In the early 1980s, southeast Utah was targeted as a potential dump site for high-level nuclear waste, the kind that comes from nuclear reactors. The Department of Energy considered storing 8,000 tons of this highly radioactive material near Canyonlands National Park, boosting the idea as spurring ānuclear tourism.ā
Who wouldnāt want to see Delicate Arch in the morning and casks of plutonium in the afternoon?
Like the radioactive waste itself, . Southeast Utah is in the crosshairs once again, aided by a $2 million Biden-era grant given to two pro-nuclear nonprofits based in California, Mothers for Nuclear and Native Nuclear, along with North Carolina State University.
San Juan County, where I live, is Utahās only majority-Indigenous county and the stateās poorest. Last year, the county hosted a number of meetings as part of the Energy Department¶¶Ņõap āconsent-based siting consortia,ā an attempt to get buy-in from residents for accepting radioactive waste. At local meetings, Mothers for NuclearĀ arguedĀ that the nuclear industry is much safer than the public has been told.
It¶¶Ņõap true that 40 years ago some locals eagerly pushed for a nuclear dump. One pro-repository activist in Moab even called it preferable to national parks, because parks attracted ādrugs, homosexuals, and environmentalists.ā Utahās governor opposed the dump plan, however, and after it was defeated, the town of Moab worked to create a new identity, Now, the Moab area has become an international tourist destination.
Yet the question of what to do about spent nuclear fuel remains, and the area surrounding Bears Ears National Monument and Canyonlands continues to be targeted as a suitable dumping ground.
Would welcoming radioactive waste lead to an economic revival? Probably not.
Though the Cold War rush for uranium created economic booms for San Juan County and Grand Countyās town of Moab, prosperity spawned public health crises. Residents of Monticello, San Juan Countyās seat, and the site of a uranium mill from 1942 to 1960, awoke to a fine yellow dust on windowsills during the millās heyday. Decades later, rates of lung and stomach cancer in the town were found inĀ one study to be twice the state average.
The Navajo Nation experienced widespread uranium mining in the 20th century,Ā followed byĀ one of the highest incidences of uranium-linked health issues in the United States. In 1979, Tribal land was also the site of the second-largest accidental release of radioactive material in history, after a wastewater pond burst near Church Rock, New Mexico. Only the Chernobyl meltdown seven years later surpassed that disaster.
Mills for processing uranium are also harmful. After a mill site in Halchita, Utah, was capped in the early 1990s, workers who cleaned it upĀ fell victim to some of the same diseasesĀ as uranium miners of the previous generation. Still contaminating air, livestock and humans are more thanĀ 500 unreclaimed uranium minesĀ on Navajo land.
The Navajo Nation banned uranium mining in 2005 and uranium transport in 2012. But Energy Fuels, the company that operates the White Mesa uranium mill just outside San Juan County, secured an exemption from the transport ban in early 2025. The mill has been accepting radioactive waste for years, including waste fromĀ JapanĀ andĀ Estonia. Recently, it began processing ore from a mine the company owns just outside Grand Canyon National Park.
Around 10 trucks leave the Arizona mine each day, crossing unceded Havasupai and Hopi lands, the Navajo Nation, and the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation before reaching the mill–all over theĀ objectionsĀ of Tribal leaders and members of the tribes along the route.
But that waste and ore is far less radioactive than the spent nuclear fuel that Mothers for Nuclear promotes at San Juan County meetings. There, the group stays away from discussing cancer rates or birth defects, instead showing slides of pregnant, smiling women sitting next to containers of nuclear waste.
It is going to take time and vigilance, but once again my fellow residents of San Juan County intend to fend off the Department of Energy, which has adopted even more pro-nuclearĀ policiesĀ under President Trump.
Zak Podmore is a contributor toĀ Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He is the author of Life AfterĀ DeadpoolĀ and lives in Utah.
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