Feds Mull Uranium Reserve Despite Environmental Injustice

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

It’s one thing to make commitments to learn and do better by those who have been wronged. It’s quite another to actually follow through. 

Under the Trump administration, a so-called “strategic uranium reserve” was proposed with the support of mining companies, including one that operates near the Grand Canyon and Bears Ears National Monument. That company, Energy Fuels Resources, would potentially pocket millions in taxpayer dollars for selling uranium to the federal government at above-market prices. The concept is so ill-conceived that in December 2020, a Government Accountability Office report found that the justification for requesting the funds was inadequate. 

Nevertheless, seed money for the project in the amount of $75 million was tucked away and passed in a massive government spending bill at the end of 2020. It’s since been up to the Biden administration to decide whether to pursue that program further. The Biden administration is now considering a path that is counter to the promises it made to frontline communities, especially Indigenous communities, and the consequences are likely to be especially steep across the Grand Canyon and Bears Ears regions. 

This is concerning because the U.S. has no shortage of uranium. Until recently, the government was actually getting rid of excess uranium. And even if we did have a shortage, a uranium reserve wouldn’t do much to address it. While keeping existing and problematic uranium facilities afloat at taxpayer expense, the actual amount of uranium that the government could obtain each year would be a fraction of what existing nuclear utilities use annually. And the reason for that is the same reason that U.S. uranium producers aren’t doing well to begin with: U.S. uranium deposits are poorer quality and thus more expensive to mine than, for instance, deposits in Australia and Canada.

Putting the Grand Canyon, Bears Ears, and Native communities on the frontlines of uranium mining operations at risk simply to pad the pockets of multinational uranium companies — at taxpayer expense — is clearly at odds with the Biden administration’s avowed commitment to environmental justice. 

Take action. Urge the Biden administration not to subsidize the uranium industry ›

Biden administration asks for public input 

Despite a brief moment of hope when the administration omitted the program from its 2022 budget proposal in May, in a Senate hearing on June 15, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm revealed that the Department of Energy would soon be starting a process to create a reserve. And on August 10, the department took the first step by opening a 30-day “request for information” to gather public input on the creation of a uranium reserve.

What a reserve means for the Grand Canyon, Bears Ears

BLAKE MCCORD

If a uranium reserve is created as the Trump administration proposed, it could mean spending $1.5 billion over a decade to subsidize new uranium production from existing facilities in the United States. While it’s a good thing that the Biden administration seems uninterested in spurring new operations, existing uranium facilities are already environmental and environmental justice nightmares. 

One of the companies most excited about the concept of a reserve is Energy Fuels Resources. The company lobbied to slash Bears Ears National Monument and owns the White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah, just outside the original monument boundaries. The company also owns Canyon Mine (newly renamed “Pinyon Plain Mine”), a uranium mine near the south rim of the Grand Canyon that the government currently treats as exempt from a temporary mining ban — a ban that tribes and local communities are working to make permanent. 

The White Mesa Mill is the only conventional uranium mill in the country. It has also pivoted its business model to become a commercial radioactive waste disposal site. The mill sits just a few miles north and upslope — as groundwater flows — of the White Mesa Ute community, which has long been concerned about the impacts community members will face now and after the mill closes, leaving behind hundreds of acres of toxic and radioactive waste. There is confirmed shallow groundwater contamination beneath the mill, and monitoring wells around the mill have been showing increasing levels of contamination.

A uranium reserve would undoubtedly mean more business for the mill since no matter where uranium is mined, the mill would likely have a hand in processing any conventional ore into a more concentrated form called “yellowcake.” The Department of Energy has also stated that it plans to accept uranium produced from “alternate feed” material, which is the substance of the mill’s radioactive waste processing and disposal business.

Canyon Mine was permitted in the late 1980s, but despite ongoing groundwater flooding and the resulting threat of uranium contamination problems, it has yet to produce any ore commercially. That’s because the cost of mining the ore is higher than what the company can sell it for. A uranium reserve could lead the government to buy uranium from Canyon Mine that no one else would otherwise buy. Canyon Mine sits within the Red Butte Traditional Cultural Property, a site sacred to the Havasupai Tribe. The groundwater problems at the mine also pose a threat to the Havasupai Tribe’s sole water source in their remote village of Supai, inside a side canyon of the Grand Canyon. 

A reserve is counter to Biden’s promises to Indigenous communities

COREY ROBINSON

The Biden administration has established policies, made plans, and created advisory councils directed at environmental justice and properly engaging sovereign Indigenous tribes and nations. One such policy created a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council — a council comprised of 26 individuals with a variety of experiences and expertise in environmental justice. The council is charged, in part, with offering recommendations to the administration for ensuring that 40 percent of federal climate investments go to disadvantaged communities (referred to as “Justice40”). 

Among the council’s final recommendations is a call to “ensure that 100% of the investments do no harm to frontline communities. Using funds to add to cumulative pollution only to use other funds to mitigate the impacts is a losing proposition...” The council also advises the administration to take “bold action to sunset investment by 2030” in nuclear energy. Yet, the Department of Energy claims that “[r]evitalizing the U.S. nuclear fuel supply infrastructure...would support environmental justice initiatives, prioritize addressing long-standing and persistent racial injustice by targeting 40 percent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities…” It’s difficult to see how, especially given the disturbing legacy of contamination and human health risks the uranium industry has left across the Navajo Nation and numerous other Indigenous nations and communities across the country, which are still dealing with the consequences of uranium contamination left over from the last time the federal government subsidized a uranium boom. In fact, creating a uranium reserve would subsidize uranium companies who are perpetrating environmental injustices toward Indigenous communities, including at Canyon Mine and the White Mesa Mill.

This is backward, but you can help

You can help by letting the Biden administration know that a uranium reserve is counter to the commitments the administration has made to Indigenous and other frontline communities and to the requests of the very advisory council it appointed to guide federal investments that are environmentally just. 

Send your comments to the Biden administration before the September 10, 2021 deadline.