Gov. Mark Gordon has signed an agreement between the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), giving the state authority to regulate uranium and radioactive byproducts from mining rare earth elements.
This expands upon an agreement between the state and the federal government signed in 2018 that gave the state the responsibility to license, rulemake, inspect and enforce activities to regulate source material involved in uranium or thorium milling.
Wyoming joins 40 other states that have signed similar agreements with the NRC, including Idaho, Montana and South Dakota. This comes as uranium, and other rare earths, are increasingly needed to power what the Trump administration has deemed a “nuclear renaissance." The administration sees nuclear power as a key way to meet rising energy demands.
In a signing ceremony on April 21, Todd Parfitt, director of WDEQ, explained the importance of the handover in Wyoming.
“ The real outcome is that we'll be issuing permits or licenses faster and at less cost because we're here, and it's best regulated at the local level,” said Parfitt.
This could be a big boon for mining and processing operators, according to Tyler Brown, the program manager for critical mineral and rare earth elements in the Center for Economic Geology Research at the University of Wyoming (UW) School of Energy Resources (SER), since the federal permitting process is often a “notorious bottleneck for project development.”
WDEQ already has control over several Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory programs. Those include underground injection control, state air quality implementation plans and coal combustion residuals, among others.
Matt Fry, director of the Center for Energy Regulation and Policy Analysis at UW SER, said there are advantages to the local DEQ regulating projects.
“For example, Wyoming staff have state-specific resource knowledge that the federal regulators do not, and they only have to work on in-state projects versus federal regulators having to cover very large regions,” said Fry in an email to WPR. “Wyoming DEQ has an excellent track record for their oversight of EPA programs, and I believe that they will build and maintain that same level of rigorous oversight of the NRC program.”
Gordon said this is a step towards Wyoming leading in critical minerals.
“ What this will do is open our opportunities for innovation investment, high-quality jobs right here in Wyoming. Critical minerals are essential to national security and to modern technology and Wyoming is positioned to lead,” said Gordon. “So that we can make sure that we control the way we develop, and we can control the way minerals are basically produced here in Wyoming.
“This is what local control looks like in practice,” Gordon added. “It brings accountability, it brings transparency, brings effectiveness, and it brings government closest to the people.”
The first project to feel the impact will be Rare Element Resources, Inc.’s Bear Lodge Project. That project plans to mine for rare earth elements near Sundance. The resources will then become material for a processing facility that aims to produce marketable rare earth materials. The project's license will now be under the WDEQ rather than under the feds. The proposed operations are still under review.
