Mead Gruver reports that one of the biggest uranium mines in Wyoming, the top producer in the U.S. of the radioactive metal, proposes to more than double in size amid hope that weak prices since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear damage will begin to climb back upward soon. Littleton, Colorado-based Ur-Energy plans to expand its Lost Creek in-situ mine in south-central Wyoming to an area covering some 15 square miles. Under the plan, production from the site would increase from around 800,000 pounds per year to as much 1.2 million pounds. Total permitted production would increase from 1 million to 2.2 million pounds, which includes up to 1 million tons brought to Lost Creek from elsewhere for processing into yellowcake, a uranium concentrate powder.
The proposed expansion must be approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which is now taking public comment. Some 2.9 million of the 4.9 million pounds of uranium produced in the U.S. in 2014 came from Wyoming, home to four of the nation's eight operational in-situ uranium mines. In-situ mining involves not digging tunnels, as in a conventional mine, but drilling hundreds of injection and recovery wells across a wide area. Chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide or sodium bicarbonate are pumped underground to dissolve uranium from surrounding deposits.
Uranium-bearing solution is then pumped to the surface in solution form. Spot prices for uranium, at around $37 per pound, are only half of where they were in early 2011 and one-third of their 2007 level. They could recover as Japan permanently restarts more of its 40 or so nuclear reactors, said Steve Hatten, Ur-Energy vice president of operations. While the demand is still there, it is a very conservative market. He is waiting to see not only what the Europeans are doing but also the Asian markets are doing.
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