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Birds, drug trafficking, illegal immigration, federal dumping among U.S. uranium challenges
If you hunt sage grouse, get stoned, hire undocumented workers, mine Powder River Basin coal, or dump stockpiled uranium on world markets, you may be contributing to the burdens faced by U.S. uranium producers.
Author: Dorothy Kosich
Posted: Thursday , 03 Dec 2009
RENO, NV -
Sage Grouse habitat, the U.S. government dumping uranium in the market, and interaction between in-situ uranium mining and coalbed methane are the issues giving U.S. uranium miners sleepless nights.
In a presentation to the Northwest Mining Association meeting and exposition in Reno, Mike Thomas of Uranerz Energy in Wyoming said he's worried about a possibility that the sage grouse may be listed as an endangered species by the Fish and Wildlife Service at the end of February.
Wyoming just happens to have the largest U.S. population of sage grouse and two of the nation's three producing ISR uranium facilities.
Uranerz is in the process of permitting the Nichols Ranch ISR project in the state's Powder River Basin, which also is home to several of the nation's largest coal mines. Uranium giants Cameco of Canada and France's Areva operate two ISR uranium mines in the area.
Since coal lies 700 feet below Nichols Ranch's uranium deposits, Thomas is also dealing with the unusual permitting issue of the potential effects that an accidental incident of ISR interacting with coalbed methane could generate.
Meanwhile the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is growing increasingly concerned about health physics or the radiological aspects of uranium operations, Thomas noted. The Healthy Physics Society website says, "The health physicist's job is to manage the beneficial use of ionizing radiation while protecting workers and the public from potential hazards."
In his presentation to NWMA, Paul Gorenson, vice president for the privately owned uranium company Mestaña Uranium in Texas, said a considerable part of their time is spent coping with or dealing with U.S. government issues. The feds selling uranium without any concern for what it will do to uranium markets particularly frustrates U.S. uranium miners, he said.
Worse yet, federal dumping of uranium often generates the boom-bust aspect of mining uranium in this country, Gorenson suggested.
With its Alta Mesa Project located 55 miles north of a U.S.-Mexico border over-run by illegal immigrants and drug traffickers, Mestaña also spends time interacting with the U.S. Homeland Security Department. The uranium company is the second largest employer in the county, second only to Homeland Security.
The ranching family, which for generations has owned the 400,000-acre Jones Ranch sprawling across four counties in southern Texas, also owns Mestaña Uranium as well as oil interests. Although Gorenson forecasts that over the next few years uranium demand will outstrip supply, exploration activities on the ranch have been halted until market conditions improve.
Meanwhile, Gorenson noted eight licensed ISR mines in this country remain inactive and could have easily added 4 million to 6 million ounces of uranium production. A number of other ISR projects are in the planning and permitting stages in Wyoming and New Mexico, he added.