Published: June 20, 2019 |

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A decision expected from the Trump White House in coming weeks could have far-reaching consequences for Utah’s uranium mining industry, which has been largely dormant in the face of competition from overseas producers.

U.S. nuclear power plants get the vast majority of their uranium fuel from foreign sources — such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and China — even though there are ample reserves of the radioactive mineral at home in the Colorado Plateau.

President Donald Trump could change that with a stroke of the executive pen should he sign an order requiring — in the name of national security — power generators to receive 25 percent of the uranium they use from domestic sources.

Such a measure could breathe new life into an extractive industry that has a storied past in Utah, along with a troubling environmental legacy and public health history whose impacts still sting decades after Cold War-era uranium mines and mills closed.

At the behest of two U.S. producers, the Trump administration has until July 15 to decide whether to impose the quota, which would make mining near Grand Canyon National Park and Bears Ears National Monument much more likely, warn critics such as Amber Reimondo, energy program director of the Grand Canyon Trust.

“It would give U.S. uranium miners their own safe space in the market so they’re no longer competing in the global saturated uranium market,” Reimondo said. “They now have this private part of the market that’s all for themselves, which means their prices are going to go up because nuclear power reactors and the U.S. government utilities have no choice but to buy from them.”

Southeastern Utah holds significant uranium resources and has been an important supplier for nuclear power plants and U.S. defense and national security, according to Paul Goranson, chief operating officer for Energy Fuels Resources, one of the two companies seeking the quota.

“This year, our once robust industry is expected to provide less than 1 percent of the uranium our country’s nuclear power plants need to generate 20% of U.S. electricity,” Goranson said. “By acting to protect the domestic uranium mining industry, President Trump can help ensure the infrastructure in Utah, including Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill, which employs 60 local workers and is the last operating uranium mill in the U.S., continues to support these important needs.”

His firm maintains several idled mines, including Utah’s Daneros and La Sal complex mines, which the Bureau of Land Management has greenlighted for substantial expansion, and has a stake in about 300 uranium claims on public lands that Trump removed from Bears Ears National Monument.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, uranium mining and processing were largely unregulated, and the federal government failed to disclose the risks of exposure. Hundreds of miners, their families and communities — including southern Utah’s Moab, Marysvale, Mexican Hat and Monticello — have endured a toxic legacy that persists to this day. Unreclaimed mines dot San Juan, Grand and Emery counties.

Through the years, the government paid out billions compensating people sickened by uranium exposure. Billions more have have been spent cleaning up contaminated sites, such as the massive Atlas tailings pile near Moab on the banks of the Colorado River.

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

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