Drill Campaign Could Re-ignite Utah Uranium Mining Boom

Talk about lousy timing. In the summer of 1980, exploration manager Clancy Wendt, then working for Phillips Uranium, a subsidiary of the oil company, had three rigs and a crew drilling mile centers in Utah's Thomas mountain range. They drilled between 60 and 70 holes, over every square mile, looking for altered versus unaltered rock to indicate uranium. One of those drill holes encountered 0.05% U3O8 over a 100-foot thickness at a depth of 900 feet. Shortly thereafter, Clancy Wendt was transferred to the company's minerals division, Phillips drilled a few more holes, and oh, by the way, there had been an accident about 2,000 miles away near Middletown, Pennsylvania, at a place called Three Mile Island. Utilities stopped building reactors and the uranium exploration business came to a grinding halt.

Phillips Petroleum got out of the minerals business, and Clancy Wendt went on to discover the Mt. Hamilton gold deposit in the Carlin Trend for another company. But that drill hole about 150 miles southwest of Salt Lake City never stopped bugging him. "When you find something, you always remember that," Wendt told StockInterview.com. "I was working with it day and night. That was my project." And it is his project again today.

After a twenty-odd-year hiatus, Wendt staked 540 acres of the property, which had been abandoned, and then optioned the 27 claims to Max Resource Corp (TSX: MXR; OTC BB: MXORF) for what both parties called a reasonable sum. Since then, Max Resource Corp staked around those claims, and increased the company's land position to 195 lode claims comprising 3,900 acres in the Thomas Mountain range. "We staked the entire caldera rim," Wendt explained, "because that is exactly where I think the uranium is going to be, within that rim or within the moat inside that rim." Wendt is now the vice president of exploration for Max Resource Corp.

Max Resource Corp President Stuart Rogers is quite thrilled with the upcoming exploration of the caldera rim that he hopes will yield an economic grade of uranium, "It's felt that the caldera was the source of the mineralization for the nearby Yellow Chief uranium mine." A caldera is a large crater formed by volcanic explosion or by the collapse of a volcanic cone. "This is one that didn't get on the radar screen because it just had the one ore grade hole on it before they stopped exploration," Rogers explained about the PPCO claims. "Clancy was one of the few guys who knew about it."

The Geological Significance

Who would have remembered Utah's Yellow Chief, a uranium mine defunct since the early 1960s? It was a small producing open pit mine of less than 100,000 metric tons with a grade of 0.20 - 0.23 percent U3O8 in the middle of a desert in a mountain range. Delta, the closest town, is 20 miles away with a population of 3209, according to the last census. Uranium might be the last thought on anyone's mind. About 1.5 miles west at Spor Mountain is the world's largest economic beryllium deposit, owned by Brush Wellman (NYSE: BW).

Like enriched uranium, beryllium is high up on the U.S. government's classified list. Beryllium is a strategic material used in most sophisticated U.S. weapon systems, used to control reactors on nuclear powered submarines and surface vessels, as a triggering device for nuclear warheads, and used in guidance, optical and satellite systems for which there are no substitute metals. Needless to say, there probably won't be much environmental challenge in Utah for uranium mining. Clancy Wendt observed, "This is an area that is well known for mining. They all want mining to happen. It helps the community. The Brush Wellman mine runs all year long."

Back to the Yellow Chief mine. Discovered by prospectors in 1953, the ore zone was outlined by rotary drilling in 1955 and open pit mining of tabular ore lenses began in 1959. Most of the ore was mined by 1962. Stuart Rogers explained, "Most people agree the Yellow Chief stopped production because mineralization was faulted off to the east." And that is the direction where Max Resource Corp is going.

Wendt explained the geology of the caldera, "The age of the mineralization is very young, when compared to uranium in Wyoming. It's between 27 and 34 million years. It's found within the caldera ring of the vent within a major vent, which is 40 to 50 miles across. Right at the edge of the circle (it stands out just like a circle on a topography map or land sat image), is where we found the mineralization." Wendt added, "It is postulated that this vent was the source rock for the Yellow Chief sediments. I am hoping a great deal of the ring itself will be mineralized because that's a nice conduit area. It's an area that's going to be permeable because it's along the ring fracture of the major vent."

