665 Wyoming Mineral Corp This is a wholly owned uranium development subsidiary of the huge Westinghouse Corporation which, though ubiquitous in exploration and production during the late '70s, has virtually ceased such activities in its own right since.
As the 1970s ended, Wyoming Mineral was the USA's 11th most important uranium producer with 575 tons of U3O8 in 1980 (1), a position it had built up in only three years - its percentage of total US uranium reserves in 1976 was nil (2).
During 1977/78 Wyoming Mineral embarked on the construction of two uranium-from-phosphoric acid plants, and a third to extract uranium from copper dumps owned by Kennecott. This plant was commissioned in 1977 at Bingham Canyon near Salt Lake City, Utah, using a Higgins CIX "loop" system to recover uranium from a copper-tailings leach liquour containing only 10 ppm uranium; it is not known how much uranium was produced using this process, and little was heard about the plant after 1981 (3).
The company's Bartow plant in Florida was scheduled to start up in 1978 to extract uranium from phosphoric acid supplied by Farmland Industries (3, 4). In fact this plant with a capacity of 425,000 lb U3O8 per year, which it might or might not have reached (5) didn't open until 1979 and had, by the early '80s, certainly stopped production (6), although Wyoming Mineral, along with Gardinier, IMC and Freeport, was cited (7) as one of the major companies exploiting the Florida-based uranium-from-phosphates technique which promised so much at the time.
Wyoming Mineral was involved in at least two in situ leaching projects during this period. The Bruni mine in Texas, operating by 1978 (8), was suspended by 1986 (9), and its Lamprecht property was closed down by 1982 (10). A contract, signed in 1979, to explore for uranium on Utah properties owned by Mountain States Resources also soon came to nothing (11). But meanwhile, in its home state of Wyoming, the company had embarked on a major mine: a 500,000 lb/year U3O8 solution mine at Irigary, near Buffalo; also, at Crown Point, New Mexico, on a 1200 tonne/day uranium ore JV with Conoco (12). The latter, having been looking for customers since 1977 (13), was suspended in 1981 (14).
At roughly the same time, Wyoming closed down the Irigary plant, after a three-year "life" plagued by fire and the "persistent excursions" of solution chemicals which not only slowed down production but caused one unforeseen shut-down (15).
The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in the state produced a detailed report on the Irigary operation which comprises a fairly effective indictment of uranium solution mining. This report revealed a disturbing chronology of misfortune:
March 14, 1979: chloride levels in a shallow monitor well were above the "upper control limit";
March 27: chloride conductivity and total alkalinity were above the "upper control limits" and one well was thought to be leaking;
2-3 weeks later: overpumping failed to correct the problem: the cause and indeed the location of the "excursion" remained unknown;
April 12-20: two units shut down and two other wells identified as leaking into the same area;
May 25-27: a pump couldn't be put into the leaking well because of casing damage;
July 5: the leaks were "coming under control" after scientists postulated that injection (of the solution) was cracking the casing of some of the wells. The DEQ found that basic tests had not been carried out by the company: the integrity of the cases had not been checked, nor were injection pressures monitored or recorded. It took more than five months to discover "problems previously unencountered with in situ uranium mining", and, even then, little could be done to prevent them (16).
As the Oak Tree Alliance concluded in public hearings the same year, in situ uranium mining embraces many "basic unknowns". Contamination is a very serious matter "... and essentially irreversible". The Alliance declared that "permanent contamination of a large volume of groundwater is possible as a consequence of poor project design". "Post restoration" concentrations of ammonia and uranium in groundwater have ranged from 2 to 123 times the pre-leaching proportions (in the case of ammonia) and no less than 100 to 1200 times (in the case of uranium). Radon-226 concentrations have correspondingly ranged from 3.7 to 21 times the proposed national drinking water standards (17).
Wyoming's ventures half way around the globe have not fared so well either. Having failed to buy a 30% stake in Queensland Mines in 1973 - a move rejected by the Australian federal government (18) - the company headed up (51%) a consortium with Delhi International and VAM to develop the Lake Way deposit near Yeelirrie, Western Australia. In March 1978, Delhi announced reserves of 6800 tonnes U3O8; there was speculation that the near-surface ore might be treated by in situ or heap leaching (19). By 1982, however, Wyoming had withdrawn from the project, leaving its Australian partners to buy out its interest (20). Similarly, although Wyoming joined a consortium with Minatome and Kratos at Pandanus Creek in the Northern Territory (21), it sold its interest to Kratos in late 1981. A compatible interest in the nearby Jim Jim prospect went the same way (20).
Both Wyoming and its parent Westinghouse have been involved in uranium exploration in Saskatchewan, but details are thin on the ground and it is certain only that the company turned up nothing substantial (22); likewise in the Black Hills of South Dakota (23).
It is also presumed that the company's uranium programme in the Philippines - which started in 1977 with a project to sample copper tailings - was abandoned soon afterwards, although Westinghouse had already entered its notorious agreement to supply a nuclear power plant to the Marcos dictatorship (24).
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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