Uranium mining returns to area
URI inks pact with BHP, will build processing mill

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Uranium Resources Inc., will build a new conventional uranium processing mill at the site of the existing BHP Billiton mine, Rio Algom, returning uranium mining and ore processing to the McKinley and Cibola counties areas within four to five years.

URI signed an agreement about 4:17 a.m., Friday to purchase the Rio Algom mine and site for $110 million in cash. URI will assume certain responsibilities for retirement benefits and reclamation liabilities of which $35 million will be pre-funded at closing of the agreement, no later than June 1, 2008.

In addition, URI will pay BHP Billton $16.5 million contingent upon the receipt of a license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct and build the mill east of Gallup in McKinley County, and just 20 miles north of Grants and Milan, in Cibola County.

URI Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Richard A. Van Horn said, during a press conference at the New Mexico Mining Museum in Grants Friday afternoon, that the mill would bring 200 high-paying jobs to the Grants-Milan area.

“Including those jobs, there will be 3,000 directly-related jobs in the area (including Thoreau and Gallup),” he said.
A series of town meetings will be help in order for URI to be able to discuss the public’s concerns and address them, Van Horn said. No dates have been announced.

Supportive local officials
Local elected officials were positively supportive about the announcement.

Sen. David Ulibarri, who is also Cibola County Manager, said “We are taking a giant step ... we have been here, we have done this before,” he said.

Milan’s Mayor Tom Ortega told the Independent after the press conference that he was excited about the announcement.

“All the roads leading to the mill site pass through Milan,” he said. “We have the airport here and the Interstate too,” he said. Rail is also available.

Grants Mayor Joe Murrieta said: “This is an exciting day for the city of Grants. The vast majority of the citizens in Grants are in support of this project.”

Star Elkins-Gonzales, executive director of the Grants-Cibola County Chamber of Commerce said: “We will do everything we can to help and housing developments are already taking place,” she said.

Doug Decker, county manager of McKinley County said: “The commission has always been supportive of this industry. We welcome them to Ambrosia Lake and McKinley County.”

Terry Fletcher, president of Rio Algom, said he was excited about the agreement.

“We are going to be able to take our former mining employees, who are now reclamation employees and make them mining employees again,” he said.

Following the meeting, he said he planned to give the news to his 60 employees who were at work at the site.
Joe Trujillo, a representative of U.S. Sen. Peter Domenici, said the senator helped make it possible for this agreement to move forward.

The site includes not only the previous mill site where the new mill will be constructed, but 14,000 acres of surface fee land and mineral interests in Ambrosia Lake which has about 20 million pounds of mineralized uranium materials.
Now that the agreement has been signed, URI will seek to raise the money required to start uranium mining in New Mexico again.

“Being able to construct the mill on the footprint of the previous mill means we can have a mill up and running in four to five years rather than eight to 10,” Van Horn said.

“We will be responsible and will follow all the rules of the Environmental Protection Agency and especially the NRC,” he said.

Safety first
Van Horn told the Independent following the press conference that the company’s policy is to be safe — for people and the environment — in uranium mining and processing.

There will be 40-acre “cells” where dry uranium tailings will be dry-stacked, rather than slurried as was done in previous mining techniques.

These “cells,” as he called them, will all be double-lined with high density polyethylene materials, with a leak detection system between the layers. This accomplishes two things, he said: First, with 40 acre cells where only 1.5-2 million pounds of tailing are stacked, you do not have hundreds of millions of pounds of tailings to burrow through to find the leak; Second, the leak detection system means the leak will be found and fixed before any contamination reaches the groundwater.

“Water in the aquifer where uranium is located is already contaminated and the EPA will issue an aquifer exemption meaning that water cannot be used for drinking water, Van Horn said.

“There is one thing about this company,” he said. “If we can’t do it safely and in an environmentally friendly way, this company will move on.”

Before, uranium miners would work in the mines and go home and wash their clothes. That is not the way we do it now, Van Horn said,

The worker has work clothes that stay at the site and are washed and cleaned here.

The worker also has a safety badge that is tested monthly and workers who may have a higher exposure rate, such as in the yellow cake packaging area, are tested weekly, sometimes more than once with urine tests, he said.

“If they are found to be overexposed, they are moved to another part of the company.

There will be no smoking in the underground mine area because testing has found that smoking in the mine results in molecules attaching themselves directly to the lungs resulting in lung cancer.

The mill will be a regional mill processing ore not only from Rio Algom, but from mine sites such as Noserock, north of Crownpoint and Rock Honda, next to Mt. Taylor as well as other mine sites in the area.

The processed ore will be sent to Metropolis, Ill., where the radioactive element U-235 will be processed into uranium pellets that will be placed into rods to be used in nuclear facilities.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197
or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.