David A. Lindsay of the U.S. Geological Survey (Denver) who has written extensively about mineralization in western Utah, wrote in a 1978 report, where Yellow Chief was mined and where Max Resource Corp plans to drill, "Uranium occurs in four diverse settings in the Thomas Range:

1. In tuffaceous sandstone and conglomerate at the Yellow Chief mine,

2. In beryllium deposits in water-laid tuff,

3. In fluorspar pipes, and

4. In veinlets of opaline silica in volcanic rocks of all ages."

Wendt, who has talked with Lindsay about the geology at Thomas Mountain, said this about the beryllium tuft, "The mineralization found in our drill hole, I think, is in the beryllium tuff unit. If it is not that unit then it is probably the source." Wendt also explained that background or trace values might be present, but economic values of beryllium would be very unusual. Ore occurs in tuffaceous sandstone that has been correlated with the tuff that hosts beryllium deposits nearby.

Another indicator mineral suggesting uranium mineralization came about by accident on the first pass two decades ago. "When I drove up in my truck and I started walking toward the drill rig," Wendt remembered. "I thought for a minute the drillers had been dumping cottonseed hulls. (Drillers sometimes use cottonseed hulls to plug up formations that might suck up water.) Instead of hulls, I'm looking at this long line of black quartz crystals on the rocks." Smoky quartz, or black quartz, crystals are formed through natural radiation coming from nearby uranium deposits. That confirmed for Wendt that a uranium deposit was in the vicinity. "It's not an indicator mineral in all systems, but it is in this one," said Wendt.

Reverse Circulation Drilling Could Increase Grade

Asked if he would find uranium during this month's drill program, Wendt chuckled after answering "Yep." Why is he certain he would when most geologists pause on questions asking for a guarantee? "Because I found it there before," Wendt laughed. "If I hadn't drilled the hole there before, I would waffle, too. After the first hole, I don't promise any guarantees. That's the one I drilled." Why test what was once drilled in 1980? "We're going to re-drill to confirm the hole so that it complies with National Instrument 43-101," Wendt explained. "Secondly, we want to get a good sample that we can assay."

His comment about getting a "good sample" to assay opened the door to the previous drilling, which was mud rotary style. Wendt explained how mud rotary drilling was done over 25 years ago at the present site:

"You would dig two pits, like baby swimming pools, next to each other, and fill both of them up with water. The rig would start drilling a hole. Out of the hole would come the material that you're grinding. It would go in the first pit, which would be the settling pond for any of the material coming out of the hole. Material would then flow over into the next hole where you've got your intake hose pumping the water back down into the hole. You would catch your sample coming out of a pipe with a colander (just like you would for a salad or spaghetti). You would catch up the ground up material, and dump a lump of it on the ground every five feet, building 20 piles of material in a row - that's a hundred feet. And you would just keep plopping them down. When you got to whatever depth you were going to do it to, you would stop."

Wendt agreed this was not a very scientific method in determining grades. "When you dumped it on the ground, you really didn't get a great sample for assay," he laughed. "You're only getting the chunky material. Any of the "real fine" material" would go through the colander. Wendt is optimistic about establishing a more accurate grade from the upcoming drill program, "It should come in higher." How will reverse circulation provide a different grade? "With reverse circ, you are sucking the material right up out of the center of the pipe," Wendt emphasized. "You are not losing the fine material."

Another reason for reverse circulation is Wendt believes the system is "probably 6-7 million years old and in disequilibrium." He clarified, "This means that you have a reading on the electronic probe that may give you a lower reading than is really there." Lindsay's geological survey report points in the same direction, "Mineralogical and geochemical studies of the (water-laid) tuff have shown it is extensively zeolitized, leached of alkali metals, and likely to have been leached of uranium by ground water, so that the tuff is a possible source for the uranium at the Yellow Chief mine."

