URANIUM MINING (Gateway, CO), Uranium Mining from Boom To Burst

Gateway, CO

Comment: Uranium mining will be a total economic and health bust! Demand Virginia leaders to ban uranium mining! (Thanks k)


Insight - A New Economy Emerges in Western Colorado

A new Sonoran Institute report uncovers economic risks associated with renewed uranium mining in Mesa County, Colorado. The research report provides perspective and recommendations for local officials. Read the report (PDF).


URANIUM MINING (Gateway, CO)

Uranium mining activity in the Gateway area is currently centered at the
Whirlwind Mine. In September 2008, Energy Fuels Resource Corporation
(Energy Fuels) completed the permitting process to mine up to 200 tons per
day of uranium ore at the property, which is approximately four miles southwest
of Gateway on the Colorado-Utah border (see Map 2).

The plan of operations indicates an initial mining rate of 100 tons per day and 10 to 12 employees, expanding to 200 tons per day with 24 employees. The average salary of the miners would be $40,000 to $50,000.

The uranium ore would be hauled via John Brown Canyon Road, Colorado
Highways 141 and 90, Utah Highway 46, and U.S. Highway 191 to the White
Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah. Estimated project life is 10 years (Bureau of Land
Management 2008).

In response to the drop in uranium prices in 2008, the company placed the
mine operation on standby effective November 21, 2008 as part of a “capital
preservation strategy” (Energy Fuels Inc. 2008).

The run-up in uranium prices over the period from 2004 through 2007 increased
the value of low-grade ore stockpiles left by earlier mining efforts.

In 2008, permits were issued for the removal of approximately 7,500 tons of lowgrade
ore from the October Mine, located about four miles due south of Gateway.

The mining plan calls for loading of the ore and hauling it to the White
Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah (Bureau of Land Management 2008). The operation
would likely employ two or three employees for one month.

Several additional historical uranium mines with potentially minable resources
exist in the area surrounding the Whirlwind Mine. This area is known as the
Beaver Mesa Mining District. Historical mine production in the area included at
least 7 million pounds of uranium ore and 24 million pounds of vanadium ore.

Energy Fuels controls additional mining properties in the area through lease
agreements (Bureau of Land Management 2008). Another company, Blue Rock
Energy Corporation (Blue Rock), also had options on properties in the area, having
conducted sampling operations at the Cone Mountain property. The property
was recently released by Blue Rock, which had not met an option payment
due to market conditions (Blue Rock Resources Ltd. 2009).

Map 2: Gateway Area

Based on the presence in the Gateway area of uranium mines with additional
potentially minable uranium resources, recent uranium claim staking and mineral
exploration activity, the potential exists for increased local uranium mining
activity. The timing and levels of future employment and economic activity that
could be associated with such mining is difficult to estimate, as it is highly dependent
on uranium commodity prices, which have been volatile over the last
few years. Should the uranium price rebound to levels near $100/lb, there
would likely be increased employment and economic activity associated with
mining in the Gateway area.

In summary, the current economy of the Gateway area is primarily based on
tourism and outdoor recreation. Due to low uranium prices, local employment
and other economic activity associated with uranium exploration and mining is
very low at the present time. As such, at this time (early 2009), uranium mining
makes a much smaller contribution to the local economy.

Future activity in this economic sector will likely cycle up and down with uranium prices (see
the following section on boom-and-bust cycles in the Uravan Mineral Belt).
The outdoor recreation and tourism economy in the area is likely to continue to
grow as Gateway Canyons Resort expands and the number of visitors to the
area increases. Another factor to consider when comparing local impacts of
these two economic sectors is that most of the employees in the tourism and
outdoor recreation sector are likely to be local residents. These employees
will spend a greater portion of their incomes in the local economy than mining
employees who are more likely to be out-of-area residents. _
22

Gateway is located at the northern end of the Uravan Mineral Belt
(UMB), an arcuate zone of uranium-vanadium ore deposits within
the Morrison Formation. The UMB extends across the western
portions of Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel counties in Colorado, and
extends slightly into Grand and San Juan counties in Utah (see Map 3)
(Motica 1968).

Uranium and vanadium ores have been mined from the UMB since their first
discovery in 1898. The Belt has seen several boom-and-bust cycles.

From 1910 to 1923 the first boom occurred with ores in the UMB exploited primarily for
radium with a small amount of byproduct uranium and vanadium. In 1923,
high-grade uranium deposits were discovered in the Congo and this source supplanted
ores from the UMB.

The first bust occurred from 1923 to 1937, during which there was hardly any mineral production in the area (Motica 1968).

The second boom in the area began in 1937, based on increasing demand for
vanadium for use in steel production. Vanadium mining continued until 1944,
with some byproduct uranium extracted for use in the Manhattan project.

This was followed by a three-year bust period of very little mining activity in the area
after the end of World War II (Motica 1968).

A third boom started in 1948 with the onset of the Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC) domestic uranium procurement program. This boom ended essentially in
1962 when the AEC ended the program, but waning production continued
under the AEC “stretch-out” program until 1970.

