Wyoming uranium producers wait out industry downturn

Published 2:14 pm, Sunday, August 13, 2017

CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — On a recent morning, the Nichols Ranch mine was quietly leaching uranium from rock formations buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the Powder River Basin.

A handful of employees slept in a trailer outside the plant after their 12-hour shifts as mine manager Bernard Bonifas pulled up at the main office to oversee operations. The haze from recent forest fires hid the dark ridge of the Big Horn Mountains on the western horizon.

On the surface, uranium mining at Nichols Ranch is surprisingly simple. Hundreds of little boxes pepper the hills about 70 miles north of Casper. Under each of those boxes, a solution is being pumped down into the rock torise. Without it, they couldn't start to build up production, and they would be faced with more layoffs, companies argued. That request was denied.

Nichols Ranch, owned by Energy Fuels, went from 38 employees about a year and a half ago to 27 today, said Paul Goranson, executive vice president of in situ recovery operations, as he toured the mine with Bonifas.

Low prices in the uranium market have driven down production, and the mine is just operating to fill established contracts and keep the infrastructure running, Goranson said. He's been in the industry for three decades.

The hopeful — including Goranson — predict a rise within the next three years thanks to new nuclear power plants in Asia that will increase demand, while production hopefully slows from operations in places