The historic grade at the Yellow Chief was 0.2 percent. How would Clancy Wendt feel if the new drilling brought in 0.2? "If I had 100 feet of 0.2, then I'm in heaven. I would have over $100 in my rock. That would be like drilling 100 feet of 0.3 gold. Would that attract anyone?" He knows it would. Perhaps the timing was bad for Phillips Uranium, but just perfect for a very patient Clancy Wendt and Max Resource Corp. As a side note, and a possible parallel, there's now an oil rush in central Utah, according to Associated Press in Salt Lake City. It appears a tiny Michigan-based oil and gas exploration company triggered the "oil rush" after a wildcat strike. Before then, the region had a history of frustrating oil exploration. Will a uranium discovery by Max Resource Corp trigger a 1950's style uranium boom in western Utah?

On July 6, 1952, Charlie A. Steen struck the biggest deposit of high-grade uranium ore in the United States on the other side of Utah. School teachers, insurance brokers, used car salesmen, and shoe clerks around the nation rushed to Utah to seek their fortune. A group of high school students staked forty claims, later selling them for $15,000. Within a few years, nearly six hundred producers were shipping uranium ore. Employment in the industry topped 8,000 workers in the mines and mills. Salt Lake City was dubbed "The Wall Street of Uranium." The boom ended in 1964 when the Atomic Energy Commission announced, "It is no longer in the interest of the Government to expand production of uranium concentrate." A lot has changed over those three decades.

Since 2001, spot uranium has jumped by more than 500 percent. Accompanying the new uranium upswing, many of the old projects in Wyoming, New Mexico and elsewhere are being revived. According to a USA Today article published in mid January, "...a new generation of prospectors is staking thousands of claims in the desert Southwest." The Utah Geological Survey said more than 6,000 uranium claims were filed in 2005. Max Resource Corp's uranium project in Utah may be one of those worth investigating.

COPYRIGHT © 2007 by StockInterview, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. StockInterview’s “Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market” has become the most popular book ever published for uranium mining stock investors. Visit [http://www.stockinterview.com]

Molybdenum Mining Investing? Check with Locals, Natives First

We interviewed Adanac Molybdenum executive chairman Larry Reaugh about the dozens of junior resource companies, which now proclaim they are part of the Molybdenum Bull Market. His company appears as a potential molybdenum producer on the horizon.

Since the beginning of this year, Reaugh's company has been riding the 'moly wave.' Institutions and investors are climbing aboard as greater interest emerges in the silvery-white metal, which adds both hardness and anti-corrosive properties to everything from energy pipelines and nuclear power plant condensers to desalination plants, automotive parts and air pollution systems for coal-fired power plants.

We posed five questions to Larry Reaugh to help separate the hype from the reality of the current molybdenum mania.

StockInterview: Of all the molybdenum companies out there, how do you know which are going to become economic?

Larry Reaugh: You can really only tell once the bankable feasibility is done. The bankable really narrows down the resource itself into a reserve and that can change. It's the only thing that can tell you with any assurance that a project can move ahead and make money. You should be able to take it to the bank, and they should finance you to go into production.

StockInterview: Please explain the timeline and the process to move a moly project from the resource stage all the way through the bankable feasibility and permitting stages.

Larry Reaugh: By the time you get to the resource stage, you should already have your baseline study and your environmental permitting started. You should have already made contact with all the various levels of government and stakeholders in the area to hire a qualified engineering firm - one that has impeccable credentials to do the pre-feasibility. And also apply for your mining lease at that time. Once the pre-feasibility is done, that gives you 30 to 40 percent certainty on the project. You take the results from those and then decide to move right into the feasibility of those if it's at all positive. Eventually when you get into the bankable feasibility, then you have another 10 to 20 percent assurance that the project will bear fruit at the end of the day. A bankable feasibility gives you reserves. Once you get reserves, you can actually put a dollar number value to it. That gives you enough of a grounding to it in which to do the detailed mining That includes the mining plans for your piping, your water, your foundation layouts, your site plans. Every Nth degree of construction that's going to take place in that plant has to be put on paper. That's about a 13-month project and will cost you up to C$15 million. So, now you move it through the environmental stage. That can take up to 3.5 years.

