The New Nuclear West: Uranium Milling As Community on Colorado's
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THE NEW NUCLEAR WEST: URANIUM MILLING AS COMMUNITY ON COLORADO’S WESTERN SLOPE by Abraham S.D. Tidwell A thesis submitted to the Faculty and the Board of Trustees of the Colorado School of Mines in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Political Economy of Resources. Golden, Colorado Date ________________ Signed: _________________________ Abraham S.D. Tidwell Signed: _________________________ Dr. Jen Schneider Thesis Advisor Golden, Colorado Date ________________ Signed: _________________________ Kathleen J. Hancock Director and Associate Professor MIPER Program Liberal Arts & International Studies Signed: _________________________ Elizabeth Van Wie Davis Professor and Division Director Liberal Arts & International Studies ii ABSTRACT In mid-2007, Energy Fuels, a Toronto-based uranium mining and milling company, announced their intent to build Piñon Ridge, the first new conventional uranium mill in the United States in 30 years. The prospect of a return to uranium milling has mobilized community support to bring back an industry some see as both familiar and capable of supporting and growing their communities. Using transcripts generated during the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s public meetings and hearings during 2010 and 2012, this study examines how proponents of the mill frame the socioeconomic advantages of bringing the industry back. Applying Kinsella’s bounded constitutive model of communication, this study shows that the community and the uranium mill are bound in a “sorge-enframing” duality where the care generated by each binds the other to the recalcitrant nature of the uranium industry and preconceived notions of socioeconomic development, respectively. This conclusion suggests that current public engagement processes associated with uranium mill licensing fail to address the complex social and economic issues surrounding the uranium industry, limiting the ability for community members to establish a new, more sustainable, development narrative. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1: THE NEW NUCLEAR WEST................................................................................ 1 The New Nuclear West: What is it? ............................................................................................ 3 Overview of Study ................................................................................................................... 6 Why Piñon Ridge? ...................................................................................................................... 8 Previous Studies on Piñon Ridge .............................................................................................. 10 Uranium Milling ........................................................................................................................ 10 Uranium Milling Regulation ..................................................................................................... 12 Modern Federal Regulation of Uranium ............................................................................... 13 Agreement States Program .................................................................................................... 14 Overview of Energy Fuels and the Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill ................................................ 15 Energy Fuels’ Piñon Ridge: A Symbol of the Future? ............................................................. 18 Overview of Chapters................................................................................................................ 19 CHAPTER 2: NUCLEAR AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATON ............................ 21 Chapter Overview ..................................................................................................................... 23 Nuclear Communication ........................................................................................................... 24 The Fabulous Textuality: Early Nuclear Communication Studies ........................................ 25 The Mundane Nuclear Texts ................................................................................................. 28 iv Environmental Communication – Beyond Human Constructs ................................................. 30 Oravec, Rogers, and the Foundation of Environmental Communication ................................. 32 Nuclear and Environmental Communication: A Nexus ............................................................ 34 Public Participation and Nuclear and Environmental Communication in the 21st Century ...... 36 Nuclear Weapons Complex Studies .......................................................................................... 37 Nuclear Waste Sitting Controversies ........................................................................................ 39 The Material and Symbolic Aspects of Nuclear Technology ................................................... 43 Heidegger and Being at the Hanford Reservation ................................................................. 44 The Bounded Constitutive Model and the Goshute Nuclear Waste Controversy ................. 46 Implications of Clarke’s Study and the Necessity for Examining Proponents ......................... 48 CHAPTER 3: THE URANIUM INDUSTRY IN WESTERN COLORADO .............................. 51 Radium Industry Boom and Bust (1898 – 1937) ...................................................................... 53 Early Carnotite Exploration on the Plateau ........................................................................... 54 Radium Industry Development .............................................................................................. 55 Radium Industry Bust ............................................................................................................ 57 Myth of the Radium Industry ................................................................................................ 58 Federal Uranium Industry Boom and Bust (1938 – 1970) ........................................................ 60 Wartime Uranium and Vanadium Extraction and Processing ............................................... 61 Atomic Energy Act of 1946 and the Circulars ...................................................................... 62 Uranium Rush ........................................................................................................................ 65 Stretch Out Period ................................................................................................................. 70 Commercial Boom and Bust (1971 – 1984).............................................................................. 74 Playing with Fire: AEC, ERDA, and DOE Uranium Market Intervention ........................... 76 v The Uranium Cartel ............................................................................................................... 77 Boom and Bust ...................................................................................................................... 78 Piñon Ridge, White Mesa, and the Legacy of Bob Adams ....................................................... 80 CHAPTER 4: PIÑON RIDGE ...................................................................................................... 82 Politics, Policy, and Piñon Ridge after 2010 ............................................................................. 84 Public Engagement and the Agreement States Program ........................................................... 85 Piñon Ridge Legal Battle and New Hearing ............................................................................. 87 Piñon Ridge Today .................................................................................................................... 89 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 90 Uranium Mining and Milling as Community ............................................................................ 94 Uranium Mining and Milling as Family ................................................................................... 96 Family as Past and Future ...................................................................................................... 98 Uranium Mining and Milling as Fatalism ............................................................................... 101 Fatalism as Past and Future ................................................................................................. 104 Uranium Mining and Milling as Expertise .............................................................................. 109 Expertise in the Past and Future? ........................................................................................ 110 Uranium Futures ...................................................................................................................... 113 Moving Forward ...................................................................................................................... 115 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 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