Naturita - Miners once again are digging into the buckled, brushy expanses of the Colorado Plateau in a search for the yellow rock that signals a payoff. It's not the sparkle of gold they're after. It's the eggy tinge of oxidation on ore that contains uranium.
In canyons and on mesas still dotted with the rusted head frames of uranium mines that have been shut down for more than two decades, three mines have been reopened this year. More are being considered for reopening as uranium prices climb.
The revival would have been unheard of just a few years ago, said Stuart Sanderson with the Colorado Mining Association. "But with the price of natural gas going up, we're seeing an increased demand for coal and uranium."
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What's happening in western Colorado's uranium belt is a far cry from the boom that once dominated this area. But analysts' predictions that uranium prices will continue to climb have made it feasible to bring the industry back to life.
"We've spent several million refurbishing our mill and getting our mines back in shape," said Jerry Powers, a manager for Lakewood-based Cotter Corp.
Cotter reopened its first mine in the Paradox Valley in the summer and plans to open its fourth and fifth next spring. The company currently employs two dozen people in the west end of Montrose County and expects to have 60 at work by the end of 2005.
Those local numbers hang on global figures that show the 435 nuclear reactors in the world - including 104 in the U.S. - need 180 million pounds of uranium annually. Global production has been half that.
That gap between supply and demand has pushed uranium and vanadium prices to their highest levels in more than 20 years, since the meltdown at Three Mile Island and the explosion at the Chernobyl plant put the brakes on new nuclear power plants.
Uranium is currently selling for $20.50 a pound after selling for as low as $7.50 a pound in 2001. Industry predictions have it climbing as high as $25 to $35 before it levels off. And the steel-hardener vanadium that comes from the same ore has jumped from less than $2 a pound to around $10.
Those prices are behind the new and stepped-up uranium mining in Canada, Australia and Africa. And it follows that revival also would occur in one of the largest uranium reserves in the United States, a bean-shaped area that stretches from Grants, N.M., through the Paradox Valley and over the border into Utah.
It's an area that encompasses a colorful history of Marie Curie studying the radioactivity in uranium ore and the high-flying Charlie Steen setting off a boom and being dubbed "The Uranium King" after his Geiger counter clicked on a mother lode near Moab.
Folks in Nucla and Naturita still talk nostalgically of the era when UMETCO Minerals built an entire company town, Uravan, on an area that has now been scraped clean of the homes, community center, schools and swimming pools. All that's left now is a UMETCO building and holding ponds where the company is completing a massive cleanup of radioactive waste.
Even residents of this area who say their uranium-miner relatives died of lung cancer or have suffered emphysema, welcome new jobs that come with another spike in the element that is marbled into their land.
"We have no hard feelings," said Thelma Archer, owner of The Watering Hole in Naturita. "My dad and brother were miners. We lived here during the boom. It was wonderful. It was the good old days"
Glen Williams, the point man for the Cotter Corp. in Colorado's uranium belt, said no one should expect another boom. He called the current expansion of uranium mining "slow and steady."
Williams said mining the uranium to fuel nuclear-power plants is safer nowadays than it was in its heyday, when miners breathed in enough radioactive dust to cause lung diseases.
In remote Bull Canyon where one of Cotter's mines is cut into a hillside behind a 1,600-foot wood-lined portal, giant fans in the hill circulate fresh air, and the levels of radon gas are monitored.
"The mines nowadays aren't that dangerous," former miner Bill Chadd said as he sat in the sun in front of the Miners Inn. Chadd said of 13 miners who worked on his crew in the 1970s, only two are alive.
That's a problem for Cotter and other companies that hope to tap into the newly healthy uranium and vanadium markets.
Williams said Cotter would have more mines reopened and operating if they could hire more miners. The few remaining in this area are mostly too old for the grueling work that includes running handheld jack-leg drills.
That worker shortage could be stretched even thinner if other companies decide to reopen mines.
Ken Miyoshi, mill manager for International Uranium Corp. in Monticello, Utah, said his company is not planning to reopen its mines near Dove Creek.
"But if the price keeps going up," Miyoshi said, "who knows? It becomes more viable."
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
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