StockInterview: Many mining projects around the world get stalled because of bad relationships with the native inhabitants. Please tell us about Adanac's relationship with the First Nation of Canada.

Larry Reaugh: If you don't have a good transparent relationship with the natives and the locals, and you don't include them all the way through, you are not going to have ease of getting your social, economic and environmental permits done. When we got involved up there, the first thing that we did was contact the local band in the area. We met with the consul, basically gave them our plans. They brought in their consultants, and as each problem came up, we worked our way through it. They became a big part of working through to the solution. They know that there's an impact benefits agreement that we will be negotiating over the next couple of months. Socially, this is a big economic boost for everybody in the area. If you can help them to raise their industry awareness in having off-spins from that mine - other industries that they can develop, then you are doing a good job of being a good corporate citizen, not just to the native groups but also to the entire area. If you don't think that way, then you are going to have problems before you get going.

StockInterview: What steps will you have to take to begin production after you get your mining permits?

Larry Reaugh: Once the environmental permits are in, it'll be construction. That will take about 18 months. That will be right from the ground up - from breaking the soil to laying the foundations to pre-stripping the pit to laying down the tailings pond and the waste dump site.

StockInterview: The molybdenum mining market is robust right now. Why should investors consider Adanac as opposed to other moly companies?

Larry Reaugh: If you go to our site, you will see that the bankable feasibility is calling for a three-year payback on a C$450 million investment. We believe that that is obtainable. The project is way ahead of its peers. I don't think there's anybody else that's breaking ground this summer on a project of this size. Here's a company that's trading at a very low market cap, which leaves a very great entry point for a mine that could be producing by the last quarter of 2008 and certainly full production by the first quarter of 2009.

James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. His focus on the uranium mining and nuclear fuel sector resulted in the widely popular “Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market,” which is now available on [http://www.stockinterview.com] and on http://www.amazon.com

COPYRIGHT© 2007 by StockInterview, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Uranium Mining Revival in New Mexico through Solution Mining

"We've got to get quickly on a track to energy independence from foreign oil, and that means, among other things, going back to nuclear power," U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) recently told Fox News. U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) invited Louisiana Enrichment Services (LES) to build a gas-centrifuge uranium enrichment facility near Hobbs, New Mexico. The facility is currently undergoing the permitting process. Southwest Research and Information Center's Annette Aguayo told us the group planned to begin working on stopping that project. Some environmentalists remain behind the times.

Other environmentalists, who led before, are leading again. James Lovelock, the spiritual guru of the world's environmental movement, sometimes called the "Father of the Green Revolution," because of his research and widely embraced warnings on DDT and CFCs, wrote in Reader's Digest, (March, 2005), "The figures show that many people's fears of nuclear energy are unreasonable." Dr. Lovelock also said "the Greens are plain wrong to oppose it." In May, 2004, Lovelock wrote, "Nuclear power is the only green solution."

New Mexico is primed for a uranium revival, not with conventional mining, but with ISL operations. The in situ leaching method, also known as solution mining, is environmentally friendly. Because it is low cost and does not contaminate the environment in ways that uranium mining did in the 1950s, many uranium companies plan to use this safer method for mining uranium in New Mexico.

In a conversation, late last year, with Grants Chamber of Commerce and Mining Museum employee Barbara Hahn, a deep resentment resounded in her voice when talking about the collapse of the uranium mining business in the 1980s. Grants (NM) was a boom town, during the 1970s uranium boom, when spot uranium prices climbed, and stayed above $40/pound. "Grants replaced the lost mining jobs by opening prisons," she told us. "Now, others bring us their prisoners." Ms. Hahn believed only 35 percent of the uranium had been extracted from the Grants Mineral Belt. "Most of it is still there," she added. According to a McLemore and Chenoweth geological report, a resource of 558 million pounds (279,000 short tons) might still be extracted. The question in the 1980s as it is today revolves around the spot price of uranium.

