Opinion: Uranium mining isn't a good option for Navajo Nation

A recent post on the High Country News website advocates the position that the Navajo Nation should eventually drop its 2005 uranium ban so that it can get a better deal on uranium development, which the author, Jonathan Thompson, sees as inevitable. The post holds up the example of the Ute Tribe as an example of how a ban or moratorium on extractive industry can be a useful gambit for increasing tribal revenues when industry comes knocking.

As an attorney representing Navajo communities resisting new uranium mining for the last 15 years, I found HCN’s showcase of this perspective both troubling and disappointing. I also think the fundamental assumptions that underpin the piece are misguided.

Like the Ute Tribe ultimately growing rich off oil and gas production, the article’s author assumes that the Navajo Nation can likewise grow rich off uranium mining. The economic realities don’t support this position. World uranium prices have been depressed for 30 years and there is no end in sight. An upsurge in nuclear power demand might change that, but the trend since the Fukushima disaster has been to move away from nuclear power and toward renewables. Indeed, the only places where nuclear power has even a chance to survive is in countries where there is unwavering state support for the industry, i.e., China, India and Russia. So comparing petroleum to uranium simply isn’t equivalent in economic terms. Further, uranium’s economic realities, should they come to pass on the Navajo Nation, guarantee significantly more modest economic development gains than the riches promised by the uranium industry.