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British Columbia shuts door on uranium projects
by Wendy Stueck
The Globe and Mail
25 April 2008
VANCOUVER – British Columbia has slapped an official moratorium on
uranium exploration and development in the province, reinforcing a
long-standing informal ban on the nuclear fuel and dashing the hopes of
companies that hoped to take advantage of soaring prices for the
commodity.
The ban, announced yesterday, makes B.C. a no-go zone for uranium and
confirms a moratorium put in place in 1980 by a previous government
responding to anti-nuclear sentiment in the province.
That moratorium lapsed in 1987 but subsequent governments did not
move to update it, as companies focused their exploration campaigns
on other metals and because there was a widespread view that uranium production
would be unpopular in the province.
That changed in recent years, as uranium prices more than doubled and
climate change concerns put emissions-free, uranium-fed nuclear power
plants in the spotlight.
Several companies, including Vancouver-based Boss Power Inc., dusted off
uranium projects that had been explored decades ago with an eye to
bringing them into production.
The government's decision comes as a surprise and contradicts assurances
Boss had received that it would be able to take its project to public
hearings, Boss spokesman Rupert Allan said yesterday.
"We did not know this was coming," Mr. Allan said, saying the decision
makes the company's Blizzard deposit worthless. The company had
described it as containing up to $1-billion worth of uranium.
There is no uranium mining in B.C. Uranium exploration is under way in
other provinces, but the only producing mines in Canada are in
Saskatchewan.
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