Decades-long clash continues over Colorado's uranium mines with implications for economy and national security.

Mining near the Grand Canyon has been an embattled topic for decades, with an outcome that has implications for American jobs, the future of green energy, the economy, and national security.

Uranium fuels nuclear power, a sustainable, efficient, plentiful and practically carbon-free energy.

Miners like Colorado-based Energy Fuels Resources Inc. and the current operation at Pinyon Plain are caught between critics, complex government policy seeking to preserve natural and cultural treasures, a transition away from fossil energy, and pressure from the oil and gas industries, among others who posit that a balanced energy portfolio including nuclear is more practical.

The U.S. was the world's largest uranium producer until the early 1980s, when production was replaced by imports from allies like Canada and Australia. However, in recent decades, sources have included geopolitical foes like Russia and China.

Uranium is vital to U.S. energy security as a clean and reliable source of electricity and national security, as it is the fuel for aircraft carriers and submarines, as well as nuclear warheads. The U.S. has mines and deposits in Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming and much production growth going forward will be focused on environmentally friendly mining under approved and permitted licenses.

Protecting culture

Native tribes, including the Navajo, Hopi and Havasupi, and environmental organizations like Grand Canyon Trust, object to local uranium mining.

Curtis Moore, senior VP of marketing and corporate development at Energy Fuels Resources Inc., has attempted to assuage fears of contaminating the Redwall-Muav aquifer feeding Havasu Creek and the Havasupi Reservation's travertine pools by citing a 35-year record of permitting and lawsuits over the mine, where every decision so far has been in the company's favor.

The tribes have good reason to be wary of uranium mining, according to Jody Pasternak's 2010 book "Yellow Dirt - A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajo," which documents the history and effects of the uranium boom on the Navajo Nation. For more than 70 years, the region has borne terrible consequences of dismissive policies and a lack of cleanup and remediation of radioactive waste going back to the 1940s.

"There are also cultural issues with the mine because it sits within traditional cultural property," said Amber Reimondo, energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust. "It's an area that's highly significant to several tribes and especially the Havasupai Tribe. Red Butte, which is just a couple of miles away from that mine, is incredibly significant in Havasupai origin stories. They conduct ceremonies there. They collect medicinal plants."

Last year, President Biden invoked the Antiquities Act for the fifth time as part of his America the Beautiful initiative, which seeks to conserve and restore 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

Biden signed a proclamation establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in late 2023. The monument makes the 2012 withdrawal permanent and encompasses almost all the known or suspected uranium around the Grand Canyon, comprising over 900,000 acres of public lands managed by the BLM and U.S. Forest Service.

A historical location

National Park Service

Graphic of a breccia pipe at Pinyon Plain with enough uranium to power the entire state of Arizona for a year,

As early as the 1950s, the area surrounding the Grand Canyon has been known to host uranium and copper and was mined for the WWII Manhattan Project to create the first nuclear weapon.

Moore insists that the mining of decades past is unrecognizable from today's practices under current federal regulations.

In 1986, the Canyon mine, renamed the Pinyon Plain mine, contained roughly 3 to 5 million pounds of marketable refined uranium oxide and has been at the center of controversy since 2013.

In 2008, then-Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano urged the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to stop the staking of new mining claims around the Grand Canyon, citing concerns over contamination of the Colorado River. Salazar, also a former Colorado U.S. senator, finalized the withdrawal in 2012, prohibiting new claims for 20 years while preserving existing mines and valid claims, including the Pinyon Plain mine.

"A withdrawal is the right approach for this priceless American landscape," said Salazar, now the ambassador to Mexico. "Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place and millions of people in the Colorado River Basin depend on the river for drinking water, irrigation, industrial and environmental use. We have been entrusted to care for and protect our precious environmental and cultural resources, and we have chosen a responsible path that makes sense for this and future generations."

"The withdrawal maintains the pace of hardrock mining, particularly uranium, near the Grand Canyon," added then-Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Bob Abbey, "but also gives the Department a chance to monitor the impacts associated with uranium mining in this area. It preserves the ability of future decision-makers to make thoughtful decisions about managing this area of national environmental and cultural significance based on the best information available."

