Yellowcake Towns
Yellowcake Towns (Mining the American West)
by Michael A. Amundson
Author: Michael A. Amundson, 2004
Book Description:
Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West provides the first detailed analysis of the four mining and milling communities at the center of the twentieth-century unranium booms: Moab, Utah; Grants, New Mexico; Uravan, Colorado; and Jeffrey City, Wyoming. Ammundson brings these places to life with stories of local boosters who hit on uranium as their key to economic growth. Although many boasted of new refineries that provided hundreds of jobs or "Atomic Motels" and "Uranium Cafes" that epitomized their success, few realized the inherent problems of coping with major population swings, infrastructure worries, creeping federal dependency, or the health hazards of mill tailings and underground mines.
Yellowcake towns illustrates an important era in American history that isn't often highlighted in the realm of western mining history - the uranium boom of the mid-twentieth century.
Radium was mined in western Colorado in the area that would become the town of Uravan as early as 1910. Radium was a product of carnotite ore, which also contained uranium as a byproduct. Radium was sold to laboratories in Europe and was worth a whopping 70-120 thousand dollars per gram at the time. Uranium was merely a useless byproduct.
World War II and the atomic bomb changed the status of uranium from useless byproduct to valuable commodity vital to national security. During the effort to create the first atomic bomb, the only known domestic source of uranium were the mines around Uravan, Colorado. As much as 85% of Uranium used during the Manhattan Project had been imported from other countries. The end of World War II and the birth of the nuclear age, together with the rising threat of nuclear Russia, thrust the issue of uranium supply to the forefront of national security. As a result, the US government sponsored both public exploration programs and guaranteed a market for privately mined and milled uranium. By 1949 the great uranium frenzy had begun in the western United States.
The uranium frenzy was not unlike the various gold and silver rushes across the West nearly a hundred years earlier. The potential for quick riches attracted thousands of treasure seekers that combed the mountains, canyons, and plains of America. Unlike their predecessors that were armed with picks and shovels in the search for gold, these new uranium prospectors were armed with Geiger counters and were after the telltale yellow ores commonly associated with radioactive elements.
The government's exploration project was a success, and many new uranium deposits were discovered . Towns near these discoveries became uranium boom towns almost over night. The book focuses on the economic growth and social change in four of these towns: Uravan, Colorado; Moab, Utah; Grants, New Mexico, and Jeffrey City, Wyoming. In the case of Jeffrey, the remoteness of the uranium find necessitated an entirely new city where none had been before, and Jeffrey was born.
The book follows the initial explosive growth of these towns, and then the cycles of boom and bust to follow as the result of changing economic environment and political events that shaped the uranium industry through the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. Changes in the government's policy of guaranteeing the purchase of uranium concentrates (or "yellowcake") at fixed prices, international competition, and the burgeoning environmental movement all contributed to the decline of the uranium industry.
Ultimately the US uranium industry collapsed and by the early 90's there were very few producers left . The effect on the uranium towns was dramatic. Jeffrey City, being a one-industry corporate town, was mostly dismantled and abandoned. Uravan, after almost a hundred years of mining and milling of radioactive materials, was deemed a serious public health threat and the entire town was closed, dismantled, and the site is in remediation to this day. Grants suffered economically but avoided ghost town status as it diversified its economy into tourism and other areas. Only Moab, Utah continued to thrive. Moab had diversified its economy into tourism well before the uranium bust and today the uranium industry there is merely a curious part of Moab's history.
After reading Yellowcake Towns, I realized that the important era of the uranium boom often gets overlooked in the study of US mining history. I believe the reasons for this are the combination of a geographically limited resource, resulting in just a handful of important mining communities, and the very nature of the yellowcake town that resulted from the uranium boom. The uranium boom occurred in a period of US history that was much different from earlier gold, silver, and copper discoveries. Gilded age towns were often built to last, with intricate Victorian homes and commercial buildings. The aesthetic value of these Victorian structures resulted in generations of people interested in renovating and preserving the landmark structures. Conversely, yellowcake towns were often comprised of a new type of American structure - the mobile home. When the booms were over they were simply hauled off or scrapped. The uranium town ultimately had little long-term value nor did it capture the public's imagination like Victorian-era mining towns have for the last hundred years.
Overall I enjoyed this book and learned a lot about both the four featured yellowcake towns and the saga of the uranium industry as it related to the Cold War era. However, I feel that there were two subjects that should have been elaborated on: the Three Mile Island accident, and the environmental and health effects of the miners in the uranium industry.
The Three Mile Island nuclear accident was one of the pivotal moments in the history of the uranium industry. It is mentioned many times in the book but the event is never described at all. The accident was thirty years ago and I think its safe to say that younger generations are not going to remember it. I had to look it up to fill myself in on the details. I think a paragraph in the book describing the accident would have been appropriate.
The environmental problems related to the mining and milling of radioactive ores became one of the central themes that shaped the industry in the 1970's and 1980's. The entire town of Uravan had to be dismantled due to high levels of radiation throughout the town. Thousands of miners worked in underground uranium mines, and in uranium mills throughout the West. Strangely though, the book never mentions any of the actual health effects of the workers or the residents of these communities. The health effects of the uranium industry were a central theme in these towns, especially as the environmental movement took root in the 1970's. It would have been appropriate to at least mention whether environmental and health concerns related to uranium mining and milling were founded.
These omissions were minor though and I can still recommend the book. Yellowcake towns is a must read for anyone interested in mining history, mining town culture, or even the politics of Cold War America.
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