The higher the spot price of uranium, the more economic it can be to mine. As the price of uranium rises, then the quantity of an economic resource increases. At $30/pound, the U.S. Energy Information Administrated reported the state of New Mexico held 84 million pounds of uranium oxide, grading 0.28/ton, as of Dec 31, 2003. However, at $50/pound uranium, that quantity would jump to 341 million pounds. The spread on the gross value of the uranium assets between those price levels is nearly $15 billion! As the spot price escalates, the economic reserves grow.

Said William Sheriff, Director of Corporate Development for Energy Metals (TSX: EMC), "Our long-term, big, big projects are going to be in New Mexico. Long term, we think New Mexico is going to be quite valuable to us." He explained his company's plans are to first develop production centers in Texas and Wyoming, before developing ISL operations in The Enchanted State. Sheriff added, "Nothing in New Mexico in terms of the first five years, but that's not to say we're going to sit idly by. We're going to be aggressively pursuing these. The only thing we're going to be pursuing is ISL production." Based upon the company's extensive acquisitions in Wyoming, New Mexico and elsewhere, Sheriff threw down the gauntlet at Cameco and Cogema, whose ISL operations in Wyoming contribute the largest share of U.S. uranium production, "We intend to become the largest ISL producer in the United States."

David Miller, President and Chief Operation Officer of Strathmore Minerals, (TSX: STM; Other OTC: STHJF), believes, "The ISL production method will continue to grow in the United States, but we will also see a return to conventional mining and milling in the western states." In addition to their Wyoming uranium properties, Strathmore hopes to move forward their Church Rock uranium property on the heels of Uranium Resources' (OTC BB: URRE) permitting on Section 17, held by their HRI subsidiary. Basically, all three companies are friendly neighbors in the area. There is evidence they frequently talk among themselves, comparing notes. The three uranium juniors appear to be the current major players in New Mexico for ISL uranium mining.

Ron Driscoll, one of the co-founders of Quincy Energy, which has been acquired by Energy Metals, said, "It will get interesting when the oil companies get involved again." It is probably early for the oil giants to rush back into uranium. In the last uranium boom, many of the major oil companies were leaders in the uranium exploration and mining. Kerr-McGee Nuclear was the number one private sector uranium producer in the world. Other major oil companies involved in uranium mining and exploration included Mobil, Phillips, Conoco, Exxon, Chevron, Amoco and others. Another of the recently arrived uranium juniors, Max Resources (TSX: MXR) also plans to drill at the other end of New Mexico, in Socorro County (about 100 miles south of Albuquerque). MXR's property was once drilled by OxyMin, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, during the 1980s, before the price of uranium fell off a cliff.

Perhaps, one major company will emerge in New Mexico, consolidating the others, or some of the others. "There's a huge number of small uranium plays in the North American market that need critical mass," Neal Froneman, CEO of Uranium One (TSE: SXR) recently told a South African newspaper. "Consolidation will drive our business in the US and Canada, where we think it's tactically smart to be." Uranium One was itself a consolidation between Toronto-based Southern Cross and South African-based Aflease. Froneman concluded, ""It makes sense to have a major presence in North America in order to supply the (U.S.) utilities that will need to be built."

"The geology for this area, with regards to ISL uranium operations, could help make New Mexico an important supplier to U.S. utilities, possibly before the end of this decade," Strathmore's David Miller agreed. "I would not be surprised at all if there were more uranium to be found in New Mexico than is currently estimated. That's why companies have exploration programs." From a state, which has produced over 300 million pounds of uranium, and which may have between 300 million and 600 million additional pounds of uranium, New Mexico will be a prime target for uranium companies as long as the price of uranium continues to rise. Will uranium crash and burn, as it did in the 1980s? After accurately predicting the spot price of uranium would double in a StockInterview feature in June 2004, Miller recently told StockInterview, "I wouldn't be surprised to see the price double again."

