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Faced with slumping commodity prices, the domestic uranium industry continues to shrink. This week, Energy Fuels Resources laid off one-third of its workforce at the White Mesa mill in Utah, the last conventional uranium mill in the country. The company had petitioned President Trump to set quotas for nuclear power plants to source a portion of their uranium from within the United States, a request that was denied.
Energy Fuels Resources has a checkered record in the West. The White Mesa mill has contaminated groundwater critical to the Ute Mountain Ute. The company hired lobbyists to successfully shrink Bears Ears National Monument. Energy Fuels' Canyon Mine, miles from the rim of the Grand Canyon, is filling with uranium and arsenic-laced water, which the company is spraying onto surrounding forests and trucking to the White Mesa Mill in Utah.
While the Trump administration is still considering options to resuscitate the uranium industry, including opening lands around the Grand Canyon to new mining claims, the future looks increasingly bleak for mining companies. In the first nine months of 2019, Energy Fuels Resources reported losses of $28.4 million.
Talking climate in Colorado
In the latest episode of CWP's Go West, Young Podcast, Garrett Garner-Wells of Conservation Colorado joins us with a look at why Colorado has become “an island of sanity” on climate policy.
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Under Trump, insiders have taken control over virtually every agency, and the Interior Department is one of the far most egregious examples.”
