Greenland’s uranium ban likely to continue

[Oscar]

Greenland’s uranium ban likely to continue

On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 12:08 PM, (With permission) 'Gordon Edwards' wrote:

Friends and Colleagues:

The following news from Greenland is very timely. Thanks to our Danish friend Neils Henrik Hooge for sharing this item.

Donald Trump has belligerently bragged that he will “get Greenland” one way or another. He sounds a bit like his buddy Vladimir Putin who has vowed that he will “get Ukraine” one way or another. In both cases, the officially stated piurpose is “national security” but there is also a strong underlying motive: taking possession of the "rich resources” of others.

Globally, Greenland has one of the largest identified deposits of “Rare Earth Elements” (REE), [ https://www.ccnr.org/Rare_Earths_2014_short.pdf ] that are always found to be intimately mingled with uranium and thorium deposits. There is a mountain rich in such radioactive ores located very close to the tidy little Inuit village of Narsaq (southern Greenland). Developers would like to strip-mine it. This billion-ton project is named Kuannersuit (in the Inuit language called Greenlandic) or Kvanefjeld (in Danish).

If approved for mining the main commodity from Narsaq would be rare earths and the secondary commodity would be uranium. The economics of the project dictates marketing both.

However, there is currently a ban on uranium mining in Greenland which prevents this mining project from going forward.

In 2016 I was sent to Narsaq by the Canadian group Physicans for Global Survival (PGS), to communicate some of the health-related concerns [ https://www.ccnr.org/Narsaq_Edwards_2016_1.pdf ] associated with uranium (and thorium) mining, at the request of the IA (Inuit Ataqatigiit) political party. I was accompanied by Dr. Bill Williams (MD) from Australia, a member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and also one of the co-founders of the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Our party also included Hilu Tagoona, representing the Inuit of Nunavut (Canada) who were successful in stopping a proposed uranium mine in the Baker Lake area on the western shore of Hudson’s Bay. A uranium ban was enacted by the Greenland parliament a few years after the Narsaq day-long seminar.

PGS is now IPPNWC – International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Canada.

On March 28, 2025, a coalition government was installed in Greenland which includes the IA party. The ban on uranium mining will likely be upheld and extended for the foreseeable future. So probably no Kvanefjeld/Kuannersuit mining project will be approved for now.

But Donald Trump wants those rare earth elements from Greenland. Coincidentally, he is bullying Ukraine into surrendering its rare earth minerals to the USA in exchange for Trump's brokering a limited cease-fire in the war of aggression launched by Putin, with virtually no concessions from the Russian side – and no firm American security guarantees for Ukraine going forward.

The global supply of rare earths is currently a quasi-monopoly of China. These elements are of crucial importance in many electronic applications, including renewable enetrgy sources. America’s billionaires want unfettered access for Artificial Intelligence and other profitable ventures,.

Canada of course is another tempting target for Trump’s rapacious appetite. Among the plentiful natural resources that Canada has been routinely exploiting and exporting, as if there is no tomorrow, almost always at the expense of indigenous peoples and the environment, Trump’s gang knows there rare earth deposits in Canada too – notably in Northern Ontario’s “Ring of Fire”. He – and presumably his friend Elon Musk – wants to own them.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, PhD, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
www.ccnr.org