Tribes and environmentalists say the country’s last operational uranium mill has become a low-cost industrial waste dump that could imperil land and groundwater in the Colorado River Basin and at nearby Bears Ears National Monument.
They want it to close or be subject to stricter regulations to avoid a catastrophic incident like the 2015 Gold King mine spill, which contaminated both the Animas River and the nearby San Juan River.
A report issued by the Grand Canyon Trust March 15 said the White Mesa Mill in southeastern Utah, which opened in 1980 to extract uranium from mined ore, had been converted into a lower-cost alternative to a highly regulated toxic waste facility using what the trust calls a “radioactive Midas touch,”a licensed “alternative feed” mill that reprocesses used ore and low-level waste to extract more uranium and rare earths.
The report said a variety of Superfund sites have sent about 700 million pounds of waste materials to White Mesa to be processed. The mill has recently applied for permits to accept low-level waste from other sites as far away as Estonia, the group said.
“If the mill wants to function like a waste disposal business, it should be regulated like one,” said Tim Peterson, cultural landscapes director at the Trust.
Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Chairman Manuel Heart said the tribe has always been concerned about the 40-year-old mill’s effects on an aquifer that several nearby communities — including its 300-member White Mesa community, the towns of Blanding and Bluff, and the northern border of the Navajo Nation — depend on for water.
“They all access the aquifer under the mill,” said Heart, whose tribe has trust lands in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. He’s worried the older storage ponds only have a single liner and have exceeded their effective life.
“Waste is a global issue,” said Heart. “Our concern is how do we protect our tribal members so they can access clean water when there’s radioactive waste that’s 2-1/2 miles from them?”
Tribal members also fear spillage from vehicle mishaps. Materials must be trucked in, sometimes on mountainous highways since the Navajo Nation barred the transportation of anything containing even low levels of radioactive materials in 2012.
Heart said the Ute Mountain Ute has set up air quality monitors in the area because the community is concerned that radioactive particles that escape the containment ponds could become airborne and drift over the White Mesa community. He said elders and other tribal members avoid the surrounding area where they once gathered plants and other materials for fear of being contaminated.
The tribe has issued resolutions calling for the mill to be closed and cleaned up.
“Waste is a global issue,” said Heart. “Our concern is how do we protect our tribal members so they can access clean water when there’s radioactive waste that’s 2-1/2 miles from them?”
Tribal members also fear spillage from vehicle mishaps. Materials must be trucked in, sometimes on mountainous highways since the Navajo Nation barred the transportation of anything containing even low levels of radioactive materials in 2012.
Heart said the Ute Mountain Ute has set up air quality monitors in the area because the community is concerned that radioactive particles that escape the containment ponds could become airborne and drift over the White Mesa community. He said elders and other tribal members avoid the surrounding area where they once gathered plants and other materials for fear of being contaminated.
The tribe has issued resolutions calling for the mill to be closed and cleaned up.
The White Mesa facility is a conventional uranium mill. That type of facility crushes the ore, leaches the uranium using sulfuric acid or other chemicals, and concentrates the uranium into what’s known as “yellowcake.” The concentrated uranium is sent to another facility to be turned into fuel for nuclear power plants. The fine-grained sandy leftover material, the tailings, are stored in tailings piles or ponds.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted on its website that these facilities must be carefully regulated, monitored and controlled. The White Mesa site was regulated by the federal government until 2004, when Utah assumed responsibility as an “agreement state” and has regulated the mill ever since.
More recently, the mill’s owner, Energy Fuels Resources, a company incorporated in Canada with corporate offices in Colorado, turned to alternative feed processes to keep the mill open and profitable.
White Mesa accepts materials with low levels of uranium or other radioactive materials for reprocessing to extract remaining uranium and rare earths used in batteries, computers, phones and other products. It’s also a major domestic producer of vanadium, which is used to manufacture a high-strength alloy.
The trust report was released on the heels of another court defeat for a long-running lawsuit brought by the Havasupai Tribe and environmentalists to close the Canyon Mine, now known as the Pinyon Plain Mine, a uranium mine also owned by Energy Fuels.
The mine is located east of Tusayan close to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The mine lies within a 1-million-acre area south of the Canyon that was withdrawn from new mining claims by the Interior Department in 2012 for 20 years.
Arizona: Tribes, conservation groups oppose new permit for a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon
Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who sponsored a bill to permanently close the Grand Canyon mining withdrawal area, said the dangers of uranium extraction are real.
“It’s particularly jarring that this heavily polluted site sits only 1 mile from the Bears Ears National Monument,” he said.
Curtis Moore, Energy Fuels’ vice president of marketing and development disputed the report’s findings.
“If they would listen to us and to the science their fears would be allayed,” he said. “Do you think state and federal authorities would allow us to store high-level radioactive waste at the mill and turn a blind eye to it?”
Moore said Energy Fuels is taking low-level ore and making something useful out of it as part of their alternative feed recycling program. He also said the mill is fully licensed.
But whether White Mesa Mill continues to operate or the Pinyon Plain Mine begins operations, the Biden administration has included nuclear power as part of its clean energy portfolio alongside wind, solar and other renewables as well as conservation to deliver clean power to homes and businesses. The U.S. Department of Energy established a $6 billion program funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill that will support the continued operation of nuclear reactors, which the agency said supplies more than half the nation’s clean electricity.
Also, the recent ban on Russian energy imports in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine did not include uranium. The U.S. imports about 20% of the enriched uranium it uses in nuclear power plants from Russia, according to an emailed statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian affairs, said the U.S. couldn’t replace uranium supplies over the short term on its own.
“We just need to develop our own indigenous capability to supply our own uranium,” Graham said.
He noted that Russia first began supplying enriched uranium to the nation through a program called “Megatons to Megawatts,” a 20-year-long program to repurpose stockpiled high-enriched uranium meant for military purposes into lower-blended power plant fuel. Although that program ended in 2013, the U.S. continues to purchase Russian uranium.
Moore said increased domestic mining would contribute some ore to the stream if imports were to be halted, but that U.S. mines plus increased imports from Canada and Australia would most likely close the gap.
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.
Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.