The Trump administration is shrinking permitting for a uranium mine in Utah down to just 14 days, part of a process that critics have warned is ill-advised and sure to be legally challenged.
The Interior Department on Monday said the Bureau of Land Management will use emergency procedures to complete permitting for the reopening of the Velvet-Wood underground uranium and vanadium mine in San Juan County in eastern Utah. Doing so, it said, will reduce U.S. reliance on other countries for uranium that’s used as fuel in nuclear reactors, as well as vanadium needed in the process to strengthen steel.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a statement said the U.S. is facing an “alarming energy emergency because of the prior administration’s Climate Extremist policies” and that Trump is responding with “speed and strength to solve this crisis.”
The agency’s fast-tracked review process under the National Environmental Policy Act, Burgum added, is “exactly the kind of decisive action we need to secure our energy future” and that “by cutting needless delays, we’re supporting good-paying American jobs while strengthening our national security and putting the country on a path to true energy independence.”
