuesday August 18th. Dr. Mudd received his PhD from the University of Victoria in Australia and is currently a professor of civil engineering at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Mudd specializes in studying environmental impacts of in situ uranium mining. His appearance is significant to the Front Range of northern Colorado as there is a proposed uranium mine near Nunn, CO. A Vancouver based company - Powertech Uranium Corporation - has begun applying for permits to recover an estimated twelve million lbs of the yellow metal from the site.

Tom Paine's Ghost has been hard at work for our friends at Wolverine Farm Publishing compiling a comprehensive story about this entire issue and what it means for the residents around the proposed mine site. Please keep your eyes out for the article release at matterdaily.org.

1 comment:

Erik Hunter said...

I am concerned that Dr. Mudd might not be as objective as he would have his audience believe. The linear no-threshold model for radiation exposure that he takes as gospel has not been "proven". In fact it is somewhat controversial in the scientific community (see Wikipedia). Also, he asserts that the USGS report proves that "No ISR mine in the United States has returned post-mining groundwater to baseline." Upon closer inspection, the report shows that the study only looked at mines in Texas, and the researchers admitted that they had no final groundwater data for 13 of the 36 TX mines. He failed to mention that the NRC has approved 11 wellfield restorations at the 3 existing licensed facilities (STAFF ASSESSMENT OF GROUNDWATER IMPACTS FROM PREVIOUSLY LICENSED IN-SITU URANIUM RECOVERY FACILITIES).