Uranium mining in Wyoming was formerly a much larger industry than it is today. Wyoming once had many operating uranium mines, and still has the largest known uranium ore reserves of any state in the U.S. At the end of 2008, the state had estimated reserves dependent on price: 539 million pounds of uranium oxide at $50 per pound, and 1,227 million pounds at $100 per pound.[1]
Wyoming has produced a total of 84,000 tonnes of uranium, and from 1995 until 2015, actually led the nation in production. Total reserves as of 2015 still amounts to 141,000 tonnes at 0.065 percent grade. However, since the early 1990s, this production has been by the in situ leach method.[2]
The Wyoming uranium mining industry was hard-hit in the 1980s by the drop in the price of uranium. When the uranium price dropped, the uranium-mining boom town of Jeffrey City lost 95% of its population in three years.[3]
No mining has taken place in the Northern Black Hills district in recent years, but recent high uranium prices have brought new exploration drilling to the area.
Gas Hills
The Gas Hills district, straddling the Natrona-Fremont county line in central Wyoming, was discovered on 9 Sept. 1953 by Neil McNeice, which led to the development of the Luck Mc Mine and others, with ore production beginning in 1955. The ore consisted of lenticular bodies of meta-autunite, uraninite, and coffinite in fluvial arkosicsandstones in the upper Wind River Formation of Eocene age. Mining was mostly by open pit, although there were also some underground mines.[7] Strathmore Minerals Corp. of Kelowna, British Columbia is currently applying for permits to mine properties in the Gas Hills district.[8]
Map of the Crooks Gap-Green Mountain and Great Divide Basin Uranium Areas. Large yellow stars depict past producers and smaller yellow stars depict prospects.
In October 2007, Energy Metals Corp. applied for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) permit to start an in-situ leach mine at the Moore Ranch deposit in Campbell County in the Powder River Basin. Energy Metals is a subsidiary of Uranium One. The permit application is the first NRC application since 1988 for a new uranium recovery facility. The Moore Ranch deposit contains an estimated 5.8 million pounds (2600 tonnes) of uranium oxide. The uranium will be absorbed onto ion-exchange resin beads at the mine; the beads will be shipped to existing facilities of Power Resources Inc. (Cameco) in Wyoming and Nebraska for recovery of the uranium.[13]
In September 2014, Uranerz Energy shipped the first uranium concentrate from its Nichols Ranch mine in the Powder River Basin. Nichols Ranch is an in-situ leach mine, using oxygenated water and sodium bicarbonate to dissolve the uranium. The uranium is recovered at the surface onto resin beads by ion exchange. The resin beads are shipped to Cameco's Smith Ranch mill, where the uranium is recovered. Uranerz expects to produce 300,000 to 400,000 pounds of uranium concentrate in 2014.[14]
↑ Wilson, Anna (2015). Uranium in the Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative Study Area, Southwestern Wyoming, USGS Open-File Report 2014-1123. US Government. p.1.
↑ Raymond E. Langden, Geology and geochemistry of the Highland uranium deposit, Wyoming Geological Association Earth Science Bulletin, Dec. 1973, p.41-48.
↑ Vernon A Mrak (1968) Uranium deposits in the Eocene Sandstones of the Powder River Basin, Wyoming, in Ore Deposits of the United States 1933-1967, New York: American Institute of Mining Engineers, p.838-848.
↑ Olin M. Hart (1968) Uranium in the Black Hills, in Ore Deposits of the United States 1933-1967, New York: American Institute of Mining Engineers, p.832-837.
↑ F. D. Everett (1963) Mining Practices at Four Uranium Properties in the Gas Hills, Wyoming, US Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 8151.
1 2 Heinrich, E. Wm. (1958). Mineralogy and Geology of Radioactive Raw Materials. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. pp.420–426.
↑ Ray E. Harris (1983) Uranium and thorium in the Bighorn Basin, in Bighorn Basin, Wyoming Geological Association, 34th Annual Field Conference Guidebook, p.171-177.
↑ E. N. Harshman (1972) Geology and Uranium Deposits, Shirley Basin Area, Wyoming, US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 745.
↑ Milton O. Childers, Uranium occurrences in Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata of Wyoming and Northern Colorado, The Mountain Geologist, Oct. 1974, p.137-141.
↑ W.M. Sutherland, Wyoming, Mining Engineering, May 2007, p.126.
↑ Uranium One submits application for Moore ranch project in Wyoming, Mining Engineering, Nov. 2007, p.18.
↑ "Uranerz delivers first Nichols Ranch uranium to utilities," Engineering & Mining Journal, Oct. 2014, p.8.
Uraninite, also known as pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2 but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U3O8. Radioactive decay of the uranium causes the mineral to contain oxides of lead and trace amounts of helium. It may also contain thorium and rare-earth elements.
Coffinite is a uranium-bearing silicate mineral with formula: U(SiO4)1−x(OH)4x.
