(June 25, 1992) We recently received a fax from Lance Hughes of Native Americans for a Clean Environment (NACE) in Oklahoma, US.
(374/5.3677) WISE Amsterdam - He and some other NACE folks had just returned from a tour of the Sequoyah Fuels uranium conversion facility (which produces 20% of the world's supply of uranium hexafluoride) near Gore, Oklahoma. The facility, owned by General Atomics, was restarted on 16 April and has already had four accidents. (See in brief, this issue.)
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URGENT REQUEST FOR CONTACTS WITH CIS GROUPS |
While touring the facility the group was able to gather information on who is supplying the plant - a death machine, as Hughes describes it, that has been killing Indian people there for 22 years. Current suppliers of uranium are:
- U.E.M. (on which we could find nothing);
- Cluff Lake Mining Corp. Ltd. Operates the Cluff Lake mine in Saskatchewan, Canada [which, accor-ding to The Gulliver File, is one of the world's most dangerous mines due to the extremely high level of uranium-in-ore] and is one of the world's most important (and richest) uranium producers; 80% owned by Amok Ltd.;
- Pathfinder Mines Corporation's Shirly Basin Mines (Wyoming, US). Pathfinder is owned by the French CEA (through Cogema);
- Cameco Corp, "The world's lowest-cost major uranium producer", according to Nuclear Fuel; 38.9% owned by the Saskatchewan provincial government and 19.3% owned by the Canadian federal government;
- Umefco [On this corporation, we could find nothing. Perhaps the supplier is actually Umetco, a US firm which is a daughter company of Union Carbide Corp.];
- Techbramexport [Hughes identifies this as a Russian firm, but we could find nothing on it.].
Hughes says there was also mention of Chinese customers, but he didn't see any drums that would identify them as customers. In addition, he overheard a conversation on how proud Sequoyah Fuels was of the high quality of uranium it was getting from Russia and that most of its source will be from there.
Source and Contact: See accompanying box.