U.S. Energy Corp. and its partner, Crested Corp., this week filed a formal request with the state for a license to reopen and operate its Shootering Canyon uranium mill about 15 miles north of Lake Powell near Ticaboo.
The Shootering mill is the last and most modern uranium mill built in the United States, U.S. Energy spokesman Don Warfield said. It is one of only four uranium mills left in the country - and only two of those are now operating.
U.S. Energy, which owns nearby uranium mining acreage, expects to eventually mine that property to provide feedstock for the mill. The company, however, estimates it could take up to two years to secure the necessary permits to reopen the mill, which operated only a few months after construction was completed in 1982.
The companies estimate it will cost about $25 million to make the mill operational. They hope to arrange financing while the license application is processed by the Division of Radiation Control, which is part of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.
"Depending on the quality of the information they submit to us about their plans, [securing a permit] can be a fairly short or an extremely lengthy process," said Dane Finerfrock, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control.
Ron Hochstein, president of International Uranium Corp., whose White Mesa mill near Blanding is one of only two uranium mills now operating, said the economics of uranium have changed with global demand for the ore now far outstripping supply.
Over the past several years, International Uranium has kept its mill operating by periodically processing "alternate feeds" - or radioactive wastes containing small quantities of uranium. Much of that feedstock material comes from the cleanup of old nuclear-weapon research and production sites.
"It allowed us to survive the past seven years," Hochstein said.
Now, though, surging uranium prices are prompting mines such as that owned by U.S. Energy to reopen in the West.
Uranium is selling above $21 per pound. It sold as low as $7.50 per pound in 2001.
The surge is occurring because some are concerned uranium supplies for power plants worldwide may be within a decade of outstripping existing supplies.
U.S. Energy's proposal, though, is not without critics.
"It is just a bad idea to restart a mill to provide more fuel for existing nuclear powerhouses," said Sarah Fields, chairwoman of the Nuclear Waste Committee of the Utah Sierra Club's Glen Canyon Group. "We still don't have a solution to the spent fuel problem, and we're still dealing with the waste from all the other mills [shut down over the years]."
Jason Groenewold of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah agrees reopening the mill is a bad idea.
"Those mills leave a lot of toxic substances behind and often they have turned into dumps for radioactive waste," he said.
Uranium mining boomed in Utah after miner Charles Steen in 1952 struck a deep bed of ore near Moab.
By 1955, the year the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announced a cooperative program between the federal government and the nuclear power industry to develop power plants, there were approximately 800 mines operating in the region.
The industry, though, collapsed in 1962. Where once there were 26 processing mills operating in the country, the only one operating other than the International Uranium White Mesa mill near Blanding is a mill operated by Cotter Corp. in Colorado.
steve@sltrib.com
