Last summer, President Joe Biden banned new mining projects on almost 1 million acres of land in Arizona. Pinyon Plain, a uranium mine located in the state’s Kaibab National Forest, was allowed to continue operating under its valid existing rights. Earlier this year, the mine began to remove ore for the first time, after years of preparing the site, acquiring federal and state approval, and securing the proper permits.
When I visited the mine last summer, employees for its parent company Energy Fuels Resources told me all about the vast regulatory apparatus that oversees, and has many times deemed safe, Pinyon Plain mine. A snippet:
Energy Fuels has conducted exhaustive studies, in part to ward off groups that want to see it fail and in part to meet government requirements. For example, to protect groundwater, Arizona regulations require mining companies to apply for an aquifer permit; it took Pinyon Plain almost three years to obtain one. Using data from state and federal agencies, third-party contractors, and environmental-impact surveys, Energy Fuels demonstrated that Pinyon Plain’s operations would not negatively affect deep or shallow aquifers. The Arizona Geological Survey determined that even if 30 tonnes of uranium were dumped in the Colorado River, there would be no detectable effect on the environment. Having met all the requirements, the company received the first uranium-mining permit to be issued in decades.
In 2012, the Obama administration placed a 20-year moratorium on mining in the Grand Canyon area so that the environmental effects of breccia-pipe mining could be studied. Over the course of nearly a decade, the study found that “no conclusive effects from breccia-pipe mining activities on uranium concentrations in groundwater samples collected to date in the Grand Canyon region can be confirmed,” while noting that “potential effects may take many years to reach groundwater discharge locations.”
Arizona governor Katie Hobbs recently called for a new environmental review of the land, after environmentalists and tribal groups urged her to do so. A tribal council that has been fighting Pinyon Plain for decades tried to prohibit transportation of uranium earlier this year because the company’s haul route passes through tribal land. Hobbs said that the poor legacy of uranium mining — and the harm it inflicted on tribes years ago, before mining processes were regulated or understood properly — is still fresh for indigenous communities, and for that reason, “anyone bringing those substances onto the Nation should undertake that activity with respect and sensitivity to the psychological impact to our people, as well as the trauma of uranium development that our community continues to live with every day.”
The mine is estimated to produce 2.5 million pounds of uranium, which will be processed at Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill in Utah. In 2023, owners of U.S. nuclear-power reactors bought 51.6 million pounds of uranium, 12 percent of which was supplied by Russia. Only 5 percent of that uranium came from the U.S. Dependence on foreign adversaries for materials is a bipartisan concern, and this year Biden signed into law a bill banning the import of Russian uranium and encouraged bolstering a domestic nuclear-fuel supply chain.
But domestic uranium miners and producers need government to get out of the way for that to happen, the Heritage Foundation explained in a recent article. When local Democrats like Hobbs cite the “psychological impact” of past “trauma” in order to thwart a mining operation that’s done its due diligence and complied with all regulatory guidance and then some, it only makes it more difficult for the U.S. to break free from Russian influence. As I wrote last year, it’s a feat when American companies mine and process minerals safely, efficiently, and stateside.