The proposed uranium mine between Langer Heinrich Mountains and the popular tourism spot Blutkuppe in the Namib Naukluft Park will seriously threaten tourism in the future, because visitors to the Blutkuppe will inhale hazardous radon gas and other radio-active components once the uranium open pit mine is in operation, according to scientists. Mining minister Erkki Nghimtina laid the corner stone for the new mine on Thursday, while environmentalists and protesters against atomic energy waged a peace-ful demonstration at the entrance to the Park the same day.

Two German experts, Gerhard Schmidt and Peter Diehl from the Öko-Institut für Angewandte Ökologie in Darmstadt completed a damning report on the environmental assessment study done by Paladin Resources of Australia, holding company of Langer Heinrich Uranium (LHU) Ltd. Germany’s Green Party funded their work.

Due to an inappropriate selection of input data the calculations of doses of radioactive pollutants in the air dangerous to the public were underestimated by the Australian company, according to then German experts. "A person at Bloedkoppie (Blutkuppe), a tourist attraction just 1.5 to 2.5 km in distance to the uranium mine, could breathe in more than internationally accepted limits", the Öko-Institut says. "The spread of radon and other hazardous gases clearly reach beyond the operational area for quite a number of kilometres".

The uranium mine will use 1.3 million cubic metres of water per year, which is not available at the site, must be transported from Swakopmund via a pipeline and must be produced at Swakopmund. This requires additional 1.3 million. m³ to the presently used 10.4 million m³ at the coast, where 12.6 Mio. m³ are sustainably available, another flaw, the experts say.

The assessment of Paladin gave no information on the measures to be taken to minimize the hazard from waste rock deposits, such as covers for dust mitigation, radiation protection, erosion protection and flood protection, Diehl and Schmidt found. Paladin’s calculated for dust only radium-226 and thorium-230, whereas the German institute insists that the whole uranium decay series in equilibrium has to be included. Radon gas and radioactive dust present the major hazards from uranium mining and have to be carefully assessed. - And Bertchen Kohrs (Earthlife Namibia) said one of the most serious short-comings of Paladin’s assessment is that no realistic view on the hazardous effects on the workers on the mining site has been presented because no estimate has been made on the exposure of workers to radio-active air. "The Öko Institute established that the Australian mining company underestimated the concentrations for Radium and Radon by a factor of four".