A new federal law banning the import of Russian uranium and directing $2.7 billion toward expansion of U.S. production of uranium for nuclear power could revive a long-dormant uranium industry in western Colorado and surrounding states.
“All things are looking very, very positive for our industry,” said Mark Chalmers, the CEO of Lakewood-based Energy Fuels, which is ramping up uranium production at three mines in Arizona and Utah. “It’s just a great time for the state of Colorado and the United States of America.”
Rumblings of a uranium renaissance have bounced around western Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Wyoming since most of the West’s uranium mines were idled in 2012 by the collapse of uranium prices.
Energy Fuels, a Canadian company with its corporate offices in Lakewood, owns and operates the only uranium processing mill in the country. The White Mesa Mill outside Blanding, Utah, is licensed to process up to 2,000 tons of uranium, vanadium and other rare mineral ore a day. The company provides uranium for nuclear power and vanadium for strengthening steel. Energy Fuels is diversifying into rare earth minerals, used in magnets for electric vehicles and wind turbines, and radioisotopes that the company says could be used for cancer-fighting therapies.
The company has uranium mining and production facilities in Arizona near the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming and has a stash of yellowcake — the powdered uranium oxide concentrate that can be converted into fuel for nuclear reactors — between 585,000 and 935,000 pounds, according to its 2023 annual report. (There is only one facility in the U.S. — in Eunice, New Mexico — that can convert yellowcake into nuclear fuel rods.)
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order banning the import of Russian oil, gas and coal. The law he signed on Monday would end about $1 billion in annual spending by U.S. nuclear power plants on Russian uranium.
Uranium spent years priced too low to warrant domestic mining operations and most permitted mines have been dormant since 2012. Energy Fuels in late 2023 ramped up production at three of its mines in Arizona and Utah as uranium prices climbed to a 16-year high. The company estimated the mines could help the company deliver more than 2 million pounds of yellowcake by next year.
Miners prospecting across Colorado, Utah, Wyoming
Energy Fuels is not alone in the revival of the uranium industry.
Texas-based Uranium Energy is planning to revive uranium production at its Christensen Ranch in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which the company bought from the Russia State Atomic Energy Corp. in 2021. Australia’s Thor Energy is drilling test sites to access uranium from 199 mining claims it owns in the Uravan Mineral Belt in western Colorado. Residents in Fremont County are fighting an Australian company exploring uranium deposits along Tallahassee Creek northwest of Cañon City. That same company, Okapi Resources, is planning uranium exploration near Maybell in Moffat County. Another Texas company, enCore Energy Corp., in January acquired a Canadian mining company that owns land in western Weld County where it hoped to mine 700,000 pounds of uranium over 14 years.
Other companies are ramping up plans for increased uranium mining around the Four Corners region.
Energy Fuels in 2009 rehabilitated the Whirlwind uranium and vanadium mine about five miles west of Gateway on Bureau of Land Management mining claims in both Mesa County and across the Utah border in Grand County. The Whirlwind mine has been dormant since then, but Chalmers on Tuesday said the new law signed by Biden could be an incentive to restart the operation.
The company has been working for the last two years to prepare Whirlwind for mining uranium ore, he said during a press conference on Tuesday.
“It is definitely in the queue for one of the mines to reopen up,” Chalmers said. “We are starting with the three mines under production right now then we will advance into Whirlwind and then into Wyoming.”
As prices for uranium climbed, U.S. production of yellowcake increased 10 times in 2022 compared to historic lows in 2021. In 2022, 95% of uranium purchased by U.S. nuclear power plants came from other countries, with Canada the largest source, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia. That year the U.S. Department of Energy increased funding to increase domestic production of nuclear fuel. The 54 nuclear power plants in 28 states have supplied about 20% of the nation’s electricity since 1990.
State regulators, federal land agencies and local communities require lengthy review of uranium industry expansion plans. Environmental watchdogs keep close watch on growth plans for new uranium mines.
Energy Fuels is hoping to build two new impoundments and tailing ponds at its White Mesa mill and the state of Utah is reviewing those plans. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality Waste and Radiation Control recently unveiled new regulations that strengthen the environmental review for uranium mills and mines.
Environmental groups are concerned with new mining operations and storage facilities as the uranium industry scales up production, said Sarah Fields, the program director for Moab-based Uranium Watch. The White Mesa expansion plan, for example, could damage archeological sites, Fields said.
“We are talking about the kind of stuff you have in national parks and national monuments, destroyed to build tailings impoundments,” Fields said. “Things are moving forward. This is happening.”