Uranium Hunters in US West Face Partial Ban, Pollution Fears (1)

Five weeks before President Joe Biden announced a historic new ban on new uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, Sarana Riggs approached the barbed-wire fence surrounding an inactive mine in an Arizona national forest, a Geiger counter in her hand.

The Geiger counter didn’t detect any dangerous radiation that day from the Pinyon Plain mine, about two miles from the spot where Biden would sign the monument proclamation. But Riggs wasn’t convinced.

The activist grew up on the Navajo Nation near Tuba City, Arizona, where a uranium mill operated until 1966. It took another 24 years to clean up the ...