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Planet-Profit Report, reporting on sustainable development in the Western United States.

Nuclear power: What we know now

There are ways to make it safer than ever

(Editor's note: This is the third part of an interview with energy expert Jim Graham, who brings a wealth of experience to his advocacy of nuclear power as a safe, clean and cheap source of power. Read Part 1 and Part 2.)

Planet-Profiit Report: Jim, nuclear power plants may be safer than ever. But these days you hear more people talk about problems associated with the legacy of uranium mining. Colorado no longer has a working nuclear power plant, but we still mine uranium. How safe is it and what's been done to make it safer?

Graham: There is a legacy with everything we do. The knowledge we had 30 years ago is different from what we know today. What mining companies did at the time was mostly accepted practice. Now we know we didn't clean up as well as we could. We're doing that now. The mining companies themselves pay for the cleanup. Where there is no longer any owner of record, the taxpayers pay for cleanup. In the 1950s, in mining and milling sites like Canon City, mine tailings were dumped on the ground and left there. The U.S. government promoted this practice, and the industry didn't know any better.

Today, at a milling site where you take raw uranium and begin milling it into nuclear fuel pellets, you build a 40-acre cell in the ground, and you design it so it won't leak, and you store tailings there.  You start with impermeable clay that water will not penetrate, then you add a high-density plastic liner. On top of the liner you add layers of sand and gravel, then you put another layer of plastic. You store the mining waste in these cells, and the entire process is heavily regulated by the industry and the government.

PPR: How about the new mill proposal in southwestern Colorado?

Graham: Energy Fuels Corporation applied for and received approval to mill mined uranium near Uravan, an area - you can guess by its name -- that has a long history of uranium mining. As such, the area also has a lot of legacy problems, areas that are being cleaned up and reclaimed. Today, you have many new requirements. If you build a milling operation, the regulatory bodies really hold your feet to the fire, unlike 30-40 years ago. I see no problem with the mine or the mill that will be built; it will create jobs and revenue that the area really needs.

PPR: Colorado’s only nuclear power reactor – the Fort St. Vrain plant near Platteville – was shut down and officially decommissioned in 1996. Why?

Graham: Fort St. Vrain was one a few high-temperature gas reactors built by General Atomics.  Construction began in 1968, and the first electricity was generated in 1976. It ran intermittently, about 15 percent of the time, until 1989. It was operated by Public Service Company of Colorado, now Xcel Energy. Public Service notified the NRC in 1988 that it had decided to halt Fort St. Vrain operations early because of high operating costs and the plant's frequent shutdowns. They just could not keep the power plant operating at design power output. The operating costs were very high, making the facility noneconomic. Built for $200 million, it was a commercial disappointment, and has been switched over to a natural-gas fired power plant.

PPR: What about the flap over the Scwarzwalder mine in Jefferson County?

Graham: High-grade uranium was discovered there in the 1950s and the area was mined on and off from then until 2002, when the mine was shut down and closed. There's a ton of uranium left in the mine. When oversaw Cotter Corp., which owns the mine, my charge was to clean up the mine and reclaim the surface, return it to nature, and be done with it. Which we did.

There continues to be a fight between Cotter and state regulators about the groundwater coming out of the mine that flows into Ralston Reservoir, which is part of the metro water supply. Cotter Corp. needs to treat the water; it's their mine and they know they need to clean it up more. One little known fact is that the uranium levels in Ralston Creek above the Scwarzwalder mine are much higher than what is projected to come from the mine drainage.

PPR:What about the controversy surrounding a proposal to mine uranium in northern Colorado near the Wyoming border?

Graham: Near the town of Nunn, uranium has been found in a concentrated geologic condition in the aquifer, well below ground. A company, PowerTech, has decided there would be a commercial benefit to recover it.They plan to use a well-known technology to recover it that is well-proven and works great. Essentially they add chemicals to the water --  a bicarbonate mixture -- that changes the PH level slightly and separates the uranium from the rock. It reverses Mother Nature.

Then they pump the water to the surface and recover the uranium. It's like a big Culligan water softening plant. Mining an aquifer is a highly regulated procedure. There are monitors inside the wellfields and outside the mining area to keep track of the fluids used to separate the uranium. People are saying it will contaminate the aquifer and contaminate their drinking water and contaminate the area after they are done. That's the most outlandish thing I ever heard. It's physically impossible since you have to comply with industry and government regulations.

When you are done mining, you clean it up. You keep pumping the water out and washing out all the chemicals until the water has been restored to its former state. It's the best way to mine uranium. There is no surface disturbance, no waste ponds, no tailings areas. People today are drinking the water from an aquifer that has a lot of uranium it. What the company proposes to do is take the uranium out of the aquifer. If it's okay to drink today, it'll be okay to drink when they are done.