Strengthening domestic supply

Mark Chalmers, president and CEO of Energy Fuels, said 50% to 60% of the uranium used in nuclear power plants in the U.S. comes via Russia. Biden has since signed an act barring the importation of enriched uranium from Russia beginning in August of this year. America's domestic supply is more than capable of delivering the country's need for the mineral if companies like Energy Fuel can navigate the contentious past and earn community buy-in.

Energy Fuels maintains that the mine has never been cited for violations of radiation regulations, including off-premises pollution. Radiation monitoring continues underground, at the surface and surrounding the site.

The mine is projected to produce about 1.57 million pounds of uranium over its 28-month operating period, while the U.S. uses about 40 to 50 million pounds per year. The mine's closure plan, which requires 30 years of monitoring and other activities, adds to an expense that critics like Reimondo feel is a non-starter.

"And then that really changes the cost-benefit analysis when you're thinking about the risk that a mine creates compared to the very little amount of uranium that they can contribute to the overall supply," Reimondo said.

Critics consider mining uranium ore in the U.S. unnecessary because a large percentage of it can and will be obtained from allies like Canada and Australia.

Reimondo also criticizes Pinyon Plain for being allowed to operate under the more than 150-year-old 1872 Mining Law. "There is no space in the regulatory framework to properly account for cultural and environmental losses," she said.

"We are the largest producer of uranium in the United States. We have been for the last several years," Chalmers told The Denver Gazette. "We have assets all over the Western U.S. that can come back into production when the markets support that."

Leaving no trace

U.S. Geological Survey

Diagram showing the cross-section of the north side of the Grand Canyon. Well-known breccia pipes are shown in yellow.

Back in 2020, when concerns for the Grand Canyon State Park were at a peak, Uranium Producers of America released a factsheet stating: "The impacts of historic government-sponsored mining activities continue to plague Native American communities today. This is why our industry is actively urging the U.S. government to live up to its promises to Native American communities and immediately begin to clean the contamination left behind – and not repeat the mistakes of the past."

Moore also pointed out that Energy Fuels has made repeated unsuccessful overtures to the Navajo Nation to assist in cleaning up abandoned radioactive mine waste by hauling it off the reservation to be processed for residual uranium at no cost.

The company has mined and reclaimed more than half a dozen uranium ore sources in the region to clean release, a designation that means they meet or exceed EPA standards for remediation.

Safety is the main concern for the company, public and personnel alike.

"We're going to make sure that yes, they've got the safety practices in place underground, but we also know that they're people and we're people, too," Pinyon Plain assistant mine superintendent Matthew Germansen told the Denver Gazette.

"We're going to do it right because we want to prove to the public that we can do it safely and that we have done it safely and we're going to do it safely this time," he added. "Energy Fuels wants to do it so that we have healthy miners and healthy equipment and healthy production, and the regulators want us to do it so that we can also have that health go beyond the fence line to the greater public."

A naturally occurring source

"There's enough uranium in this breccia pipe to power the entire state of Arizona for a year in a 14-acre parcel," Germansen said, describing the natural formation where the uranium is found. "The scale is incredible of the efficiency of this mine relative to the efficiency of coal strip mining. There are so many hazards that we know about from coal that don't exist with uranium."

The Grand Canyon already has naturally occurring uranium constantly being washed out of the soils, rocks and aquifers of the region, according to documents like the 2011 report by the Arizona Geological Survey, which examined the impacts of uranium mining on the waters of the canyon and stated that Colorado River water contains about four parts per billion of uranium, and that natural sources deposit approximately 60 metric tons of dissolved uranium into the river each year.

"Uranium is one of the many chemical elements in Earth's crust that are gradually washed away by weathering and erosion and dissolved in very small concentrations in river water and groundwater," detailed the report. "The seemingly large amount of naturally occurring uranium in the Colorado River reflects the large water flux in the river, not unusually high uranium concentration...Uranium concentration in river water, at about 4 ppb, has been consistently well below the EPA Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 30 ppb for drinking water."

Energy Fuels plans to mine for two to seven years. Closure will include removal of all structures, backfilling the shaft with non-uranium bearing rubble and sealing off the upper aquifer using bentonite, a near-impermeable clay. The 14-acre site would then be replanted with native vegetation. The only thing that will remain is two monitoring wells that will be observed for the next 30 years.