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For those of you who have never been to the Canyon...I doubt this venture would impact the view. I've been to the canyon twice, and first of all, they said the test mining would be done adjacent to the canyon park, not IN the park. Secondly, once you get to the entrance to the park, it takes another 5minutes of driving through scrubs and trees just to reach the canyon rim, and you don't even know you're there until you're right on top of it!...and then it's generally about a 1000 foot drop at any given point before you'd hit an extreme sloping canyon wall that drops another mile into the river below. Standing at the rim you can see across to the other side about 16 miles away at it's widest point, not to mention that the whole canyon stretches over 200 miles. I seriously doubt that some neighboring mines in one particular area, and a bunch of trucks driving up and down an established highway, are going to ruin such a huge wonder. And they'd never mine IN the canyon...it would be nearly impossible and the country would never let it happen. But come on people, we're talking about the American Southwest here...there's already numerous turquoise mines, oil drills, and a few opal mines dotting the region....probably others I'm not mentioning. Plus, uranium is an important element for this country's energy future. Nuclear plants get a bad rap because of the media hype from events such as Three Mile Island (no damage done) and Chernobyl (caused by human ignorance and a now outlawed and outdated, carbon-rod system). The newer plants being used by every country it seems, besides us, are extremely clean and safe, and provide a HUGE amount of energy from very little uranium. The plants don't "melt-down" anymore because of fool-proof safety mechanisms now in effect (wanna know more - send me a message). All of this wind, solar, and natural gas stuff is just plain stupid and highly inefficient in comparison. I don't know about you all, but my energy bills are high, and I'd like to see them come down...if all it takes is a few more nuclear plants, I don't care if they mine some uranium near the canyon. It's not like you'll see any of it while you're visiting the canyon. Oh, and the way uranium comes out of the ground isn't all that bad since it's an ore before they refine it...so it's not like everyone passing the trucks will be irradiated or something. Also, uranium ore is rare - current estimates show we have enough worldwide to fuel current plants for 100 years though. There are only a few mines throughout the world, so imagine what the valuable mineral could do for our economy if we were to find a viable mine in our own country. Does anyone think these things through?
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