COPYRIGHT © 2007 by StockInterview, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. StockInterview’s “Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market” has become the most popular book ever published for uranium mining stock investors. Visit [http://www.stockinterview.com]

Is the Navajo Nation President Being a Hypocrite about Uranium Mining

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, about 80 percent of the electricity in New Mexico is generated each year by burning coal. The irony is that the dominant anti-nuclear group in New Mexico, Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC), has shown no evidence of denouncing coal consumption. According to Don Hancock, an SRIC Administrator who directs the non-profit organization's Nuclear Waste Safety Program, the group's "spiritual mentor" is John W. Gofman. The former nuclear physicist is an aging, eccentric author who was discredited by the Atomic Energy Commission and was branded by the nuclear power industry as "beyond the pale of reasonable communication." As a kind gesture, Hancock gave us a copy of a Gofman "cartoon book," whose theme revolves around Thoreau's essay, "Civil Disobedience." Another cosmic ally is Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a favorite Don Hancock icon.

While Gofman championed solar energy in his hey day, Lovins presently espouses hydrogen as a primary solution for transportation, wind, and increasing efficiency through natural gas. However, neither wind power nor solar energy is a relevant energy source in New Mexico. Hydroelectricity supplies about 0.7 percent of New Mexico's electricity generation. Despite the hoopla and hyperbole, all of other renewable energy sources combined supply New Mexico with a mere 0.6 percent of its electricity. Coal is, in a very big way, the overwhelming reason why New Mexicans are not living in darkness and without heat or air conditioning.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, about 2400 people die every year from the air pollution caused from each million tons of sulfur dioxide emitted. In 1999, it is estimated that over 1.05 billion tons were produced, releasing 11.856 million tons of sulfur oxides and more than 5 million tons of nitrous oxides. Having personally inspected the first floor library of SRIC headquarters, no anti-coal mining literature was discovered. There appears to be scant fund-raising interest from these environmental activists to close down New Mexico's large coal mines. In fact, more U.S. coal mining deaths were reported in 2005 than deaths from uranium mining (zero). StockInterview.com heard no worries at SRIC over the blackening of coal miner's lungs, but the staff appeared very concerned over the radon gas emitted from uranium mining. Uranium mining in New Mexico came to a standstill about twenty years ago. Coal mining continues as it has for seven decades.

Don't expect the coal mines of New Mexico to be closed any time soon, though. No matter how deadly coal mines are, coal production is irreplaceable at this time. According to the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, tax revenues from coal in 2001 exceeded $30 million. Nearly one-half of the state's energy needs are met through coal-generated power. The coal industry employed 1,800 people in 2001. New Mexico is the country's leader for methane gas production from coal beds. Coal is the state's third largest source of revenues.

An EPA Toxic Release Inventory report published in 2000 reported that two power plants and their coal mines in New Mexico's San Juan County released 13 million pounds of chemical toxins into the Four Corner's area (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado). It was also reported that 6.5 million tons of solid waste was buried by the two San Juan County power plants on their sites or at nearby coal mines. Those airborne toxins were miniscule compared to over 300 million pounds of other emissions, such as particulates and nitrogen dioxide released into the air, and which can travel for hundreds of miles. Reports confirm those power plants were among the worst polluters in the United States. The eighth worst emitter was Giant Refining, about 17 miles from Gallup, New Mexico, which emitted 608,000 pounds according to the EPA report. Any visitor to the Gallup area can readily smell the stench circulating in the air.

Does Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr Have Double Standards?

Why haven't the Navajo banned coal mining on the reservation as they have uranium mining? According to Anna Frazier, a Navajo affiliated with a local environmental group, "Our Navajo Nation is certainly not going to do that. They would rather have the revenues coming in from the coal companies and the power plants." According to a news report published in Indian Country newspaper, "The Navajo Nation receives the bulk of its annual $100 million operating expenses from royalties, leases and taxes from its coal, oil and gas. These revenues provide operational expenses for the tribal government, including the salaries of the 88-member Navajo Nation Council, the tribe's annual budgets show."

