Reclaimed Uranium ISR Sites of South Texas

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Related Environmental Issues

UEC reports that one of the best kept secrets in Texas is that uranium has been continually mined since the late 1950s. Uranium mining was initially conducted by open-pit mining followed by conventional milling to produce yellowcake, which is harnessed to produce electrical energy in nuclear power plants. In the early 1970s, a new environmentally sensitive means of extraction was developed in South Texas addressing concerns about the disturbance of the surface of the land, dewatering portions of the aquifer to enable men and equipment to work beneath the surface, and later forming vast areas of mill tailings from the processing of ores.

It was at this time that South Texas gave birth to In-Situ Recovery (ISR) and has ever since been the ISR capital of the western world. These are successful mining legacies that are quietly unheralded, and optically undetected for all the obvious reasons.