With the partial release of market controls in the 1970s and a growing international
demand created by nuclear power expansion, prices increased dramatically,
reaching $50/lb in 1977.

This fourth boom came to an end after the incident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania in March 1979. The price dropped very rapidly until 1983 and continued to decline throughout the remainder of the 1980s. Low prices then continued until
2003. During this period, uranium mining almost completely ceased in the
UMB and elsewhere in the region.

The fifth boom-and-bust cycle began in 2004 when the price of uranium started
moving up yet again, peaking at about $136 in June 2007. This most recent uranium
price run-up resulted in a huge increase in uranium exploration activity in
the UMB and adjacent prospective areas in Colorado and Utah. Many thousands
of new mining claims were staked in Colorado from 2004 through 2007,
many of them in the UMB (see Map 3). Several mines were permitted and min ing re-started at some properties. Also during this period, a new uranium mill was proposed for the Paradox Valley (see Map 3) and the permitting process initiated. The price of uranium has since plunged again to about $50/lb in early February 2009.

This has initiated a new bust with properties closing down, workers furloughed, exploration programs slowing down and mines going on standby (Energy Fuels Inc. 2008; Jaffe 2008; Blue Rock Resources Ltd. 2009).

In light of the multiple boom-and-bust cycles that have occurred in the UMB
over the last hundred or so years and given the historical and continuing volatility
of uranium prices, it seems highly likely that the area will see similar cycles
in the future.

Price increases will most likely be accompanied by claim-staking
rushes, increased exploration activities and increased mining activities. A period
of sustained high uranium prices could also result in the permitting and opening of new uranium
milling operations in or near the UMB.

With price decreases, exploration programs will wane
and mines will shut down. _

Please review the whole study: http://www.sonoraninstitute.org/

Uranium all about $ signs

Comment: Again, another great letter stating facts about the layoffs in uranium mining. Southside deserves clean, high tech jobs just like Northern Virginia! We are tired of manufacturing jobs and we do not want our children to grow up to be uranium miners!! Demand Virginia to ban uranium mining and milling NOW!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 9:22 AM EDT

It saddens me to think some can only think of $$ (dollar signs) and not the contamination and sickness from uranium mining and milling.

We, the citizens, have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

I would like to know when the price of uranium drops will Virginia Uranium Inc. or any other uranium mining companies handle their mining and milling operations like all the other mining companies in the world do.

Will you stop operations temporally or permanently until the price of uranium rises again?

Keep in mind, even if you are an experienced miner, these jobs could be part time; you might be laid off for months.

Can you support your family on a part-time job? Would you try and build or buy a house or buy a new vehicle knowing you might only work three to four months a year?

The only milling facility (White Mesa) in the United States has only operated a few months this year, and announced in May it would not process ore for the remainder of 2009 because its cost is higher than the spot price of uranium, according to Denison Mines president Ron Hochstein.

Let's not forget about all the part-time tax revenue for our county and state.

My understanding of the tax revenue from mining and milling operations is the company has to be running and the jobs being worked to get the tax revenue.

Our great state and county are not run on part-time taxes and jobs.

It might help, but it does not outweigh the contamination of our drinking water and land, the sickness to our families and the tax increases to clean up this mess if it ever could be cleaned up.

All I hear is we need to mine this uranium, get it out of the ground if it is so dangerous, it's a matter of national security, and we need to dig so we can power our nuclear plants now.

Well watch the price drop and you will see the mining stop.

The nuclear plants still need the uranium whether the price is high or low, but we have an excess of uranium, and the mining and milling will stop and start with the greed and costs of operations.

If dug up, the radon released with be 10,000 times more than if left in the ground.

What I feel is a matter of national security is destroying your own water and agriculture land and depending on foreign countries to feed you or provide you with drinking water.

Phillip Lovelace
Gretna

http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/08/05/chatham/opinion/opinion02.txt

Kyrgyz Town Lives with Radioactive Soviet Legacy

Comment: Uranium Mining has ruin people lives all over the world. Uranium mining today is the same old, same old, they put fans in the underground mines, the open pit mining, well they blow that up (not new) but inside the uranium milling, well you may get to wear lovely white suits all day!! So, may question to you, Do you want your children to grow up to be uranium miners!! Heck NO!!

by Ivan Watson

Morning Edition, February 5, 2008 · Residents of the town of Mailuu-Suu in Kyrgyzstan are accustomed to living next to radioactive waste.

Some locals even joke that they need radiation to survive.

"It's in our blood. We can't breathe without it; we can't live without it," said Sultanbek Eshmanbetov, chuckling as he gave a walking tour of the snowy grounds around his electric insulation factory.

In Soviet times, the factory employed 650 people. But now, even the factory's remaining 40 employees have been without work because of power cuts that have frozen production for months.

On the tour, the factory director pointed out several plots of land, just a stone's throw away from his compound. A rusting metal sign poked out of the snow, warning of radiation.

"Here's a radioactive waste dump, there's one over there and another one over there," Eshmanbetov said. He then urged his guests to each drink 100 grams of vodka at the end of their visit to help "clean the radiation" out of their systems.

