Dear Editor,
Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson would like to comment on the blatant lies being put out by the Biden Administration in regard to uranium and the new Grand Canyon National Monument. In recent press reports, it has been stated that only 1.3% of the nation’s uranium reserves are found within the monument’s boarders.
“The actual amount is closer to 40-59%,” Supervisor Buster Johnson stated.
A paper written by geologist Gene Spiering stated, “In 2004, the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistics from the US Government, released the US Uranium Reserves Estimates by State. The reserves totaled 890 million lbs. at a uranium price of $50/lb. The uranium price today is currently $52/lb. Therefore, if one compares the 375 million pounds of uranium estimated for the withdrawal to the total of 890 million pounds considered as reserves in the US, we arrive the figure of 42%. This is not 42% of the US reserves but 42% in a pound for pound comparison. This gives us an idea of the relative size of the withdrawal estimate but using the current US reserves as a yardstick (with the current USGS endowment estimate) the same comparison is now 59%.”
Supervisor Johnson has attached the above-cited paper, reprinted below. “This is an excellent paper with creditable sources. It shows how the federal government is lying about the amount of uranium in Mohave County and just how much the removal of Mohave County uranium from mining will cripple our country,” Johnson ended.
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” or How the US is robbed of domestic energy and jobs
In light of recent political posturing by the supposed apolitical scientists of the US Geological Survey (USGS), many people are questioning estimates for the amount of uranium lost to the country by the recent mineral withdrawal of 1 million acres in the northern Arizona. The 40% figure used by ACERT and others was an attempt to describe the significance of the withdrawal in terms of pounds and comparing the number of these pounds to the total number of pounds of reserves in the US. The actual comparison is now even more serious.
In 1990, the US Geological Survey (USGS Circular 1051) published a resource endowment estimate of 2 billion lbs of uranium in breccia pipes for a 9,096 square mile area in the Grand Canyon region of northern Arizona.
The estimate was based on a 144 square mile study located in the heart of uranium district where Energy Fuels Nuclear produced 20 million pounds of uranium. The average uranium endowment used in the USGS estimate was 225 thousand pounds per square mile. When the average endowment is multiplied times the area of the withdrawal (originally published as 1,670 square miles) the total was 375 million pounds. (The USGS later reduced the calculated area and the resulting estimate to 320 million lbs. based on refined property measurements.)
But how many of us can actually visualize the significance of 375 million pounds? There are a couple of ways. In 2004, the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistics from the US Government, released the US Uranium Reserves Estimates by State, 2003. The reserves totaled 890 million lbs. at a uranium price of $50/lb (The uranium price is currently $52/lb). Therefore if one compares the 375 million pounds of uranium estimated for the withdrawal to the total of 890 million pounds considered as reserves in the US, we arrive the figure of 42%. This is not 42% of the US reserves but 42% in a pound for pound comparison. This gives us an idea of the relative size of the withdrawal estimate, but using the current US reserves as a yardstick (with the current USGS endowment estimate) the same comparison is now 59%.
“But this is comparing apples to oranges.” Ok, so lets look at it another way, how about energy equivalence. The withdrawn estimated endowment of 375 million pounds of uranium has an energy equivalence 13.3 billion barrels of crude oil (The amount of energy in one pound of yellowcake is equivalent to 35.6 barrels of oil (208 x 10^6 Btus / 5.8 x 10^6 Btus in one barrel of crude oil).”
This is equal to the total recoverable oil in Prudhoe Bay; the largest oil field in North America. We now can begin to understand the enormity of Sec. Salazar action when we compare the energy potential of the northern Arizona withdrawal area to one our national treasures in Alaska. But let’s be scientists and compare apples to apples. (Here we get to the title of this essay.) Susan Hall with the USGS Central Energy Resources Science Center in Denver is probably technically correct in stating that “the undiscovered uranium resource calculated for the withdrawn areas represents about 1.5 % of the total estimated US endowment” (If only 1.5%, why even worry about it?)
Unfortunately, the USGS is comparing apples to apple sauce. A good analogy might be comparing a small vein of gold to all the gold in a cubic mile of seawater. They may both be apples (with the same amount of gold), but the comparison of economics is a little shaky. The uranium deposits in breccia pipes of northern Arizona have been proven to be the highest grade and most profitable hard rock uranium deposits in the US. Even on a world scale, the average estimated production cost of $30/lb places them in the upper quartile of profitability.
The fact that these small mines (smaller than a K Mart parking lot) can be developed (underground), mined and totally reclaimed within 5 years makes them a national treasure. So how about the USGS total uranium endowment estimate? The estimate for the Grand Canyon region of northern Arizona is a good example. The USGS endowment estimate for the 9,096 square mile study area was based on a projection of the 225,000 lbs/square mile to come up with 2 billion lbs. The major error here is the assumption that mineralized uranium pipes are uniformly distributed throughout the region. Nearly 100 million dollars of past exploration in the district has demonstrated that nearly all the known mineralized pipes and all of the economically viable uranium deposits in northern Arizona occur in a N-S trending mineralized “corridor” that is approximately 45 miles wide by 110 miles long.
The hundreds of pipes mapped outside of this corridor are barren. All of the withdrawn area is within this corridor because the area was selected by drawing a line around the focus of the claim staking activity. Most of the remaining corridor has already been withdrawn from mineral entry. Perhaps the most ironic outcome of the USGS study is that for the withdrawn area, the 375 million lb. estimate is surprisingly good. Two independent estimates including the results of a new technology applied to airborne geophysical surveys have confirmed the range of the USGS estimate, but the 1.7 billion lb. USGS estimated endowment outside of the withdrawn area doesn’t exist.
The USGS and the BLM have tried to diminish the significance of the uranium endowment on the withdrawn land by describing it as “highly speculative” and further reduce it by stating that the “estimate refers specifically to rocks containing uranium exceeding a grade of 0.01%”. In fact, the calculated resource estimates used in the mining operations applied concentrations down to 0.05% and the total amount of uranium with concentrations between 0.05% and 0.01% in the district is insignificant in comparison to the total estimated endowment of the withdrawal area.
The Federal government has effectively reduced a national treasure of energy and jobs to insignificance. But this is certainly not unprecedented. Many professionals in industry and academia can attest to the political biases of “scientific” studies carried out by federally sponsored and conducted research. Depending on the desired outcome, resource estimates are made bigger or smaller as ordered and the accuracy of the estimates tend to be laughable. In 2002, the USGS released an assessment of 2 trillion cubic feet of gas (cfg) for the Marcellus Shale (2 trillion – who cares?).
Nine years later their estimate was revised to 84 trillion cfg; 42 times the original estimate. The resource was touted as a major source of energy for the east coast of the US. Similar gross under estimates have been made for the Bakken Shale in North Dakota (the 2005 estimate of 3.65 billion barrels of oil was 24 times larger than the 1995 USGS estimate) and for the large coal gas potential of the Powder River Basin (under estimated by a factor of 13). Now the USGS is working to “develop better, updated estimates of these undiscovered [uranium] resources in a project that initiated this fiscal year.
The US taxpayers should ask, “Who cares?” Or more importantly, “Why?” The uranium endowment of northern Arizona is truly a “crown jewel” of the country. A withdrawal of its resources should not be taken lightly in these difficult economic times with widespread unemployment and an insatiable dependency on costly foreign energy. Indeed, if the goal were to identify areas where uranium exploration and development would have the best chance of success with the least impact on the environment, northern Arizona would win hands down. It is an affront to the citizens of the United States to remove this land from mineral entry.
Eugene D. Spiering
