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Show Uraniysi industry Being Quietly 10? v by Maxine Newell The uranium industry being quietly rejuvenated the Moab area - so quiet-, quiet-, .in fact, it has the bus-ess bus-ess section pondering how prepare for it. Moab has en geared all year for a imored second , boom, but for all practical purposes )thing seems to be happen-,g. happen-,g. The extent of uranium ;tivities is almost as hush jsh as the use which set : in. motion a couple of de-ides de-ides ago. Nevertheless, things are pparently happening, at a ace that could1 be overwhelming over-whelming if the story were .poked out. A dozen or "tajor . corporations are jnown to be in the area, squiring large blocks of .aimland on all sides of Mo ab Valley. Some of these companies are diversifying into mining for the first tme. But "don't quote me" is almost a slogan among the mining inrustrialists. Begin Production Sooner or later, however, Moabites feel, exploration must turn into . production and supply and demand sta-stistics sta-stistics for U308 indicate it could be sooner than we think. One Moab mining industrialist indus-trialist in the "don't quote me" category predicts within with-in a 3-year period price increases in-creases will put low grade ore mines into production that were culled out as impractical im-practical during the world's first uranium boom which centered in Moab ten years ago. . I . . . ' ." v V . : J ' ::7:';"V t U; , . - 1 . . . J " ' , .s, , ' .- - .. ' ', : - - U- . '- .1 . ,, , " .. . Milled Uranuim Reserves dwarf Atlas Minerals Mill nortlh of Moab as the stockpiles increase each day, but according accord-ing to AEC statistics, future demands for U308 for nuclear power plant react- Still another points out the difference . in exploration explora-tion now, and that of the boom decade. The geiger counter, which identified the uranium prospector during the '50's, is gathering dust on storage shelves. In South eastern Utah, locating an unstaked uranium deposit shallow enough to make a geiger tick is like locating a needle in a haystack. Deep Drilling The Morrison formation, once the focal point of the hunt, is not the principal target today. The '60's exploration ex-ploration is for deep ore andi ,the geologist has comf into his own. Deep drilling is the prospecting procedure today, and the pick and shovel prospector a thing oJ the past. Major companies or cannot lis Sw6 Witfi,oul active SelopmerrG of prunlnetl reserves, MucH explpratiott is imderwa In MoaB bow to with unlimited exploration funds will set the future pace of the uranium mining industry. There has been little in-' in-' centive for exploration since the peak uranium boom .period of tilie mid-1950's. mid-1950's. But demands for u- ranium for nuclear power . plants has revived interest . In the next three years, uranium producers plan exploration ex-ploration and development drilling in the U. S. at an approximate rate of 6 mil-' mil-' lion feet per year, three times the level planned a year ago, and topped only by boom years of 1955 ; through 1958. ' (Reaction Mixed J The mining industry is . reacting in mixed fashion i to the pressure to increase j reserves. Same companies - are downright cool about increasing exiploration ef-i ef-i forts; others cautious; some are highly enthusiastic over ' the future of uranium and are backing it with greatly expanded exploration budgets. bud-gets. Initially, producers will concentrate on known ore 3 environments in the three ' established major producing districts of the U.S. - the Gas Hills and Shirley Basin I areas of Wyoming, the Ura- van Belt, of Colorado, and S Big Indian Wlash near Moab I and the Ambrosia Lake dis- trict in New Mexico. From these locations they will fail out to adjacent areas regarded re-garded as potentially favorable, favor-able, and from there into wildcat country if reserves are needed and 1 price is right. i Rumors Persist i Attention now is focased j on the Lisbon fault, near j Moab, where deep U308 min j eralization has been drilled. Rumors also persist in Mo-. Mo-. ab that an exciting deposit has been located in the 7-; 7-; mile area North of the city. ' The pace of the uranium ? hunt of the '60s is geared to peacetime use. In a paper . delivered at the December ; convention of the NW Mining Min-ing Association, an AEC official of-ficial listed 49 reactors at 37 locations in 21 states scheduled for startup no later la-ter than 1974. (Continued ,on Page Three) i URANIUM (cent, from page 1) AEC Stastistics quoted in a recent Engineering and mining Journal rates com-Imercial com-Imercial nuclear electric 'generating capacity now at 1,167 electrical megawatts, tout forecast that it will soar 8-Va times by 1970. 34 times iby 1975, and 81 times by 1980. In addition, growth of nuclear electric power in the Free World abroad is expected to exceed that of the U.S., reaching 130,000 Mwe by 1980. Tonnage Predicted Translated to Tons' of U-',308, U-',308, the forecast predicts 1980 nuclear power capacity will require 172,000 tons for the domestic market, 237, 000 short tons for the foreign for-eign market. Most sources agree that tlie demand! for uranium will tax reserves .'and production. pro-duction. The AEC has estimated esti-mated U. S. reserves at 145,000 tons as of the first of 1966; contract deliveries through 1970 will, lower the reserves to 102,500 tons of uncommitted uranium' for the post-1970 period. Price Estimates Estimates for the future price of uranium have many scopes, ranging front $5 to $30 per ton. Actually the effect ef-fect supply and demand) will have on price remains to be seen. At the present time, price estimates are based or. costs of mining and producing produc-ing from shallow mines, deep drilling, reserves from the sea, milling J techniques, etc. Known reserves are catalogued cat-alogued by. price bracket. With an adequate exploration explora-tion effort, the AEC estimates esti-mates 325,000 tons of U308 can be found and developed, at prices of $5 to ?10 per pound. If confirmed by exploration ex-ploration efforts, 425,000 tons of U308 could be made available for commercial power development, exclusive exclus-ive of stocks being accumulated accumu-lated by the AEC which could be in excess of military mili-tary requirements. , Reserve Locations More than 85 percent of the known Free World re- serves of uranium ar" located lo-cated in the U.S., Canada and South Africa. About 60 per cent of the U. S., re serves of S5-S10 ore lies in the Colorado Plateau. The two major ore enviroments of the Colorado Plateau are the Uravan mineral belt, and the Ambrosia Lake district dis-trict These uranium deposits depos-its are found chiefly in the Morrison formation, Chinle and Shinarump. Drilling costs are highly variable ranging from 35 cents a foot up to $5 for deep drilling drill-ing up to 2,000 feet. It is generally agreed that develrpment of breeder reactors re-actors will eventually effect ef-fect the uranium market, but is not likely to have any major effect on requirements require-ments within the next 15 year period: Some very long projections have shown a leveling off and decline in uraniutn needs toward the end of the century, but trying try-ing to predict 35 years a-head a-head is difficult. Claim Filings Heavy In spite of the optimistic evidence that the uranium industry must be rejuvenated rejuvena-ted and quickly, the only concrete information obtainable obtain-able in the Mciab area comes from the Recorder's office. Last year, after a lapse of several, a lively increase in claim! notice filings was shown, with over 4,000 recorded re-corded for the year. The trend is definitely increasing increas-ing as spring breaks in the hills. Since the first of January, Jan-uary, 1967, 769 claim notices no-tices have been filed in the Grand County Recorder's office: of-fice: 295 of these during the first 15 days of February. The number of filings in San Juan County in 196-7 according to San Juan County Co-unty Recorder, Arvilla Warren, War-ren, had reached 1844 by the middle of February; On Friday February 17, 180 claim filings were received in the San Juan Recorders office. The new filings do not portray the true picture of activity in the area, however. how-ever. Attention is focused on corporation leasing of pre-staked pre-staked claims for exploration explora-tion work. The predicted boom in Moab hinges on development of these claims into productive mines. |