Southern Utah uranium producers hope Trump's trade decision will benefit them

Global markets are awash with cheap uranium, threatening to put out of business U.S. producers who say they are competing against “state-sponsored” companies in Russia’s orbit bent on cornering the market for a critical fuel that powers a fifth of U.S. electrical generation and the nation’s nuclear Navy.

In the coming three months, however, President Donald Trump is expected to issue a trade decision that could make or break the U.S. uranium-mining industry with implications for southeastern Utah, where idled and abandoned mines still dot some of the world’s most beautiful desert landscapes.

At the request of two U.S. producers, the Trump administration is weighing whether to require the nuclear power industry to secure up to 25 percent of its uranium from domestic sources. Such a move would make mining near Grand Canyon National Park and Bears Ears National Monument much more likely, say critics such as Amber Reimondo, energy program director of the Grand Canyon Trust.

“U.S. uranium prices will climb and U.S. uranium miners will be given a bypass around the presently saturated global market,” Reimondo said. “The brimming global supply of uranium has kept prices low for years, restraining the kind of rampant plundering of public and tribal lands that this country experienced decades ago. The public is still grappling with the consequences and paying the price of the last uranium boom.”

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2019/04/17/buy-more-our-uranium-utah/
(Salt Lake Tribune)