"Trump’s Plan To Create A Uranium Stockpile Excites Utah Mines"

"The Trump administration’s newly proposed budget would throw a $1.5 billion lifeline to the struggling U.S. uranium industry, long battered by declining demand and cheap imports.

If approved by Congress, Trump’s proposed “uranium reserve” would spend up to $150 million annually for 10 years to buy domestically sourced uranium, much of which would be mined in Utah and neighboring states, to protect the nation “in the event of a market disruption.”

This strategic stockpile would supply the nation’s nuclear-generating plants and nuclear-powered naval fleet.

But environmentalists fear the reserve amounts to a subsidy to prop up a commodity that has left a toxic legacy across the Colorado Plateau, where uranium was heavily mined in the 1960s."

Brian Maffly reports for the Salt Lake Tribune February 14, 2020.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune, 02/17/2020