The Update: Victory in Virginia

A state moratorium banning uranium mining in the Commonwealth of Virginia has stood since 1982. But in 2007, a Canadian company called Virginia Uranium Inc., partnered with a landowner at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to try to overturn the ban. The reason? Beneath the Coles land lies the largest uranium deposit in the US -- not a very high quality one but nevertheless a potential, well, gold mine.

A coalition of citizens across Virginia, calling themselves Keep the Ban, have, since 2008, fought efforts by VUI to overturn the moratorium. Now it looks like they might finally have won. VUI failed to get legislation passed in 2013 to reverse the ban and even went as far as the US Supreme Court where it lost as well.

Last month, hopefully, came the final nail in the uranium coffin, when a state judge declared that Virginia had a right to protect its citizens from the "irreparable harm if uranium mining were to be allowed in the Commonwealth.”