The Natural Resources Department is looking at whether it’s time to lift a ban on uranium exploration that dates back to the early 1980s.

“I’ve asked the minister and the department to take a look at the issue, and at the appropriate time, they’ll bring forward recommendations to government, and from there, we will make a decision,” Premier Rodney MacDonald said Thursday after a cabinet meeting.

The premier said there’s no deadline for completion of the review.

“They’ve started the work . . . but it could be some time before we make a decision, and we’re not firm on any timeline on this particular issue just yet,” he said.

Mr. MacDonald had said in the fall that he was “open” to the possibility of lifting the ban, which has been in place since 1982. He has also said it isn’t a priority for his government.

The premier was much clearer Thursday about whether any work on reconsidering the moratorium was underway than he was Wednesday, when he told The Chronicle Herald’s editorial board, “We are not in that process, but we haven’t closed the door to it.”

Mr. MacDonald said Thursday that Canada’s premiers have talked together about the importance of nuclear energy.

“That is much more acceptable today than it was in the 1980s, and you need uranium for that process, so it’s only logical that we take a look at the issue,” Mr. MacDonald said.

Environmentalists and others are already mobilizing in support of the ban. The Council of Canadians is holding a public information meeting on the issue tonight in Chester Grant.

“There’s huge environmental and health risks with uranium mining, and they really haven’t really come up with technology to deal with the tailings,” said Frank Fawson, an organizer with the council’s South Shore chapter. “They’re radioactive, some of them for thousands of years.”

A representative of the Mining Association of Canada wasn’t available for comment.

Mr. MacDonald said Nova Scotia is one of the few places in the world that doesn’t allow uranium exploration. He said nuclear energy could be part of the answer in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The premier said Wednesday that a review of the moratorium would have to include looking at what’s happening in other jurisdictions, as well as “why, in the first place, it was put in place and whether it was based on science and whether it was based on perhaps politics.”

He said the science behind allowing uranium exploration would have to make sense for the government to actually lift the ban.

Environmentalists are concerned about Tripple Uranium Resources Inc. drilling holes searching for minerals in Wentworth and in Millet Brook, between Windsor and Chester. The company’s exploration licence from the province allows it to search for many minerals, but not uranium.

The company is likely to find trace amounts of uranium, but if the quantity is too high, the exploration would be shut down, Natural Resources Minister David Morse said earlier this month.

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