For one Colorado rancher, uranium is the key to the future

[phantom power]

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- With just one more permit from the State of Colorado, Energy Fuels Resources Corporation founder and CEO George Glasier can break ground for the first new U.S. uranium mill since the Cold War.

...

With a 7.3% unemployment rate, nearly 1,000 county residents are out of work.

"In a small town, you know them all," says Terri Tooker, Naturita Chamber of Commerce president. "The area certainly needs an economic boost."

...

The mill is expected to provide 85 jobs, and 200 more are likely to come from its mines. Calculating ripple effect, the Western Small Miners Association hopes for 1,392 new jobs total, from housing construction to schools.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/uranium_pinon_ridge.fortune/index.htm

[FBaggins]

1. This should help with some wild concerns about "peak uranium"

When all that's really happened is that we haven't needed to mine the stuff as much in recent years... there's plenty of it in the ground, we just don't have new mines.

[CanonRay]

2. In Canon City, Colorado

we are still suffering the effects, e.g. ground water poisoning, excessive illnesses, etc. from the mill which operated here in the 50's and 60's. These people are nuts to let them build in Montrose County.

Check out this site: http://www.downtheyellowcakeroad.org/

[enlightenment]

4. Uravan is right up the road from Naturita.

And the entire area is a former hotbed of uranium mining.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/umtra/grandjunction_title1.html

[ensho]

3. this is really bad news

nt

[kristopher]

5. .

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. I grew up in Colorado and the problem of the tailings of mines

go on for centuries......

We aren't even talking about something with a half life.

I know that area very well and it will pay,
for centuries for this short sighted endeavor.

Its close to the last super site....

[pscot]

7. They won't be so pleased about it

20 years from now when the cancer starts showing up. Ask the Downwinders in eastern Washington. They've been living in the shadow of Hanford for more than 50 years.