The Trump administration is pushing for domestic uranium mining to ramp up. Companies are eyeing Wyoming, as it holds the largest known reserves in the country.
For the past couple years, Myriad Uranium has drilled holes into a long desert hillside called Copper Mountain, just outside of Shoshoni. The mineral exploration company is collecting data on where the uranium is and how recoverable it is.
CEO Thomas Lamb said they just secured their next necessary federal permit to continue that research. But they chose not to take Pres. Trump’s permitting “fast track.”
“It was an option,” Lamb said. “There's a button on the website, the fast track, and we did not choose it.”
Trump’s executive orders, which are under the umbrella of Unleashing American Energy,’ shorten some environmental reviews and public comment from a couple years to 28 days.
Lamb said his company chose the longer, original process.
“You have to be careful with the application for and the granting of permits really fast, because there could be a price to pay if things aren't done properly,” he said.
Wyoming’s uranium boom in the ’50s left water on the Wind River Reservation contaminated with radioactive waste. Repercussions are still felt today.
“We wanted to make sure that we go through all the detailed studies and everything like that,” Lamb said. “We feel that long term, that is what is going to enable a sustainable and sort of healthy project.”
The new permit will allow the company to drill up to 222 holes, averaging about 500 feet deep, in search of uranium in Copper Mountain. The research will total about 50 public and private acres of disturbance over the next two years, according to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) documents.
Parts of the area are on a previous uranium mine site in the 1960s. The Arrowhead Mine had both underground and surface operations and was eventually abandoned in the 1980s. Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality reclaimed the site in 2014.
Other sections of Copper Mountain were researched for uranium in the ’70s and ’80s by Rocky Mountain Energy Corp.
According to the BLM’s environmental assessment (EA) for Myriad Uranium’s project, 36.19 public acres will see “a short-term shift in plant communities to an undesirable state, resulting in fewer deep-rooted perennial bunch grasses and more shallow-rooted perennial or annual grasses.” The agency said it could be restored to a “healthy, self-sustaining perennial plant community” with successful reclamation.
As for water, the BLM said the project could potentially “limit water available to other users,” like Shoshoni water users.
“If drawdown to water sources is shown to impact other permitted water users, the operator must obtain water from an alternate source permitted by the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office,” according to the BLM’s EA.
Lamb said Myriad’s project is still in the research phase, and an actual mine is still years out. He added that Trump’s executive orders that push for domestic energy supply, including Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, are a boost to industry morale.
“Executive orders are not laws. I’m very conscious of that. But it provides a real psychological boost to the sector,” Lamb said. “Everybody knows that the federal government's behind the mineral sector.”
The U.S. was the world’s top uranium producer from the early ‘50s until 1980. But economics and safety concerns forced the industry into a bust cycle.
To power nuclear power plants in 2024, the U.S. imported the majority of its uranium from Canada, Kazakhstan and Australia. The most recent federal report shows that three of the nation’s five active domestic uranium mines are in Wyoming. The industry started ramping up in the U.S. prior to Trump taking office, largely to shift away from foreign suppliers like Russia.
