Responsible for the worst nuclear "accident" in the western world, the United Nuclear Corporation was, until the early '80s, the largest private sector uranium producer in the United States: nearly 4 million pounds were produced in 1979, and just over 3.5 million the following year (1).

Its uranium reserves were also vast. The UNC/Homestake partnership alone held 5.8% of all US reserves, at its Ambrosia Lake mines, in 1976. Only Kerr-McGee and Gulf Oil held bigger reserves at that time (2).

But already, in early 1980, the weakening uranium market and increasing costs were forcing UNC to cut back: 350 miners laid off at Church Rock in March 1980, its HQ at Albuquerque, New Mexico, closed, and its office "consolidated" at Church Rock (3). The UNC Recovery Corp - processing uranium from phosphoric acid - suspended operations at the same time, UNC accusing W R Grace of supplying acid below quality from its fertilizer plant near Bartow, Florida (1, 3).

Uranium operations at the Ambrosia Lake and St Anthony (Laguna Pueblo) mines were closed in 1981 and 1982 (4) and all operations at Church Rock suspended in the second quarter of 1982 (5) after the company reported a net loss of US$ 14.1 M. Only 0.3 million kilograms of uranium was provided to customers from UNC's own stocks during 1982; about 7 million kilograms had to be purchased, though at a delivery price which allowed a "modest profit" (5). At the end of 1982, UNC valued its uranium properties at US$138M, in addition to US$39M invested in exploration projects. Uranium production was not expected to resume for at least two years (5). Early in 1981, UNC also sold its 70% share in UNC/Homestake (sometimes known as United Homestake) to Homestake for US$20M (6). Under the deal, Homestake acquired full control of the three mines and a mill at Grants, New Mexico (7), and paid US$3M for uranium stocks (8).

By then, UNC had already relegated uranium to a back seat (9) and was trying to diversify. It was proposing to buy into Western Airlines of the US and, more important, made moves towards securing NCC Energy, a British energy and investment company with holdings in the North Sea and North Africa (10).

As of 1984, UNC could report further discontinuation of uranium exploration and the reduction or write-off of some of its mineral properties. No uranium deliveries at all were made in the first six months of 1984, and UNC's final uranium contract was fulfilled in 1983 (11).

UNC Resources was the holding company for United Nuclear Corp which advertised itself as "... a diversified energy company engaged principally in uranium mining and milling, manufacturing, and providing products and services in energy-related and other fields" (6). The holding company itself was divided into three main operating groups: Manufacturing and Services, Offshore Products and Services, and Minerals (5).

The Offshore group made UNC a leading producer of aluminium and steel marine vessels used not only by the off-shore oil industry but in military applications too. This section contributed nearly a quarter (23.5%) of UNC's total 1982 revenue (5), but it was being closed down in 1984 (11).

The main activity of the Manufacturing and Services group was to "supply reactor fuel and related components to the US Navy's nuclear powered fleet" (5). This was by far UNC's biggest money-spinner until the early 1980s, contributing nearly half (47.7%) of total 1982 revenue (5). The same year, UNC also won a contract to supply nuclear components to Westinghouse (12) .

The Minerals group of UNC was the main exploiter of the company's huge New Mexico uranium holdings: 69 million pounds of U3O8 were held in total by the company in March 1981, of which most - 58.3 million pounds was in New Mexico, and most of this - 39 million pounds - in the Church Rock area alone (6). Most of the remainder, in New Mexico and Wyoming (13), was conserved for possible solution mining.

However, the company also branched out into precious metals, acquiring the Cornucopia gold-silver mine in Oregon in January 1983 (6).

UNC Plateau Mining Co, a large-scale but unpromising producer of steam coal from Utah, was sold in 1980 (6), but the company retained an interest in solar "energy" through its purchase of 50% rights to any solar devices produced by the lone solar scientist Ovshinsky, in 1976 a pioneer of silicon cell technology (14).

Also, in May 1981, UNC branched out into machine tools by buying the National Automatic Tool Co of Richmond, Indiana, for about US$ 18M (6).

The wholly owned UNC subsidiary Teton not only investigated uranium deposits in the Powder River Basin and Red Desert regions of Wyoming - as well, of course, as the Ambrosia Lake area of New Mexico - but also obtained a concession in the native chaco region of Paraguay (15). This was not the first time the company had ventured into South America: in the mid-'60s it had joined US Steel in exploration of manganese deposits in what is now the Carajas project area - one of the biggest threats to indigenous people and peasant farmers now existing (16).

