(September 1995) In Europe, uranium mining has generally not taken place in the limelight, although about one third of the world's total uranium production has been produced in Europe so far.
In Western Germany, for example, the construction and operation of nuclear power plants, as well as the nuclear waste problem, have always found high public attention. The origin of the nuclear industry, the uranium mining industry, however, did never find that attention. One reason, obviously is that the uranium used for the German nuclear power plants is nearly completely imported from overseas, and the problems resulting from the uranium industry are thus not obvious in Western Germany.
Quite on the contrary, for example, the situation in France, the largest uranium producer in Western Europe: Here, a nation-wide network of environmental groups opposing uranium mining was already set up in 1979.
In Eastern Germany, there existed vast uranium mining operations; but information on them was not publicly accessible until the young peace and environmental activist Michael Beleites published his underground report "Pitchblend - Uranium Mining in the GDR and its Impacts" in 1988.
The situation changed abruptly with the political changes in 1989. It came to light that in Europe large areas had also been devastated for the production of the source material for the nuclear bomb, and later for nuclear power.
Meanwhile, uranium production has been shut down or strongly reduced in most European countries due to the high production cost. What is left over, are the countless shut-down uranium mines, hundreds of millions of tonnes of radiating waste rock and uranium mill tailings, presenting health risks through release of radon gas and contaminated seepage. This legacy does not only present an immediate hazard, but also endangers future generations for tens of thousands of years.
The time has come that the decisions on the fate of the uranium mining legacy and thus of the future generations must no longer be taken in obscurity.