For more than 35 years, Peabody Energy has operated massive mines on Navajo territory. The closure of one such coal mine, the Black Mesa, sent the Navajos rushing for their Maalox. Ironically, it was environmental activists that forced Southern California Edison to close their Mojave Generating Station nearly 300 miles away in Laughlin, Nevada. The utility was given a choice: cough up $1 billion to stop polluting the Grand Canyon or shut it down. It had been called "one of the dirtiest coal plants in the West," and air emissions from that plant reportedly polluted half a dozen other national parks in the Southwest. But, that coal mine provided about 15 percent of the Navajo's annual budget. George Hardeen, the Navajo president's media voice, complained about the mine closing last October, "This is going to have a terrible effect on this entire region because the Navajo economy is so fragile."

John Dougherty complained about the Navajo Nation's tactics in the Phoenix New Times newspaper in March 2005, observing, "Environmental groups have long exploited the Native American tradition of sacred places to fight their battles to preserve wilderness areas...It's always the soulful Native American who steps forward as the high priest of sacred geography. In the background lurks the environmentalist equipped with charts and data on tree-trunk diameters and spotted-owl nesting sites." Dougherty concluded, "The cries of environmental destruction and cultural murder from Navajo and Hopi leaders ring hollow."

What are not going to be ringing at all will be the cash registers at Albertsons supermarket in Bullhead City, near Laughlin (Nevada), which closed down this week. That's because the Mojave power station closed as advertised because of the dirty Black Mesa coal. Mike Conner, president of the Bullhead Area Chamber of Commerce, said, "The community will be devastated." Across the river in Laughlin, Buddy Borden of the University of Nevada at Reno told a group of community leaders the area "will take an almost $21 million hit" in lost power plant payrolls. The facility will lay off 375 employees, who had an average annual wage of $87,000. Like dominoes falling, jobs in Nevada, Arizona and in the Navajo Nation were lost.

Recently, Navajo president Joe Shirley Jr. considered replacing budget shortfalls with casinos, four in Nevada and two in New Mexico. Last March, Senator John McCain forecast the Navajo casinos would fail because of their remote locations. Shirley quipped back in the Arizona Republic newspaper, "I beg to differ with him." One coal mine that won't be on the Navajo reservation is the first to receive an operating permit in six years. Peabody Energy announced a coal mine on Lee Ranch, one of New Mexico's largest landowners. It is projected to produce 102 million tons of coal over the next thirty years.

For the time being, the Navajos hope to solve their economic quagmire by just putting up more casinos across a New Mexico landscape, already replete with "truck stop casinos." One can soon get bored guessing when the next casino will surface while driving across either Interstate 40 or I-25, the state's main arteries. First you see a sign announcing which tribal land you are entering, then the ubiquitous billboard describing which has-been musical act is "now appearing," and then finally the combination truck stop, casino, restaurant(s) and discount smoke shop whizzes by. One aging Navajo told us, "It's bad for the families, and it sets a bad example for the younger ones."

On Navajo reservation land and just in New Mexico alone, Joe Shirley Jr may control more than 75 million pounds of uranium, with a gross value presently exceeding $2.7 billion. Some say the number could run much higher, into the hundreds of millions of pounds. Don't expect Mr. Shirley to over turn his ban on uranium any time soon. Dr. Fred Begay, a Navajo and nuclear physicist at Los Alamos, whose career has been featured on BBC Television and in the pages of National Geographic and celebrated by the New York Academy of Science, explained the problem, "The Navajo don't get it. They think that they'll have miners. They have illiteracy on mining and uranium." Dr. Begay clarified that the Navajo have failed to differentiate between conventional uranium mining and ISL operations, which he considers safe, "They think that miners are going in there and digging it out."