In early 1981 Teton agreed with North Kalgurli on an exploration project for minerals including uranium throughout the whole of Australia (17) . Shortly afterwards, North Kalgurli bought out 50% of Teton Australia (6).

As of 1983, Teton Australia had shares in two uranium exploration projects in South Australia, apart from the suspended Honeymoon Uranium Project. The first was at Gould's Dam, 150km west-north-west of Broken Hill, in a JV (24.5%) with AAR (75,5%) and the prospect of earning a 49% interest; a small deposit (1100 possible tonnes in 1981) (18). The second was 75km north-west of Broken Hill at East Kalkaroo, where Teton is partnered with MIM and AAR (as at Honeymoon) and can earn an aggregate of 50% on the basis of exploration expenditure. According to AAR's 1993 annual report, there are 800 tonnes of contained uranium in this deposit. A legal "wrangle" between the partners developed in 1982, which by the end of 1983 had not been resolved (18).

In early 1984 Teton signed a letter of intent with Alaska Apollo Gold Mines, giving Apollo the right to earn a 51% interest in Teton's six precious minerals prospects in the Aleutian - native - area of Alaska, which had been conducted since 1979. Apollo agreed to take on Teton's obligations to the Aleut Corporation, established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 as a native corporation, which include paying royalties, a minimum exploration expenditure and making a production decision on one or more of the production units in the Aleut island chain by 1986 (19).

Apart from its contract to supply the US Navy, and another to supply nuclear components to the US Department of Energy (20), UNC concluded two major uranium contracts. At the end of 1978 it concluded a US$40M contract with an "unnamed utility" to deliver 855,000 lb of uranium (21); less than two years later it landed a major deal with Kepco/Korea Electric Power to deliver more than 3 million pounds of uranium oxide (20).

UNC was one of the American producers cited by Westinghouse in its cartel proceedings (22) during the late '70s, and by TVA in one of the "spin offs" from that huge legal bonanza. In its turn, UNC litigated against Gulf Oil for failure to meet contracts:

The dispute with TVA was settled in 1979 when UNC sold its interest in a number of its Wyoming uranium properties to TVA, namely Morton Ranch and Box Creek, containing just under 7 million pounds of uranium reserves, and agreed to purchase TVA's 50% interest in a JV near UNC's San Mateo mine, increasing the amount of its deliveries to TVA from 5 million to 6.25 million pounds between 1970 and 1984.

The US$300M suit brought by UNC against General Atomic (23) - rather its parent company Gulf Oil, now controlled by Chevron was settled out of court in 1984, with US$ 130M paid in cash, assumption by Gulf/Chevron of a US$71M liability, and the investment of US$ 100M in UNC by Chevron (11). On July 16th, 1979, a dam holding radioactive uranium mill tailings at the UNC Church Rock uranium mill 20 miles north-east of Gallup, New Mexico, burst its banks. An estimated (100,000,000) gallons of radioactive liquids spewed forth and, together with 1100 tons of solid wastes, deluged into the Rio Puerco, a river used by local Navajos (Dine) for grazing cattle (24).

The north fork of the Rio Puerco received the brunt of the waste-waters and sediments pouring through the 20-foot hole in the southern portion of the dam wall.

The liquids eventually travelled 115 miles downstream, temporarily altering the chemical quality of surface waters in the Little Colorado River, Holbrook, Arizona - despite early assurances by state officials that they couldn't have travelled that far (25).

Contaminated effluent also found its way into California where the state authorities considered the possibility of filing suit against UNC (26).

UNC knew of the unsafe nature of its tailings dam back in 1976 (26). When it burst three years later, it was already 50% fuller than it should have been - and cracks appeared in 1977 which were filled instead of repaired (27).

"In an effort to recoup some of their losses resulting from the spill, some 125 Navajo families filed US$12.5 million in lawsuits against UNC in tribal court in August 1980. UNC officials then filed federal suits contending that the Navajo Tribal Court did not have the authority to hear the cases. A US District Judge recently ruled in the company's favor and granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Navajo families from seeking claims before the tribal court.

