Uranium expansion for nuke

Rapid city journal reports, Opponents of a request for expanded uranium mining near the South Dakota-Nebraska border have prompted a hearing Wednesday before an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Because of higher prices for uranium used in nuclear power plants and weapons, the Crow Butte Resources mine near Crawford, Neb., in Dawes County wants to raise its annual production from around 800,000 pounds of uranium oxide to about 1.2 million pounds.

The mine owned by Cameco Corp. of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, lies southwest of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

It uses the "in situ leach" process in which a sodium bicarbonate solution is pumped into an aquifer that has uranium in it. The resulting chemical reaction releases the uranium, which is pumped to the surface and processed into uranium oxide.

Crow Butte has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality for permission to add wells and raise the amount of solution it pumps into the ground.

Several individuals and groups have been allowed to intervene in the NRC process. One of them, Debra White Plume, said her goal is to determine whether the mine is contaminating water on the nearby reservation and causing health problems for its American Indian residents.

"We couldn't find a mine that did not affect the groundwater," said White Plume, who is from the Pine Ridge town of Manderson. "Until we can say with certainty they are not contaminating the groundwater, we have to oppose them."

Gord Struthers, a Cameco Corp. spokesman, said the geology of the area and distance to the reservation make that physically implausible.

"It's impossible for our mining activities at Crow Butte to affect well water at Pine Ridge," he said.

The NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel already has accepted three of seven contentions brought by the petitioners.

Two of those deal with possible water contamination. The other concerns consultation with tribal leaders over a prehistoric Indian camp, according to a memorandum and order.

Wednesday's hearing in Chadron, Neb., will help determine whether the NRC will consider a fourth issue regarding foreign ownership of the mine, the document states.

Struthers said that though the company is Canadian, the United States is its largest customer so it benefits from the mining.

The hearing will also include discussions on the involvement of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and what set of rules will be used in the proceeding, said Scott Burnell, an NRC spokesman.

"We're still in the preliminary phases of the hearing," he said of the process.

Other petitioners include the group White Plume helps run called Owe Aku, or "Bring Back the Way" in Lakota, the Western Nebraska Resources Council, Slim Buttes Agricultural Development Corporation and Thomas Kanatakeniate Cook.

Struthers said Cameco's record in Nebraska is good. A broken coupling allowed contaminated water to reach an aquifer in 1996 but it was pulled back through the mining process before it left the mine. And 23 times mining water has reached monitoring wells at Crow Butte, but groundwater was never contaminated, he said.

Earlier this month, another Cameco company, Power Resources, agreed to pay $1 million to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality to settle restoration violations at the company's uranium mine in Converse County.

Because of the higher price of uranium, Cameco continued its mining operations beyond the permit timeline, Struthers said.

"There was never a question of whether the well fields would be restored but when," he said