Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 1.3: Indigenous Peoples, Mining and Climate Change
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water availability for mining operations, leading to higher
costs and cause quality issues (e.g., salinity),” the analysts indicated.
“Operations reliant on hydroelectricity may benefit
or suffer from higher or lower rainfall, respectively. In some
areas, higher rainfall could require modification to tailings
operations.”
1.3.4 Uranium Revival
The nuclear power industry, and the mining operations
for uranium on which it depends, have had increasing difficulty
in maintaining credibility and investment. They have
been hit by disasters such as the Three Mile Island in the USA,
the 1986 Chernobyl in Belarus and—more recently—the
Fukushima disaster in Japan. Unfortunately and perversely,
however, the general concern over climate change has been
taken as an opportunity to revive the fortunes of this most
unsustainable of all fuels.
The radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl resulted in
significant pollution from radioactive materials. The plume
drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and
Europe. From 1986 to 2000, 350,400 people were evacuated
and resettled from the most severely-contaminated areas of
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. 61 According to official post-Soviet
data, about 60 percent of the fallout landed in Belarus. 62
Significant radioactive fallout was recorded as far away as
Wales and Ireland in the west.
Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only two level seven
events ever recorded on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
Nuclear power, already among the most expensive forms of
power generation, became increasingly feared and opposed.
According to The Japan Times, the Fukushima nuclear disaster
changed the national debate over energy policy almost
overnight. “By shattering the government’s long-pitched
safety myth about nuclear power, the crisis dramatically raised
public awareness about energy use and sparked strong antinuclear
sentiment.” A June 2011 Asahi Shimbun poll of 1,980