Powertech wants to mine for uranium in southwestern South Dakota has taken a step ahead in the regulatory approval process and identified a potential satellite mine across the border in Wyoming. The company is Powertech USA, which is part of Azarga Uranium, of Canada. Powertech was awarded a license for the South Dakota project by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2014, but the Oglala Sioux Tribe and other project opponents filed a number of contentions.
All but two of the contentions were dismissed by the U.S. Atomic Safety Licensing Board in 2015. Last month, the board dismissed one of the two remaining contentions, leaving one yet to be resolved.
The remaining contention is about the lack of a survey of Sioux Native American cultural, religious and historic resources in the proposed mining area. That area — known by the name Dewey-Burdock — is in a sparsely populated region 13 miles northwest of Edgemont, near the old Dewey and Burdock town sites along the southwestern edge of the Black Hills. The proposed mining area is not on the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Pine Ridge Reservation, but the area was formerly part of the Great Sioux Reservation, and the Black Hills are spiritually significant to the Sioux and other tribes.
The recent Atomic Safety Licensing Board ruling blames the lack of the survey on disputes and poor communication between the tribe and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over survey methodologies and costs. “Throughout the consultation process, both the NRC Staff and the Oglala Sioux Tribe have appeared unwilling and/or unable to step away from their original negotiating position and move toward compromise,” said the Atomic Safety Licensing Board’s Oct. 19 written memorandum and order.
The document lays out a schedule to resolve the dispute by October 2018. That could add another year to a process that dates to 2009, when Powertech applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license.
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