Wyoming Could Play A Key Role In U.S. Nuclear Future

Summary: Will the Wyoming Uranium Province Rival Canada's Athabasca or Australia's Northern Territories? "Geology is 90 percent terminology and 10 percent science," laughed Ray E. Harris, one of Wyoming's leading geological theoreticians, having been with the Wyoming Geological Survey since 1982.

Will the Wyoming Uranium Province Rival Canada's Athabasca or Australia's Northern Territories? "Geology is 90 percent terminology and 10 percent science," laughed Ray E. Harris, one of Wyoming's leading geological theoreticians, having been with the Wyoming Geological Survey since 1982. He died on March 7th. Two weeks earlier, we met with and interviewed Mr. Harris. Everyone we met in Wyoming, and who was interested in uranium mining, had, at one time or another, passed through his office, which was adjacent to the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Ray Harris traveled the world, investigating and studying uranium deposits. He was well versed on the geology of every significant uranium deposit on earth and was also involved in the exploration, development and mining of uranium. In a Geological Survey of Wyoming Public Information Circular, published in 1986, Ray Harris presented a unique, and possibly controversial, thesis, "The genesis of uranium deposits in Athabasca, Canada and Northern Australia - Wyoming exploration significance." In his introduction, Harris wrote: "Wyoming has some uranium occurrences in geological environments similar to those of Australia and the Athabasca Basin, and appears to have the potential for a uranium deposit similar in magnitude to those deposits." Harris acknowledged in his paper, "Reported reserves for these two regions are 436,360,000 tons of U3O8, or one quarter to one third of the noncommunist world's proven reserves." At the same time, the total 1982 U.S. uranium reserves at $30/pound stood at 203,000 tons. Wyoming's piece of that mineable pie stood at 32,700 tons. His was a bold statement, open to debate it not outright dispute and dismissal. Perhaps there may be truth in Harris' claim. In 1981, E.S. Cheney published an article in American Scientist, entitled "The Hunt for Giant Uranium Deposits," where he explained a giant deposit would contain more than 100 million pounds of recoverable U3O8. But can the parts amount to more than a single giant uranium deposit? William Boberg in his 1981 article, "Some Speculations on the Development of Central Wyoming as a Uranium Province," published in the Wyoming Geological Association Guidebook, wrote, "The Wyoming Uranium Province consists of several uranium districts (Gas Hills, Shirley Basin, Crooks Gap, Red Desert, Powder River Basin and Black Hills) each of which is made up of a few to numerous individual uranium deposits. In Part 2 of this Wyoming Series, uranium savvy Senator Robert Peck speculated there were "50 to 60 million pounds of recoverable uranium in the Gas Hills proven by previous drilling." Warren Finch in U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin #2141 (1996, US Government Printing Office, Washington), wrote in his paper, entitled "Uranium Provinces of North America - Their Definition, Distribution and Models," that "