Uranium in Valtellina: new drilling requests as local concerns grow

In the Orobie Alps, in Val Vedello, above 2,000 metres, lies one of Italy's most significant uranium oxide deposits. Between 1975 and 1983, the Agip company carried out an exploration campaign there, estimating around 6,000 tonnes, less than half of Europe's annual demand. The survey was never completed.

Today the British company Reveille Resources has requested to resume the investigations. The Lombardy Region has opened the environmental impact assessment procedure. The plan calls for 150 core samples over three years, in galleries that extend for eleven kilometres. Requests for exploration in the Orobie Alps have now risen to three.

Doubts over roads and the environment

The municipality of Piateda commissioned experts from the University of Turin and the Polytechnic of Turin to assess the project. Among the problems raised is the restoration of the old mountain road, now reduced to a path, which would have to carry traffic to the site. Lecturer Daniele Martinelli points to geological weaknesses along the final 3.8 kilometres of the route and is asking the applicant for more detailed information.

Another issue concerns environmental protection. Lecturer Vincenzo Andrea Riggio notes that the galleries have been home for around 40 years to several bat families and other notable wildlife.

Piateda's mayor, Simone Luca Marchesini, has submitted observations to the Ministry, asking for greater safety guarantees for any exploration activity.

The biggest concerns, however, relate to health. Piateda's former mayor, Martina Simonini, points to a kidney tumour incidence rate 1.40 times above average, though without proven causation; she is therefore calling for an epidemiological study. The mayor of Faedo Valtellino, Giordano Caprari, fears instead that the work could contaminate the water supplying the area.

Extraction has not yet been authorised: for now, only further research is under discussion. But the issue sits within a political context revived by the Meloni government, one that is attracting foreign capital. Reveille Resources' non-executive chairman is Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA, a sign of the international interest in this raw material.

The question of who will ultimately decide the fate of these mountains remains open: the communities living next to the deposit, who know its risks, or distant investors drawn by uranium's strategic value.