"UNC proposed an out-of-court settlement late [1980], but the offer to pay the group of plaintiffs a US$25,000 lump sum in exchange for an agreement that UNC was in no way responsible for the spill or negligent in the operation of its tailings facility was rejected flatly by the Navajos who [said] they [were] committed to pursuing the lawsuits to the end no matter how long the process [took]" (28).

However, it has been - and is - radioactive emissions from UNC's tailings dam which probably poses a greater long term threat to people and environment in New Mexico.

"Seepage of tailings fluids to usable groundwaters afflicts all five of the licensed and active uranium tailings facilities in New Mexico, but the condition is most severe at the United Nuclear operation. An estimated 15,000 to 80,000 gallons of raw tailings "raffinate" high in radioactivity and toxic metals and process chemicals seep daily from the UNC evaporation ponds into underlying aquifers, state officials say. Contamination is evident in site monitoring wells at depths up to 240 feet below the surface, according to the company's own information.

"Evidence that the tailings spill left lasting contamination in sediments of the Rio Puerco and in groundwater near it is contained in environmental monitoring data collected since the spill and in correspondence between the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Division (NMEID) and UNC.

"An analysis of the information shows that although radioactivity levels in stream bed soils have decreased as a function of time and distance downstream, several portions of the river remain contaminated, and contaminant concentrations have yet to return to background levels for the vast majority of the stream bed. "The fact that tens of thousands of gallons of acidic tailings waste-water are leaking from United Nuclear's tailings ponds every day is not disputed - not even by the company itself. The problem is severe enough to have merited inclusion in the EPA's list of hazardous waste sites targeted for clean-up under the so-called Superfund program.

"What is not agreed upon, however, is the extent and severity of the seepage problem, or a remedy for it. But a review of the data shows that contaminants have left UNC's property and are degrading groundwater on Indian lands east of the tailings impoundment and on state lands north of the site. Concentrations of these pollutants far exceed state groundwater standards for process chemicals and heavy metals; some monitoring wells also have detected radioactivity above the state's maximum permissible concentrations for thorium-230.

"UNC apparently has an aversion to obtaining water quality information on groundwater in Section 1, which is on federal Indian 'trust' land administered by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Navajo Tribe. Individual Indian 'allottees' possess the surface rights on these lands, while the government retains the mineral rights. While the company has claimed in the past that it has had difficulty obtaining permission from Indian authorities to monitor groundwater east of its property, Indian officials offer another version of the story. According to Harold Tso, Navajo Environmental Protection Commission (NEPC) director, UNC has neither drilled monitoring wells in the neighboring Indian lands nor sought permission from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs or the tribe to do so" (24).

Almost incredibly, given the proven damage caused by the continuing leakages, UNC was allowed to continue operating its mill during most of this period. Only in May 1982, when UNC closed down its operations for economic reasons, did the mill cease functioning. Because of the NMEID's belated prohibition UNC couldn't start up again without cleaning up the seepages, even if it wanted to (29).

In summer 1983 the NMEID told UNC to dispose of the uranium tailings pile at Church Rock and halt the seepage of water contaminated with thorium-230 into ponds near the piles. UNC promised to stop the seepage but not to clean up the 160-acre site containing some 5 million tons of tailings. While UNC was claiming that the entire spill site had been cleaned, local Navajos who use the Rio Puerco claimed that only the upper 3 inches were cleaned (30).

At the end of this saga, however, UNC, - if not laughing was at least sitting pretty.

In 1983 it received US$3.2M in fees and litigation costs in a suit against the Allendale Mutual Insurance Co - and this was after it had been awarded a total of US$54.4M (including operating costs and losses) arising out of the collapse of the tailings dam at Church Rock (5, 31).

So - it pays to be reckless; and the bigger you are, the more reckless you are, and the worse you damage the environment, the more you're likely to get. Your victims, of course, get nothing - not even recognition. Who doubted it would be anything else in the world of Big Uranium Business?

By 1989, further studies along the Little Colorado River showed water samples with over 1,000 picocuries/litre of water (60 times the State and federal safe drinking level) with surface water in the Rio Puerco itself displaying up to 100 times the maximum level (32).

Contact: NIYC, 203 Hermosa Drive NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108, USA.

American Indian Environmental Council, POB 7082, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87194, USA.

Southwest Research and Information Center, POB 4524, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106, USA.

SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.

Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.

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