White Mesa plans meeting on uranium mill issues; Ute Mountain tribe will give update on mill status
Source: The Cortez Journal
The 36-year old mill, located on private land south of Blanding, Utah, is the only conventional uranium mill operating in the country. It processes uranium ore into yellow cake, which is shipped for processing into fuel for nuclear power plants. The mill also processes alternative feed sources of uranium, and accepts wastes from other uranium mines for storage in containment cells.
The Ute Mountain Ute tribe criticized the mill’s operations and has claimed that liners in waste containment ponds are inadequate. In May, the tribe and Grand Canyon Trust released the film “Half Life: The Story of America’s Last Uranium Mill,” which claimed that the mill’s waste storage ponds threaten groundwater, springs and aquifers relied upon by the nearby White Mesa community, a satellite of the Ute Mountain Ute reservation.
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On Aug. 30, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered Cameco and Power Resources to stop delivering toxic shipments of barium sulfate sludge from their Wyoming uranium mine to the waste cells at the White Mesa mill. The order came after it was revealed in August, 2015 and March 2016 that trucks transporting the waste from the mine near Glenrock, Wyoming, twice showed up at the mill leaking toxic and radioactive contents.
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An NRC investigation in June concluded Cameco failed to effectively package the waste and did not accurately describe the contents and quantity of loads in shipping papers.
Read more: http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20160929/NEWS01/160929870/White-Mesa-plans-meeting-on-uranium-mill-issues
I'm glad I don't live near the highway between Glenrock and Blanding, at least.
