But as the U. S. pursues its nuclear potential, environmentalists and Native American leaders remain concerned about the consequences for communities near mining and concentration sites in the West and find greater regulatory oversight uneasy.
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The new mining operation at the Pinyon Plain mine near the Grand Canyon is being located within the barriers of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukv National Monument, designated in August by President Joe Biden. Work will be able to move forward thanks to energy fuels. Inc. had valid existing rights.
Low effect and zero threat to groundwater, that’s how Energy Fuels spokesman Curtis Moore describes the project.
The mine will cover 17 acres and operate for a few years, generating at least 2 million pounds of uranium, enough to force the state of Arizona to have carbon-free electricity for at least a year, he said.
The pit tower of Energy Fuels Inc. ‘s Pinyon Plain uranium mineit was filed on January 31, 2024, near Tusayan, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
“As the global outlook for a clean, carbon-free nuclear force strengthens and the U. S. moves away from Russian uranium supplies, the demand for locally sourced uranium increases,” Moore said.
Energy Fuels, which is also preparing two other mines in Colorado and Wyoming, won a contract in 2022 to sell $18. 5 million worth of uranium concentrates to the U. S. government to identify the country’s strategic reserve in the event of a source outage.
Faced with a growing appetite for uranium, a coalition of Native Americans testified in late February before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, calling on the commission to pressure the U. S. government to revise mining legislation and prevent further exploitation of marginalized communities.
Carletta Tilousi, who served for years on the Havasupai Tribal Council, said she and others have written countless letters to state and federal agencies and assisted regulators and lawmakers for hours. His tribe’s reservation is in a gorge in front of the Grand Canyon.
“We have diligently participated in the processes,” he said. They hear our voices. There’s no answer. “
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Many demanding legal situations to prevent the Pinyon Plain mine have been continually ignored in court, and senior Biden administration officials are reluctant to interfere beyond speaking broadly about consultation efforts with Native American tribes.
This is the latest war for the advancement of power and sacred lands, as tribes in Nevada and Arizona battle the federal government over lithium mining and the location of renewable energy transmission lines.
The Havasupai are concerned that mining will affect the water supply, wildlife, flora and geology of the Colorado Plateau, and that the Colorado River that flows through the Grand Canyon and its tributaries is important to millions of people across the West.
For the Havasupai, their water comes from aquifers that lie deep within the mine.
The Pinyon Plain mine, formerly known as the Canyon mine, was licensed in 1984. With existing rights, it has enjoyed legal mining despite a 20-year moratorium imposed on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region during the Obama administration in 2012.
In 2012, the U. S. Forest Service issued a report on the U. S. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security reaffirmed an environmental impact that had been predicted for the mine years earlier, and state regulators have approved permits to protect air and aquifers over the past two years.
“We work incredibly hard to do our job to the highest standards,” Moore said. “And that causes us to be vilified as we are. The things we do are subsidized by science and regulators. “
The regional aquifers that feed the springs at the back of the Grand Canyon are deep (about 1,000 feet below the mine) and separated by nearly impenetrable rocks, Moore said.
State regulators also said the area’s geology provides information about vegetation cover against water migration from the site to the Grand Canyon.
Still, environmentalists say the mine raises bigger questions about the Biden administration’s willingness to adopt nuclear-friendly policies.
The use of nuclear force to meet emissions targets is a sell in the western United States. From the Navajo Nation to the lands of the Ute Mountain Ute and Oglala Lakota, tribal communities have a deep distrust of uranium corporations and the federal government because abandoned mines and related contamination have yet to be abandoned. To be cleaned.
Taylor McKinnon, director of the Center for Biodiversity of the Southwest, said allowing mining near the Grand Canyon “makes a mockery of the administration’s environmental justice rhetoric. “
“It’s a black eye for the Biden administration,” he said.
Teracita Keyanna of the Red Water Pond Road Community Association choked as she testified before the Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D. C. , saying federal regulators were proposing to keep infected soil from operations beyond New Mexico rather than remove it.
“It’s unfair that we have to deal with this and my kids have to deal with this and later, my grandkids have to deal with this,” she said. “Why does the government just feel like we’re disposable? This is not the case. “
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In Congress, some lawmakers from communities devastated beyond the infections are standing their ground.
Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri told a congressional caucus in January that lawmakers cannot communicate about the advance of the nuclear force in the United States without first addressing the effects nuclear waste has had on minority communities. In the Bush community of St. Louis, waste was left behind through the required uranium refining through the top-secret Manhattan Project.
“We have a duty to correct our mistakes and be informed about them,” he said, “before we risk exposing other communities to the same exposure. “