New Mexico is home to the most important uranium district in the United States. The Grants Uranium District yielded more uranium than any other state previously for nearly three decades. New Mexico also has the largest identified uranium ore reserves in the country, with over 400 million pounds of uranium remaining in the Grants district. This is all before further exploration is conducted. Simply put, New Mexico can be a leader in providing the necessary fuel for nuclear energy to power homes and businesses with safe, clean energy.
New Mexico, however, has been overlooked for decades due to legitimate community concerns about the safety of uranium extraction, for both the land and the people. In-Situ Recovery (“ISR”) for uranium is widely regarded as the most environmentally responsible method of uranium extraction accounting for over 60 percent of all the uranium recovery globally. ISR is not a new technology, but one that has had little information shared. I like to say the inventors of ISR are probably not the best marketers; scientists are not necessarily marketers, and marketers are not scientists.
Simply put, ISR is wellfield technology developed some 50 years ago by the oil and gas industry. Using a controlled system of injection and recovery wells, uranium is dissolved in place and pumped to the surface, eliminating the need for open pits, tailings, and large-scale land disturbance. In the United States, a mix of oxygen and sometimes sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is added to aquifers contaminated with uranium, allowing uranium extraction at near-neutral pH with minimal environmental impact and eventual reclamation of the land and water.
In-Situ Uranium Recovery, despite all of its advantages over conventional mining, has met with some opposition, primarily related to the lack of information available. These concerns generally relate to the protection of drinking water and overall water use.
It is important to recognize that ISR can only be conducted in aquifers the government has declared to be contaminated due to the naturally occurring high mineral content (uranium included) and is deemed, by the government, to be not suitable for any current or future use. This raises a broader policy question – if the water is not usable to begin with, what is the most appropriate standard for restoration? But I am getting ahead of myself.
Protecting water quality is at the heart of all ISR operations, and no one is proposing to compromise one of New Mexico’s most vital resources. ISR does not damage or misuse clean water. ISR operates in aquifers that are naturally mineralized and therefore not suitable for drinking, irrigation, or other domestic purposes, both before and after uranium extraction. In other words, the water we are discussing is already non-usable; ISR simply recovers uranium from these already impacted formations in a controlled, low-impact manner.
