Vol. 71/No. 19      May 14, 2007

This "uranium rush" is spurred by plans by U.S. utilities to build at least 35 to 40 more nuclear power plants in the country in the next 20 years.

British prime minister Anthony Blair has said he wants nuclear power to provide 20 percent of the country's energy, a substantial increase from current levels that would require building 10 new nuclear power plants by 2020 in the United Kingdom, according to the Financial Times. Globally, there are 436 nuclear power plants in operation and 31 more under construction, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 2,700 new claims for uranium mining have been filed in Colorado alone in the first quarter of this year, compared to 104 in 2004.

This push is related to the gradual diminishing of the dominant energy sources today, nonrenewable fossil fuels, and recent steep increases in the prices of oil, natural gas, and coal.

The increasing demand for the ore is pushing up its market price. The March 28 New York Times reported that uranium ore was trading at $90 a pound, compared to $10 five years ago. An April 9 dispatch from Bloomberg News said the Texas-based Mestena Uranium LLC sold 100,000 pounds of the metal at $113 per pound.

The new rush toward uranium mining, the first since the Cold War ended in the 1980s, has revived concerns among former uranium miners, their relatives, and other working people about the related threats to health and safety. Many such miners—especially on the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico where some 1,200 uranium mines operated between the 1940s and 1980s—have died or are suffering from cancer caused by exposure to uranium and the radiation it emits. In 2005 the Navajo Tribal Council banned uranium mining.  
 
 
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