What is the History of Uranium Mining in the U.S.?
The uranium mining industry began in the 1940s primarily to produce uranium for weapons and later for nuclear fuel. Although there are about 4,000 mines with documented production, a database compiled by EPA, with information provided by other federal, state, and tribal agencies, includes 15,000 mine locations with uranium occurrence in 14 western states. Most of those locations are found in Colorado , Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Wyoming, with about 75% of those on federal and tribal lands. The majority of these sites were conventional (open pit and underground) mines. With the drop in market price of uranium beginning in the 1980’s U.S. producers turned to in-situ leaching operations to extract uranium from ore. (In-situ leaching involves injecting solutions that will dissolve the uranium from the ore directly into the ground and then pumping out the uranium containing solution). By 2004, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, there were only six
