After years of protesting the White Mesa uranium mill, Ute Mountain Utes and environmental groups cheered the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision last week to stop the mill from storing toxic waste.
The mill, owned by Energy Fuels Inc. of Toronto, is the only conventional uranium mill in the nation. It processes waste from the cleanup of other mines to make a uranium concentrate, which is later sold to make fuel rods for nuclear power plants. The leftover waste from the milling process is then stored in containment pods at the mill.
Just 3 miles north of tribal lands and the reservation of White Mesa, north of Bluff, Utah, the mill came under scrutiny when the Ute Mountain Ute tribe claimed the mill was not correctly storing chemicals left over in the milling process...