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Show AND THE #1 SECRET PLACE OF THE CANYON COUNTRY: THE WHITE MESA MILL at BLANDING, UTAH! Southeast Utah has been doing the backstroke in nuclear waste for half a century and the White Mesa Mill has been an integral part of that legacy. When it opened in the 1970s, the mill processed "home-grown" uranium from mines in the Four Corners area. But the domestic. uranium industry went belly up in the early 1980s when the price of the ore plummeted. Energy Fuels, the mill owner, struggled to stay afloat and eventually sold out to the International Uranium Corporation (UC). With no profitable ore to dig up and process, Energy Fuels and then IUC sought license amendments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to accept "alternate feed materials." So in the last five years, according to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, the mill has sought to “receive, process, and dispose of over 1,000,000 cubic yards of waste," from just one site in St. Louis alone. It has also received waste products from sites across the country; even by-products from the original Manhattan Project, the world’s first controlled nuclear reaction, have found a home at the White Mesa mill. Now, the mill wants 840,000 tons of contaminated dirt from Maywood, New Jersey. According to the Sierra Club, the dirt contains radioactive thorium, volatile organic compounds, pesticides, metals, and other hazardous wastes." The dirt would be hauled by rail to Cisco, Utah, and then by truck through Moab, Monticello, and Blanding at a rate of 46 to 86 loads per week, for seven years! And if that’s not enough good news, IUC could not pass up the opportunity to get its hands on Moab’s own Atlas Tailings Pile. Most advocates of re-locating the mulltimillion ton pile have proposed that they be moved 20 miles north to a location on Klondike Flats, near I-70. But IUC wants to build a slurry line, eos 90 miles south to the White Mesa mill. These guys just love nuclear waste. And yet, while other nuclear waste sites get all kinds of publicity, the White Mesa Mill struggles along in relative obscurity. Until recently, the only press it was able to muster came from The Zephyr’s Ken Sleight, who has been shining all the light he could upon it for years. But now the Sierra Club has entered the fray and hopes to give the mill a lot more attention in the near future. So..to our pals at IUC we award them “The Zephyr’s #1 Secret Place.” CONGRATULATIONS! You may be reinvigorating SE Utah’s old moniker as “Uranium Capital of the World," but we’d bet the second home market in Blanding is awful...especially when the wind blows. Aerial view of the White Mesa Mill near Blanding... |