Wyoming primed to become uranium sacrifice zone

Armed with the enriched uranium mined in New Mexico four Los Alamos scientists blessed the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed over 200,000 children, women and men. 

Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. 

Warren Peak in the Wyoming Black Hills was home to PM-1, the first micro reactor built in the United States. When the Sundance Air Force Station went nuclear in 1962 it was powered by Uranium 235 with an enrichment of 93% and provided 1.25 megawatts to feed radar data to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and enough steam to heat the facility until it was shuttered in 1968.

In 1979 an earthen dam collapsed releasing 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive and highly acidic water onto Navajo tribal lands.

In July, 2023 Canada-based Anfield Energy bought enCore Energy’s Marquez-Juan Tafoya uranium project in New Mexico. Texas-based enCore has uranium claims or operations in Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and South Dakota. 

Wyoming leads the country in uranium mining and has the largest economic uranium ore reserves in the U.S. which are located across the Powder River Basin, Great Divide Basin, Shirley Basin and Gas Hills. In Wyoming, there are 24 uranium projects currently in the exploration or planning stages, including three in Crook County and four in southwestern Campbell County. BWX Technologies is a Virginia-based company that is looking to build up a supply chain in Wyoming for nuclear micro reactors. It recently held a workshop with vendors in northeast Wyoming and will be going around the rest of the state this year. [State report: Wyoming uranium industry primed for success]

Rare earth deposits in the upper Belle Fourche River threaten that watershed, too. The soils of the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers are inculcated with arsenic at levels that have killed cattle.

Wyoming is the testbed for an advanced micro reactor through BWXT’s partnerships with the US Department of Energy Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

ip image: Terry Peak as seen from Carlile, Wyoming looking across the Belle Fourche River and behind Cement Ridge.