Uranium mining in New Mexico was a significant industry from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Although

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...

has the second largest identified

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

ore reserves of any state in the United States (after

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

), no uranium ore has been mined in New Mexico since 1998.

White Signal district

The first uranium production in New Mexico was a minor amount of

autunite Autunite (hydrated calcium uranyl phosphate), with formula Ca(UO2)2(PO4)2·10–12H2O, is a yellow-greenish fluorescent phosphate mineral with a hardness of 2–. Autunite crystallizes in the orthorhombic system and often occurs as tabular square ...

and

torbernite Torbernite is a radioactive, hydrated green copper uranyl phosphate mineral, found in granites and other uranium-bearing deposits as a secondary mineral. Its name derives from the Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman (1735–1784), It is also known a ...

mined circa 1920 from former silver mines in the White Signal district, about southwest of Silver City in

Grant County Grant County may refer to: Places ;Australia * County of Grant, Victoria ;United States *Grant County, Arkansas *Grant County, Indiana *Grant County, Kansas *Grant County, Kentucky *Grant County, Minnesota *Grant County, Nebraska *Grant Co ...

Grants mineral belt

New Mexico was a significant uranium producer since the discovery of uranium by

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

sheepherder Paddy Martinez in 1950. Almost all uranium in New Mexico is found in the Grants mineral belt along the south margin of the

San Juan Basin The San Juan Basin is a geologic structural basin located near the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. The basin covers 7,500 square miles and resides in northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and parts of Utah a ...

in McKinley and Cibola counties in the northwest part of the state. Stretching northwest to southeast, the mineral belt contains the Chuska, Gallup,

Ambrosia Lake Ambrosia Lake is a uranium mining district in McKinley and Cibola counties in New Mexico north of Grants that was heavily mined for uranium starting in the 1950s. It is in an anticlinal dome. History Kerr-McGee first learned about ric ...

, and

Laguna Laguna (Italian and Spanish for lagoon) may refer to: People * Abe Laguna (born 1992), American DJ known as Ookay * Andrés Laguna (1499–1559), Spanish physician, pharmacologist, and botanist * Ana Laguna (born 1955), Spanish-Swedish ballet d ...

uranium mining districts. Most of the uranium ore is contained in the Jackpile, Poison Canyon, and Westwater Canyon sandstone members of the

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Late Jurassic, Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandsto ...

, and in the Todilto limestone, all of

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

age. Several different companies moved into the region in the 1950s, particularly oil companies. They included

Anaconda Company The Anaconda Copper Mining Company, known as the Amalgamated Copper Company between 1899 to 1915, was an American mining company headquartered in Butte, Montana. It was one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century and one of the largest min ...

Phillips Petroleum Company Phillips Petroleum Company was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors. It was Phillips Petroleum that first found oil in the ...

, Rio de Oro Uranium Mines, Inc, Kermac Nuclear Fuels Corporation (a cooperative of

Kerr-McGee Oil Industries The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an American energy company involved in oil exploration, production of crude oil, natural gas, perchlorate and uranium mining and milling in various countries. On June 23, 2006, Anadarko Petroleum ...

, Anderson Development Corporation, and Pacific Uranium Mines, Inc),

Homestake Mining Company Homestake Mining Company was one of the largest gold mining businesses in the United States and the owner of the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. Founded in 1877, it was acquired by Barrick Gold in December 2001. Homestake was the longest- ...

, Sabre-Pinion Corporation,

United Western Minerals Company The United Western Minerals Company was a company formed to exploit uranium deposits in New Mexico in 1955. History In the mid-1950s, the company was involved in uranium exploration in the Ambrosia Lake area of McKinley County, New Mexico. A numb ...

(of General

Patrick Jay Hurley Patrick Jay Hurley (January 8, 1883July 30, 1963) was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945, during which he was instrumenta ...

), J H Whitney and Company, White Weld & Co., San Jacinto Petroleum Corporation, Lisbon Uranium Corporation, and

Superior Oil Company Superior Oil Company was an American oil company founded in 1921 in Coalinga, California, by William Myron Keck, Superior Oil began as a drilling contracting firm and grew into the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. In 1930 the com ...

.(lists many companies)(re: Kermac) (re: Kermac)(re: Kermac)

Current activity

Active uranium mining stopped in New Mexico in 1998, although

Rio Algom Rio Algom was a mining corporation that was purchased by Billiton in 2000 and is now part of BHP. Uranium It operated many uranium mines and mills in the Elliot Lake region of Ontario, Canada, including the Lacnor Mine, Nordic Mine, Panel Mine, ...

continued to recover uranium dissolved in water from its flooded underground mine workings at

until 2002. Currently (April 7, 2014), there are 12 uranium mines that are either in the process of licensing or actively developing in New Mexico. The state has the second-largest known uranium ore reserves in the US. , these included 201,000 tons of uranium oxide, amounting to 35% of total U.S. reserves, economically recoverable at $50 per lb.

General Atomics General Atomics is an American energy and defense corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, specializing in research and technology development. This includes physics research in support of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion energy. The ...

' subsidiary

Rio Grande Resources Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil. Rio or Río may also refer to: Geography Brazil * Rio de Janeiro * Rio do Sul, a ...

is currently evaluating its Mt. Taylor Mine for development by

in-situ leaching In-situ leaching (ISL), also called in-situ recovery (ISR) or solution mining, is a mining process used to recover minerals such as copper and uranium through boreholes drilled into a deposit, ''in situ''. In situ leach works by artificially disso ...

. Uranium is present in

coffinite Coffinite is a uranium-bearing silicate mineral with formula: U(SiO4)1−x(OH)4x. It occurs as black incrustations, dark to pale-brown in thin section. It has a grayish-black streak. It has a brittle to conchoidal fracture. The hardness of coffini ...

in the Westwater Canyon member of the

at 3,000 feet (900 m) below ground surface. The mine, which operated as an underground uranium mine from 1986 to 1989, has a remaining

resource Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their ...

estimated by its owner at more than 45 thousand tonnes of uranium oxide. Strathmore Minerals Corp. is currently applying for permits to mine their Church Rock and Roca Honda properties in the Grants Mineral Belt. Neutron Energy and URI also reportedly plan to start uranium mining in the Grants belt.

Health and environmental issues

New Mexico uranium miners from the 1940s and 1950s have had abnormally high rates of lung cancer, from

radon Radon is a chemical element with the symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas. It occurs naturally in minute quantities as an intermediate step in the normal radioactive decay chains through ...

gas in poorly ventilated underground mines. The effect was particularly pronounced among

miners, because the incidence of lung cancer is normally low among Navajos. The Navajo tribe, whose reservation contains much of the known ore deposits, declared a moratorium on uranium mining in 2005. In May 2007, the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...

announced that it would join the Navajo Nation EPA in cleaning up

radioactive contamination Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...

near the Church Rock mine. In 2017, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Navajo Nation, and two affiliated subsidiaries of

Freeport-McMoRan Freeport-McMoRan Inc., often called Freeport, is an American mining company based in the Freeport-McMoRan Center, in Phoenix, Arizona. The company is the world's largest producer of molybdenum, is a major copper producer and operates the world's ...

, Inc., entered into a settlement agreement for the cleanup of 94 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. The settlement was valued at over $600 million, with the United States, on behalf of the Department of Interior and Department of Energy, contributing $335 million into a trust account for the cleanup. According to the EPA's announcement of the agreement, “With this settlement, funds are now committed to begin the cleanup process at over 200 abandoned uranium mines (AUM) on the Navajo Nation.”

White Signal district

Grants mineral belt

Current activity

Health and environmental issues

Cited references

See also