Because of this situation, these facilities eventually will have to be decommissioned. Regulatory control is exercised principally through the NRC licensing process. Once the plan is approved, the licensee must post a surety to guarantee that funds will be available to execute the plan and reclaim the site. Although the environmental and financial implications of decommissioning uranium production facilities have attracted widespread interest, few data have been compiled on the subject and even fewer have been published. These facilities are located in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington.
Conventional operations excavate uranium ore by open pit or underground mining.
The uranium is then recovered from the ore at a processing mill. In situ leaching operations utilize a series of wells rather than mines to recover the uranium from the ground. On average, tailings reclamation activities account for approximately 54 percent of the decommissioning costs for conventional uranium mills. Estimated Average Decommissioning Costs, U.S. Conventional Uranium Production Facilities Figure ES2. The reader should take care to consider the results in context.