When we are driving 14 hours to the barge leaving for Wollaston Lake we meet about 20 trucks loaded from the huge pits. Uranium powder from Rabbit Lake, McArthur River and the other Canadian giant mines in Saskatchewan should be transported very far. The first real city that truckdrivers are driving through is Saskatoon, which is equal to the Swedish third city Malmoe.
Here in Saskatoon both the Canadian company Cameco Corporation, the largest uranium company in the world, and the French uranium and nuclear power giant Areva, have headquarters. Cameco and Areva has an important role for the economy of Saskatchewan. Businesses create jobs and the companies are keen to be seen as much as possible in a positive context.
Cameco is for example a very important sponsor of the university in Saskatoon and owns a kidney hospital here. Both the markets of Cameco and Areva are also often seen in the city's theater lobby.
- It upsets me tremendously that even not a hospital can be operated with public funds, but allow themselves to be bought by these companies, Stephanie Sydiaha says.
- It's frightening, the uranium industry and these companies has caused so much trouble.

A disgrace to the province

Stephanie Sydiaha is one of the environmental movement's most important representatives in Saskatoon. Another is Peter Prebble, a former politician and now active in the organization Saskatchewan Environmental Society. He understands that uranium companies need to strive to be seen in favorable light.
- My very first objection is that the uranium from Saskatchewan has built up large parts of the world's nuclear arsenal, Peter Prebble says when we meet him at an ice cream bar in Saskatoon.
- For me this is a disgrace to both this province and for the whole country.
- Same thing with depleted uranium, used as ammunition in a large scale in the Iraqi war. Depleted uranium is a residue from the manufacture of nuclear fuel. It can be used as a radiation protection in connection with x-ray examinations.
More controversial it is also used as materials in tanks and ammunition. When the ammunition hits its target, it will be a fine powder, which can enter the human body through the lungs and stomach and into the kidneys and liver and poison cells.
The reports on how Iraqi children following the Gulf War suffering from cancer and birth defects for this war have been many. Suspicion exists that the diseases that a large number of returning American soldiers suffered was caused by depleted uranium.
Governmental Eldorado, which later became Cameco, broke the uranium in Port Radium in the Northwest Territories in Canada in the 1940s used for the nuclear bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.
The Port Radium mine caused consequences for the indigenous population in the area.

Died of lung cancer

Studies from Saskatchewan, until the 1970s, have shown an abnormal number of uranium miners suffering from lung cancer. 65 former miners who worked in the Beaver Lodge-mine between 1950 and 1980 died of lung cancer. But according to mining companies and the authorities there is no evidence that people who works in the mines now suffers at all.
Kevin Scissons is in charge at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commissions, CNSC:s, headquarter for control of uranium mining in Saskatoon. He concludes that the mineworking has no negative environmental impact at all on communities in northern Saskatchewan.
- The law in Canada says it can have legal implications if the companies do not do the mining correctly. We could stop mining if its not following the rules.
- We had not done it the last few years, Kevin Scissons also says.
- 1998 or 1999 we made a decision to stopp. It had nothing to do with health or environmental impacts, but about that they had not received permission to start a new process. This was stopped about one month, Kevin Scissons says.