Yellowcake is a type of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before fuel fabrication or uranium enrichment. Yellowcake concentrates are prepared by various extraction and refining methods, depending on the types of ores. Typically, yellowcakes are obtained through the milling and chemical processing of uranium ore, forming a coarse powder that has a pungent odor, is insoluble in water, and contains about 80% uranium oxide, which melts at approximately 2880 °C.
Uranium mining in the United States produced 224,331 pounds (101.8 tonnes) of U3O8 in 2023, 15% of the 2018 production of 1,447,945 pounds (656.8 tonnes) of U3O8. The 2023 production represents 0.4% of the uranium fuel requirements of the US's nuclear power reactors for the year. Production came from five in-situ leaching plants, four in Wyoming (Nichols Ranch ISR Project, Lance Project, Lost Creek Project, and Smith Ranch-Highland Operation) and one in Nebraska (Crowe Butte Operation); and from the White Mesa conventional mill in Utah.
In the United States, copper mining has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017, the US produced 1.27 million metric tonnes of copper, worth $8 billion, making it the world's fourth largest copper producer, after Chile, China, and Peru. Copper was produced from 23 mines in the US. Top copper producing states in 2014 were Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Minor production also came from Idaho, and Missouri. As of 2014, the US had 45 million tonnes of known remaining reserves of copper, the fifth largest known copper reserves in the world, after Chile, Australia, Peru, and Mexico.
Uranium mining in Colorado, United States, goes back to 1872, when pitchblende ore was taken from gold mines near Central City, Colorado. The Colorado uranium industry has seen booms and busts, but continues to this day. Not counting byproduct uranium from phosphate, Colorado is considered to have the third largest uranium reserves of any US state, behind Wyoming and New Mexico.
Uranium mining in Utah, a state of the United States, has a history going back more than 100 years. Uranium mining started as a byproduct of vanadium mining about 1900, became a byproduct of radium mining about 1910, then back to a byproduct of vanadium when the radium price fell in the 1920s. Utah saw a uranium boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but uranium mining declined in the 1980s. Since 2001 there has been a revival of interest in uranium mining, as a result of higher uranium prices.
Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the most common elements in Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. It can be found almost everywhere in rock, soil, rivers, and oceans. The challenge for commercial uranium extraction is to find those areas where the concentrations are adequate to form an economically viable deposit. The primary use for uranium obtained from mining is in fuel for nuclear reactors.
Uranium mining in Arizona has taken place since 1918. Prior to the uranium boom of the late 1940s, uranium in Arizona was a byproduct of vanadium mining of the mineral carnotite.
In-situ leaching (ISL), also called in-situ recovery (ISR) or solution mining, is a mining process used to recover minerals such as copper and uranium through boreholes drilled into a deposit, in situ. In situ leach works by artificially dissolving minerals occurring naturally in a solid state. For recovery of material occurring naturally in solution, see: Brine mining.
The Cigar Lake Mine is a large high-grade underground uranium mine, located in the uranium-rich Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, at the south-west corner of Waterbury Lake. The deposit, discovered in 1981, is second in size of high-grade deposits only to the nearby McArthur River mine. Other deposits, such as Olympic Dam in Australia, contain more uranium but at lower grades.
Uranium mining in New Mexico was a significant industry from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Although New Mexico has the second largest identified uranium ore reserves of any state in the United States, no uranium ore has been mined in New Mexico since 1998.
Crow Butte is a uranium mining operation located four miles (6 km) southeast of the city of Crawford in Dawes County, Nebraska, United States. Cameco Corporation owns and operates Crow Butte through its wholly owned subsidiary, Crow Butte Resources, Inc.
Smith Ranch and Highland are uranium mining operations located in Wyoming, U.S.A. They are separate permits, operated as a single operation, and have one central processing facility. The Smith Ranch-Highland operation is the largest uranium production facility in the United States.
SAG/SDAG Wismut was a uranium mining company in East Germany during the time of the Cold War. It produced a total of 230,400 tonnes of uranium between 1947 and 1990 and made East Germany the fourth largest producer of uranium ore in the world at the time. It was the largest single producer of uranium ore in the entire sphere of control of the USSR. In 1991 after German reunification it was transformed into the Wismut GmbH company, owned by the Federal Republic of Germany, which is now responsible for the restoration and environmental cleanup of the former mining and milling areas. The head office of SDAG Wismut / Wismut GmbH is in Chemnitz-Siegmar.
The Yeelirrie uranium project is a uranium deposit located approximately 70 km southwest of Wiluna, in the Mid West region of Western Australia. The name Yeelirrie is taken from the local sheep station.
The world's largest producer of uranium is Kazakhstan, which in 2019 produced 43% of the world's mining output. Canada was the next largest producer with a 13% share, followed by Australia with 12%. Uranium has been mined in every continent except Antarctica.
The Willow Creek mine is an in-situ leach (ISL) uranium mining project located in Powder River Basin in the state of Wyoming, United States. It comprises the Irigaray central processing plant and wellfields, and the Christensen Ranch ion exchange plant and wellfields.
Paramontroseite (V4+O2) is a relatively rare orthorhombic vanadium oxide mineral in the Ramsdellite Group. Synthetic paramontroseite may have applications in medicine, batteries and electronics.
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