I have posted this in response to Ulti's request for info...

I have posted this in response to Ulti's request for info regarding utilization of Ablation within old U.S. abandoned Uranium Mine ore tailing's.


Here's something else for fellow BLR Holders new & old to consider !

Most mines in the U.S. were shut down long ago due to the poor grade of uranium ore and cheaper uranium supplies from other global commercial operations or from the former Soviet Nuclear weapons infrastructure.


At present there are still thousands of abandoned uranium mines across the southwest that have yet to be cleaned up. Epa experts say that waste rock from 4,000 identified producing mines estimate a range from 1 to 9 billion Metric Tons still untreated, with numbers that could go higher.


Here's an Overview example of abandoned Mines within the proximity of Arizona,Utah & New Mexico, with Wyoming to the North not shown.






In 1952 Charles Augustus Steen, an unemployed oil geologist from Texas, effectively proved there was significant uranium ore on the Colorado Plateau. Settling his wife and four young sons in a tarpaper shack near Cisco, he took off alone to seek the precious mineral. Unable to afford a geiger counter, he took a broken down drill rig into the back-country, ignored standard uranium-seeking technology, and used oil exploration geology to locate the Mi Vida mine in the Shinarump conglomerate of an area the AEC had deemed barren of ore. What had been ridiculed as "Steen's Folly" resulted in the nation's first big uranium strike in the Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab.

Steen's find triggered more. Vernon Pick claimed the Delta Mine northwest of Hanksville, later selling it to international financier Floyd Odlum for nine million dollars and an airplane. Pratt Seegmiller staked the lucrative Freedom and Prospector claims near Marysvale. Joe Cooper and Fletcher Bronson discovered uranium in their played-out Happy Jack copper mine near Monticello and netted over $25 million. Between 1946 and 1959, 309,380 claims were filed in four Utah counties. A center of activity, the once sleepy farming town of Moab became known as "The Uranium Capitol of the World."

By 1955 there were approximately 800 mines producing high-trade ore on the Colorado Plateau. Utah alone had produced approximately nine million tons of ore valued at $25 million by the end of 1962. But then the industry almost came to a standstill. The AEC, now holding ample reserves, announced an eight-year limited program, and finally completely stopped buying uranium in 1970. Private industry triggered a brief second boom when nuclear power plants came on line in the mid-70s, but foreign competition, federal regulations and nuclear fears virtually put an end to domestic uranium mining.





Cheers from G64

EARLY URANIUM MINING IN THE UNITED STATES



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