In Mailuu-Suu, taxi drivers, shopkeepers and even town government officials offered visitors similar advice. Few question whether vodka is a remedy for radiation exposure.

Mailuu-Suu has one of the largest concentrations of radioactive waste in all of former Soviet Central Asia, said Amanda Wooden, an environmental policy professor at Bucknell University.

Last year, it was ranked one of the world's 30 most-polluted places by The Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based environmental organization.

Bunkers Deteriorating

Mailuu-Suu was once an elite Soviet industrial town, where uranium was mined and processed. The mining came to a stop in the 1960s. The radioactive waste remains to this day.

The Soviets buried some 2 million cubic meters of radioactive material under layers of concrete and gravel in 23 dumps around the town. In some places, the dumps are marked by concrete posts and waist-high barbed wire fences, which impoverished locals sometimes steal and sell for scrap metal.

"The wastes were simply left in piles, and unfortunately, right along a major water source, the Mailuu-Suu River, in a tectonically active area, in a canyon surrounded by a population, in a town that was built, in essence developed, in order to do this mining," said Wooden, who studied Mailuu-Suu when she served as an environmental field officer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in southern Kyrgyzstan.

The Kyrgyz government has been asking for international assistance to protect the deteriorating radioactive bunkers from bursting open in the event of an earthquake or a flood.

"The radioactive waste sites are in a dangerous area that's prone to landslides," said Capt. Almabek Aidekeev of the Emergency Situations Ministry. "There is a danger that the radioactive dumps could break open and spill their contents into the water, and then disperse downstream."

In the worst-case scenario, the radioactive material could plunge into the fast-flowing Mailuu-Suu River and be carried downstream across the border to a densely populated region of Uzbekistan, less than 50 miles away, thus contaminating the water supply for more than 2 million people. In 1992, 1,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste spilled into the river when a landslide broke open one of the dumps.

Worries About Health, Environment

The World Bank has contributed several million dollars to protect some of Mailuu-Suu's radioactive garbage.

Recently, Kyrgyz workers were hard at work in the freezing cold, attaching metal nets to the steep banks of a dry creek bed. The gulley wends between several radioactive dumps that are perched precariously on a rapidly eroding hillside. Asked whether he was worried about exposure to radiation, Aman Toktubaev looked up from the netting and answered, "We're used to it, because we've been here 30 years."

Little has been done to protect the more than 20,000 residents living in Mailuu-Suu from their radioactive neighborhood. Most of the factory jobs that first brought them to the town have disappeared following the collapse of the Soviet economy. Locals now struggle to get by, living in crumbling apartment buildings in an area where the background radiation levels are three times higher than the average in North America.

Dr. Rakhmanbek Toichuyev, a pediatrician from the Academy of Sciences in Osh, said he documented abnormally high rates of birth defects, miscarriages and stillbirths in Mailuu-Suu.

"There's a higher incidence of stomach cancer among residents who live close to the river," Toichuyev said. "In some cases, we found that people [unwittingly] used irradiated stones to build the foundations of their homes."

Much of the evidence of health problems in Mailuu-Suu is anecdotal — in part, one foreign observer says, because the Kyrgyz government has blocked the publication of reports on the town's environmental and health hazards.

"People die young here because of the radiation," said 24-year-old Misha Kassimov after working a shift at the struggling Mailuu-Suu light bulb factory, the last major source of employment in the area. "Last month, my friend died from bone cancer. … He was 22 years old."

A Risky Source of Income

As Kyrgzystan's economy has gone post-industrial, scavenging scrap metal has increasingly become a vital and, environmentalists say, dangerous source of income.

On the outskirts of Mailuu-Suu sits an entire mountain of broken glass, the product of 40 years of industrial waste dumped by the town's lightbulb factory.

The sound of tinkling glass was everywhere as dozens of locals dug through the snow to scrape through shards of glass, looking for light bulb filaments that would later be sold as scrap metal. No one paid attention to the radioactive dump sites less than 100 yards away.

"The uranium's buried right over there," said Kabuljan Dolotaliev, a former employee of the lightbulb factory, who now scavenges metal for less than $2 a day. "We eat on top of the uranium, drink on top of the uranium. What should I be afraid of?"

Another scrap-metal hunter said he regularly drank milk to combat the effects of the radiation.

In 2006, the price of nickel jumped, and the glass landfill became a scavenger city with restaurants, tents and taxis serving as many as 5,000 scrap-metal hunters a day. Several people died during the scrap nickel boom, buried alive under mounds of broken glass. Foreign observers worried that in the scrap metal frenzy, scavengers uncovered more Soviet-era radioactive waste and leaked it out into the environment.

Amid the abandoned factories and increasingly empty apartment buildings of Mailuu-Suu stand monuments to the prosperity the town once enjoyed. Faded signs celebrate the town's 50 years as a "city of light" near statues topped with giant light bulbs. Many young residents migrate to Russia to work as laborers, leaving behind senior citizens and invalids who have no place else to go.

"This was such a good town in the old days," said Abdulaziz Nazarov, an asthmatic shopkeeper who sells eggs in an icy, outdoor bazaar. "Now, it's a dead end."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18666435