--> Abstract: State of the Uranium Industry in the U.S., by Henry M. Wise and Michael Campbell; #90124 (2011)

Datapages, Inc.Print this page

AAPG ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
Making the Next Giant Leap in Geosciences
April 10-13, 2011, Houston, Texas, USA

State of the Uranium Industry in the U.S.

Henry M. Wise1; Michael Campbell2

(1) Eagle-SWS, La Porte, TX.

(2) I2M Associates, LLC, Houston, TX.

Interest in nuclear power continues to grow in the U.S. with more than 50 permit applications now under review for building new plants. Nations around the world are looking to increasing their use of nuclear energy to generate greenhouse gas emission-free electricity because it is the cleanest technology available that is capable of producing the amount of electricity required at a competitive cost. With this increase in interest, there has been an increase in uranium exploration and production, with new exploration targets and new and old mines being opened as the market price of yellowcake begins to increase. The renewed activity has also encountered an equally increased resistance from a few adversarial groups, especially in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. These groups base their objections on exploration and mining techniques and mining laws that were in effect 30 years ago and more. Unfortunately, many in the news media have been reporting on these complaints without regard to important improvements in exploration and uranium recovery techniques, and environmental protection laws. This has led the general public to believe that uranium exploration and recovery will poison both land surface and underlying aquifers over vast areas. Typical concerns by environmental advocacy groups and associated media often claim that no in-situ uranium recovery operations ever remediated the mined area to its original condition and that the companies all had to amend their permits. They also claim that there are health risks living around in situ uranium facilities and release radiation into the air, which increases human cancer rates. In addition, they also claim that nuclear power isn’t really carbon-free because the associated environmental costs of in-situ uranium recovery operations are not being fully assessed, such as energy/water/chemicals consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and social issues, claiming that significant gaps remain in complete sustainability reporting and accounting. We will evaluate these misconceptions in some detail.