Uranium mine poses on going risk, UN reports

The Shinkolobwe uranium mine in Katanga Province, in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), must remain closed, according to a statement issued on Tuesday following an assessment of the site by a joint UN team. "Risks of mine collapse and potential chronic exposure to ionising radiation" were the two reasons for the recommendation, according to the team of experts from the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN Mission in the DRC. The mine collapsed in July, killing eight people. The team carried out its assessment from 25 October to 4 November. "We found levels of radiation that exceed international safety standards," René Nijenhuis, an official with the joint UNEP-OCHA Emergency Services Branch, told IRIN on Wednesday from Geneva. "People in the area potentially risk chronic exposure." Uranium from Shinkolobwe was used in the atom bombs that detonated over the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. Officially, the mine has been closed for half a century, but some 15,000 people in and around Shinkolobwe were living off low-tech mining activities until the mine collapsed in July. Nijenhuis said no one appeared to be living in Shinkolobwe and the village had been destroyed. Although people were mining cobalt, not uranium, they still risked radiation exposure, according to the statement. "There is no respect for mining safety regulations," Bernard Lamouille, one of the team members specialised in low-tech mining, said. "The situation in Shinkolobwe could be described as anarchistic." In the coming weeks, the UN team will issue technical reports based on their finds from the visit. The reports will be on health, radiation safety, the environment, low mining safety and humanitarian issues.