Uranium Energy Corp. will double its uranium oxide production capacity at its Irigaray plant in the Powder River Basin, its central processing plant in Wyoming, which will top off its overall Cowboy State processing capacity at a whopping 8.1 million pounds of uranium.
Uranium oxide is the main ingredient in making yellowcake, the powdered and refined uranium used in nuclear plants and weapons.
With its Texas processing capacity, that brings UEC’s overall American production capacity to 12.1 million pounds, setting it up to become the top dog in America for uranium production, with nearly two-thirds of that production in Wyoming.
“Irigaray is where we produce yellowcake, our final product, from the mine,” UEC’s Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations Brent Berg told Cowboy State Daily on Friday afternoon. “It was built back in 1978, so one of the things we wanted to do, we had a license that allowed us to produce up to 2-and-a-half million pounds per year, but we wanted the flexibility to increase production there.”
Berg said the future is looking particularly bright for uranium production, crediting the recent rise of artificial intelligence for some of that demand. That’s also putting Wyoming, which has the largest uranium reserve in the United States, in a great position to capitalize.
“I mean, that’s all you hear lately,” Berg said. “Is how all the big tech companies continue to dominate the news flow for nuclear. Amazon did three deals recently for small modular reactors. Google has made a commitment for reactors to power a data center by 2030.
“I mean you just keep hearing these stories one after another, and it’s artificial intelligence driving all these power needs.”
More UEC Moves
The increased capacity at Irigaray is not the only move Uranium Energy has recently made to ramp up production capacity in Wyoming.
In September, UEC also bought up British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto’s uranium assets 40 miles northwest of Rawlins for $175 million. In addition to 6 million feet of drilling for new projects that purchase included a licensed processing mill, one of few in the U.S., which operated from 1981-1983 with a capacity of 4.1 million pounds of yellowcake per year.
UEC is still in the preliminary stages of production, but it has already begun to process some uranium, Berg said.
“We don’t have any dried product yet,” he said. “We have in-process inventory, and we will let that build up until we decide we want to run a drying campaign.”
The ramping up stage now includes going through all of Irigaray plant’s circuits, from precipitation and filtering to drying and packaging, to ensure all of the equipment is working as it needs to for increased production.
“That’s really the first step,” Berg said. “We did buy one key piece of equipment, a filter press for the plant. That’s a key piece that we’ll use, it goes in front of the calciner, so where we produce the yellowcake.”
In the wet stage, yellowcake is washed with fresh water to remove soluble contaminants before it is de-watered and then dried for packaging into 55-gallon drums for storage and shipment.
“We’ve got engineering plans underway,” Berg said. “We’re getting cost estimates on equipment, and we’re getting a very good understanding of what it’s going to take to increase throughput.”
The Hiring Race Is On, Too
Something else that’s key to UEC’s plans is ramping up personnel. The company is actively hiring for several positions, ranging from plant operators and maintenance technicians to construction managers and geologists.
Berg said the company needs to fill about a dozen positions. Hiring so far is going well, he added, despite Wyoming’s labor crunch, where there are two jobs for every job applicant.
“We just participated in a career fair at University of Wyoming, and we did one at South Dakota School of Mines,” Berg said. “We’ve been fortunate so far. We’ve been able to onboard a number of people. We’ve got people coming out of Buffalo, Gillette and Casper, and kind of all over the place to our operation.
“Uranium has a really positive outlook right now, so I think people are willing to give us a shot.”
Berg said he was also pleased the state has begun a new nuclear training program in the southwest corner of the state and believes that such a program only bodes well for UEC.
The main purpose of the new program is training professionals for the $4 billion Natrium nuclear plant that Bill Gates-owned TerraPower is building in Kemmerer, but Berg also feels the program could help overall hiring in the nuclear and uranium sector.
“A program like that gives people a broad understanding of nuclear,” Berg said. “I would say traditionally we probably look for more geologists and engineers coming out of college, but we’re kind of open to any and all applicants right now.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
