The Navajo Nation took the unusual step of using its police force to try to impede uranium shipments across its land last week—a preview of legal environmental battles to come if other uranium mines open in the southwest.
Energy Fuels Resources Inc., on July 30 began transporting its first shipments of uranium ore from its new Pinyon Plain mine near the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the company’s White Mesa Mill in southeast Utah, the first of possibly many such shipments to the only uranium ore processing site in the US. Transporting uranium ore is banned on the Navajo Nation, but Navajo Police were unable to stop the shipment.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) announced Aug. 2 that she negotiated a pause on the shipments across the Navajo Nation while tribal officials and Energy Fuels discuss a solution.
The clash between the Navajo Nation and uranium miners is happening as climate change is sparking new interest in nuclear energy and high uranium prices have motivated mining companies to begin exploring for uranium around the edges of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico.
But failure of the federal government to clean up hundreds of abandoned mines in the United States’ most uranium-rich region has undermined trust that it can be extracted without harming public health across the “nuclear West,” said Andrew Mergen, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School.
Uranium mining near Indigenous land and transporting the ore through the Navajo Nation is likely to spark more conflict in a region where Native Americans have been traumatized by past mining, said Amber Reimondo, energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust, a regional environmental group.
“The Navajo Nation and other tribes have been clear that they don’t want uranium anywhere near them anymore,” Reimondo said. “It doesn’t really matter what people think is legal or is not legal, we’ll see that tested in courts.”
Trucking uranium across Indigenous land against the will of tribes “touches at the heart of some difficult sovereignty issues” likely to intensify if uranium mining continues to ramp up, Mergen said.
“Those are really potentially difficult issues—not just legal issues,” he said.
Environmental groups worry about water pollution, and tribes say the mines continue a decades-long legacy of uranium production that has left their land polluted and citizens stricken with cancer.
Mining and possible water pollution at Pinyon Plain near the Grand Canyon were part of the impetus for President
“Every time we see a new wave of uranium mining in the Southwest, we see a new wave of pollution,” said Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
Breaking Tribal Law
The Navajo Nation accused Energy Fuels of breaking tribal law when it trucked about 50 tons of uranium ore through the reservation last week without the nation’s approval. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren signed an order requiring Energy Fuels to strike an agreement with tribal government before shipping more uranium ore across the region.
“We’re a land of laws,” Nygren said in a statement. “As the executive branch, as the President of the Navajo Nation, we’re here to enforce these laws to make sure nobody’s breaking these laws.”
Energy Fuels said it followed all legal requirements for safe transportation of Pinyon Plain’s uranium ore, which will eventually be used as fuel for nuclear power plants.
Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers said in a statement Aug. 2 that the company looks forward to negotiations facilitated by Hobbs even though the company has “gone above and beyond any legal requirements.” He said he looks forward to addressing any of Nygren’s reasonable concerns. The Navajo Nation and Hobbs’ office declined to comment on the Energy Fuels statement.
“Activist organizations” are spreading “unwarranted fear” about risks associated with transporting uranium ore, Chalmers said.
More than 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined during the Cold War from more than 500 places on the sprawling Navajo Nation that spans three states—one of the country’s primary sources of uranium used for nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants until the 1980s.
Cancer cases among Navajo miners were rampant at the time. Most of the mines have never been cleaned up, leaving a long-lasting legacy of radioactive waste considered one of the region’s most significant environmental justice challenges.
The Environmental Protection Agency added uranium waste piles on the Navajo Nation in Arizona to the National Priorities List this spring, paving the way for the federal government to help clean up sites left behind by companies that mined uranium there from the late 1940s to 1986.
Mine Proposals on the Table
The future of uranium mining near the Navajo Nation is uncertain because analysts don’t expect uranium prices to peak again after years of depression.
Uranium prices peaked at around $106 after the US and 19 other countries attending the 2023 United Nations climate change conference in Dubai pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 because nuclear power plants don’t emit greenhouse gases and they can replace coal and natural gas generators that are driving climate change. Russia had long been a chief supplier of the uranium used for nuclear fuel, but in the wake of the war in Ukraine, President Biden this year signed into law a ban on uranium imports from Russia to revive domestic uranium enrichment and production.
Uranium was $25 per pound six years ago. Today, uranium hovers around $82.
The pledges “were unrealistic, but there’s much more interest in mining and producing uranium,” even as some countries hesitate to build new nuclear power plants, said Chris Gadomski, lead nuclear analyst for BloombergNEF.
Energy Fuels is bullish on Pinyon Plain’s future as uranium prices remain high.
“Pinyon Plain will likely be the biggest, or one of the biggest, contributors to domestic uranium mining in the next few years,” Curtis Moore, an Energy Fuels senior vice president, said in an email. “It’s a great mine.”
But the Navajo Nation views uranium mining near its reservation as a desecration—especially in areas its people consider sacred outside the reservation, spokesman George Hardeen said.
Two companies have recently announced plans to expand uranium exploration and mining in western New Mexico near Mt. Taylor, a mountain sacred to the Navajo people.
Premier American Uranium Inc. announced on July 26 that it plans to expand uranium prospecting at its Cebolleta Project near Mt. Taylor in Cibola National Forest near the town of Grants, N.M. The company estimates more than 18 million pounds of uranium oxide could be mined there. Premier American didn’t respond to recent requests for comment.
The US Forest Service said in an email on July 31 that it will soon complete an updated environmental review of Laramide Resources Ltd.'s nearby proposed La Jara Mesa uranium mine, which may contain more than 7 million pounds of uranium oxide. An updated draft of that review is due in January and a final decision is scheduled for 2026.
Laramide, which is also planning to develop another uranium mine closer to the Navajo Nation near Crownpoint, N.M., didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Water pollution is among environmental groups’ biggest concerns about uranium mining near Grants.
“The Grants area already has permanent groundwater pollution from past uranium mining,” said McKinnon, of the Center for Biological Diversity. “They’ve had high rates of cancer, and more mining promises more pollution.”
The Navajo Nation wrote a letter to the Forest Service in 2012 saying it “unequivocally opposes” the La Jara Mesa project.
Hardeen said he can’t comment about the nation’s current position on the La Jara Mesa project but said that uranium development around Mt. Taylor amounts to “desecrating a sacred place.”
“To Navajos, one of the only words that comes to my mind is appalling,” Hardeen said. “Uranium, Navajos believe, should not be removed from the ground. It disturbs harmony.”
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