[ RadSafe ] Article: World's Shift to Atomic Energy A Boon for Town of Nucla, Colo.

[John Jacobus]

>From the Washington Post: 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080601204.html

The issues of uranium mining is like those of nuclear
power plant construction.  It is economic.  

"The problem with a boom is, you get a bust on the
backside," . . .  

------------------------

World's Shift to Atomic Energy A Boon for Town of
Nucla, Colo.
Demand for Uranium Prompts Return to Abandoned Mines

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 7, 2005; A03

NUCLA, Colo. -- The uranium for the world's first
atomic bombs was gouged out of the soaring red cliffs
here on the Uncompahgre Plateau, and for decades
uranium mining was the economic base for the rugged
canyon country along the Colorado-Utah border. But
then the arms race slowed, and public fears made
civilian nuclear power plants unpalatable.

"After Three Mile Island in '79, the price of uranium
fell to near nothing," recalls Clifford Chiles, whose
family has been mining here for decades. "The mines
closed. We had our boom, and then we got our bust."

The first years of the 21st century, though, have
brought a new uranium boom -- a huge surge in global
demand. The skyrocketing costs of fossil fuels, plus
concerns about global warming, have prompted electric
utilities around the world to move rapidly toward
nuclear generating plants. And those plants run on
uranium.

"The price of uranium has just about tripled since
2003," said Energy Department analyst Ed Cotter. "The
analysts all seem to agree that it's going to keep
going up and up as the world moves more and more to
nuclear power plants. And this time, the market is
global."

At the end of 2004, the International Atomic Energy
Agency says, 440 power reactors were in operation
around the world, the most ever. An additional 26 are
under construction, and more than 100 are on the
drawing board, with China, India and other developing
economies strongly committed to nuclear power.

In the United States, where 104 nuclear plants produce
20 percent of the nation's electricity, atomic power
stations have been politically taboo for decades.
President Bush is pushing for a sharp increase in
atomic generating capacity, but the lack of a
permanent disposal site for nuclear waste has slowed
domestic development.

The world's shift to atomic-powered electricity stems
partly from the rising costs of the oil, natural gas
and coal used to drive the turbines of a conventional
power plant. Further, nations committed to the Kyoto
accord on global warming -- the United States has not
ratified the treaty, but more than 150 countries have
-- are required to reduce emissions of the greenhouse
gases that form when fossil fuels are burned. A
properly functioning nuclear plant emits nothing into
the air but water.

The result is a global swing away from coal, gas and
oil and toward nuclear fuel. That has created a chasm
between supply and demand. The Energy Department says
world uranium consumption is greater than 180 million
tons a year, while the mining industry is turning out
only 90 million to 100 million tons.

The end of the Cold War provided a temporary supply of
fuel in the form of uranium that was removed from
nuclear weapons in the disarmament process. But that
source is used up now and utilities' stockpiles are
dwindling, analysts say.

Soaring demand with restricted supply is the classic
formula for a seller's market, and the major
uranium-producing nations -- Canada, Australia, Russia
and the United States -- are all moving to reactivate
mines that were closed after the uranium bust of the
1980s.

The point has not been lost on the veteran miners who
live on the hardscrabble high desert country where
southern Colorado and Utah meet.

This region, a scattered collection of dusty villages
separated by endless stretches of two-lane mountain
roads, is known to geologists as the Uravan Mineral
Belt. Both uranium and another industrial mineral,
vanadium, are found in the red cliffs that tower 1,000
feet above the valley of the San Miguel River.

Even before it supplied the Manhattan Project and the
World War II bombs, the Uravan played a key role in
nuclear history. Nobel Laureate Marie Curie came to
Colorado to collect radium for her pioneering
experiments. When this town was incorporated in 1904,
it proudly took the name "Nucla" to reflect its role
in the new science of nuclear physics. During the boom
years, Nucla had a Uranium Cafe and a movie theater
called the Uranium Drive In.

In an area where people track the spot price of
uranium the way Washingtonians track the president's
approval rating, the global boom has sparked
considerable interest. This year, county clerks say,
thousands of mining claims have been staked -- a
procedure that still involves driving four stakes into
the ground to mark the corners of the plot. More than
a dozen abandoned uranium mines have been reopened,
and long-closed mills in Utah and Colorado are once
again grinding the miners' rocks into the powder form
called "yellowcake" that utilities use.

"There could be hundreds of mines operating around
here in a year or two," says Ernie Anderson, a veteran
mining industry geologist. Anderson says he first
"went underground" to mine uranium in the boom years
after World War II. Although his age is "way north of
70," Anderson says, he has recently staked claims in
10 areas he judges to be uranium-rich.

Like many miners, Chiles complains that regulatory and
environmental restrictions make uranium mining a much
tougher business than it used to be. "If President
Bush could push a button and get rid of the red tape,
that would be the best thing to happen to this
industry," Chiles says. Still, he and his brothers
have staked more than 50 mining claims in recent
months, he says.

And yet, the miners of the Uravan region display a
clear ambivalence to the prospect of new boom in their
old mines. "The problem with a boom is, you get a bust
on the backside," Chiles says, reflecting a common
viewpoint. "Yeah, you make money if everything goes
okay. But if it ends, that puts a lot of hurting on
people."

One thing the locals are not worried about is the
potential health or environmental risk from mining
radioactive fuel. "There is nobody here who is
anti-uranium," said Roger Culver, editor of the San
Miguel Basin Forum, Nucla's newspaper.

The more serious question for Nucla and the
neighboring towns is whether they are being lulled
into one more cycle of boom and bust. "All the global
indicators tell us that uranium demand and prices are
going to keep rising steadily," says Cotter, the
Energy Department analyst. "And that's what we're
telling our miners. But of course, they've heard it
all before."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company


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"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea and never shrinks back to its original proportion." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com


		
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