Perhaps the illiteracy about mining extends to geochemistry. Coal is big money in New Mexico, and a little-known fact about the composition of coal may enlighten more than just environmentalists. Former Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco reported in Science magazine (Dec 8, 1978: "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants") the shocking conclusion that "Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations."

In an article entitled "Coal Combusion: Nuclear Resource or Danger," researcher Alex Gabbard, explained, "Coal is one of the most impure of fuels. Its impurities range from trace quantities of many metals, including uranium and thorium, to much larger quantities of aluminum and iron to still larger quantities of impurities such as sulfur. Products of coal combustion include the oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; carcinogenic and mutagenic substances; and recoverable minerals of commercial value, including nuclear fuels naturally occurring in coal."

Did you know that the amount of radioactive thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than the amount of uranium? For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively. Uranium and thorium are IN coal.

For the year 1982, assuming coal contains those same uranium and thorium concentrations, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium. Coal consumption has jumped dramatically since 1982 - by more than double!

Gabbard calculated the net impact of the release of uranium and thorium from coal burning by the year 2040:

Based on the predicted combustion of 2516 million tons of coal in the United States and 12,580 million tons worldwide during the year 2040, cumulative releases for the 100 years of coal combustion following 1937 are predicted to be:

U.S. release (from combustion of 111,716 million tons):

Uranium: 145,230 tons (containing 1031 tons of uranium-235)

Thorium: 357,491 tons

Worldwide release (from combustion of 637,409 million tons):

Uranium: 828,632 tons (containing 5883 tons of uranium-235)

Thorium: 2,039,709 tons

The population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton. This figure can be used to calculate the average expected radioactivity release from coal combustion. For 1982 the total release of radioactivity from 154 typical coal plants in the United States was, therefore, 2,630,230 millicuries.

Gabbard explained further: "Thus, by combining U.S. coal combustion from 1937 (440 million tons) through 1987 (661 million tons) with an estimated total in the year 2040 (2516 million tons), the total expected U.S. radioactivity release to the environment by 2040 can be determined. That total comes from the expected combustion of 111,716 million tons of coal with the release of 477,027,320 millicuries in the United States. Global releases of radioactivity from the predicted combustion of 637,409 million tons of coal would be 2,721,736,430 millicuries."

Uranium and the entire nuclear fuel cycle are blamed for a host of ills by the anti-nuclear crowd, but little is reported on the subject of radioactivity released from burning coal. Gabbard writes, "Large quantities of uranium and thorium and other radioactive species in coal ash are not being treated as radioactive waste. These products emit low-level radiation, but because of regulatory differences, coal-fired power plants are allowed to release quantities of radioactive material that would provoke enormous public outcry if such amounts were released from nuclear facilities. Nuclear waste products from coal combustion are allowed to be dispersed throughout the biosphere in an unregulated manner. Collected nuclear wastes that accumulate on electric utility sites are not protected from weathering, thus exposing people to increasing quantities of radioactive isotopes through air and water movement and the food chain."

While environmental groups hold fund raisers to stop uranium mining, protest the nuclear fuel cycle, and lobby to have vested interest groups, such as the Navajo Nation, ban uranium mining on the reservation, little data or statistics can be found about the daily tragedies found through coal production. There is no vocal outcry from Southwest Research and Information Center about coal mining, let alone the radioactive dangers found in releasing toxic coal fumes into the atmosphere.

It was a difficult task to locate the data illustrating, as Mr. Gabbard has done, that the radioactivity IN coal, from thorium and uranium, is far more deadly than the world's fleet of nuclear reactors. Will Joe Shirley, Jr. now ban coal mining on the Navajo reservation lands? After all, a greater amount of radioactivity is released among the Navajo from coal consumption than uranium mining ever would have achieved. Or will Mr. Shirley let that slide because his budget committee wouldn't stand for it?

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James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. StockInterview’s “Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market” has become the most popular book ever published for uranium mining stock investors. Visit [http://www.stockinterview.com]