Let's not forget the hidden costs of uranium mining

Jen Jackson writes and insightful piece in the High Country News about the gradual and insiduous toll that uranium mining takes on the largely indigenous communities that do the deadly work. Here's an excerpt:

With other extractive industries, we tend to see the tragedies boldly splashed across the front page of the newspaper -- the massive oil spills, deaths on the natural gas rigs, or the dozens of coal miners killed in collapses and explosions. We can't avoid a general awareness of some of the true costs of fossil fuels-based energy production. But many of the costs of nuclear power -- beyond the Three Mile Island tragedy now fading in our memories -- have been more insidious.

Cancer deaths do not occur suddenly, inside a mine. Instead, they happen slowly and at a remove from the time and place of exposure. The deaths occur at home or in the hospital, surrounded by grieving loved ones rather than reporters with TV cameras. The family mourns, but the nation goes on about its business; nobody makes speeches. Mining disasters are horrible, but uranium takes an even more deadly toll. And it's not just the miners who are affected. It's also the families that live near the mine or the mill.