Curtis Moore thinks the Navajo Nation’s new rules for hauling radioactive material across its reservation are “a little excessive.”
Requiring a $5 million bond and extra fees is on par with U.S. regulations for transporting nuclear fuel, said Moore, vice president of marketing and corporate development for mining company Energy Fuels.
The Navajo Nation’s move to strengthen its regulations follows what the tribe says was Energy Fuels’ unannounced transportation of uranium ore through its reservation on July 30. Navajo leaders recently passed legislation delineating the new regulations, which include the bond requirement, additional fees and limits on the hours that trucks can drive across tribal land.
“We’d probably comply with three-quarters of it right now,” Moore said of the new legislation. But he added that the company doesn’t expect to be required to follow all of the new rules, because it is negotiating a separate agreement with the tribe, as the law allows.
The Navajo Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that issue.
The tribe’s power to enforce its new rules could be considered unclear. While a tribal law passed in 2012 restricted the transportation of uranium across the reservation, a legal loophole exempted state and federal highways U.S. 89 and U.S. 160. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren asked President Joe Biden in March to stop uranium transport on those roads.
Tribal leaders say they need the updated regulations — now. They believe Energy Fuels is just the first company that will want to move radioactive material across their land.
“There is a lot of support growing for nuclear power and these uranium mines are going to be developing all around us,” Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, said at a Navajo Nation Council meeting last week. The council was discussing the new amendment to the 2012 law.
The council approved the amendment unanimously.
Energy Fuels trucked two loads of uranium ore from its Pinyon Plain Mine, located near the south rim of the Grand Canyon, north to the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah, for processing in July. The trucking route crosses Navajo land.
Nygren said he wasn’t notified and deployed tribal police to apprehend the two trucks, but they crossed the border into Utah before law enforcement reached them.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs negotiated a deal between Energy Fuels and the tribe in which the company promised to stop trucking temporarily to discuss safety concerns with Navajo leadership.
Energy Fuels has not trucked any more uranium ore through the reservation. Talks are ongoing between the company and the tribe, both the Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels confirmed.
“We want to make clear that the people that live and reside on the Navajo Nation should be respected at all times,” Nygren said as he signed the new amendment into law last week.
Moore said that the company’s meetings with the tribes have been productive. “We’re as optimistic as ever that we’re going to be able to come to an agreement,” he said.
“It’s our understanding, and I think they would confirm,” Moore added, “that if and when we come to an agreement, it would supersede these regulations.”
The regulations that went into effect with the amendment’s approval will expire in one year. During that time, the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency will ask for public comment, and will later finalize the rules.
Under the amended law, companies that want to transport radioactive materials across the Navajo Nation must notify the tribe a week in advance — up from the previous standard of four days’ notice.
Radioactive material transporters can only drive trucks on routes designated by the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, and only in good weather.
Transporters must also apply for a license, for a $450 fee, and pay a $200 fee for each truckload. That money, Etsitty said, will pay for the expenses that the tribe will incur to implement the regulations.
Alongside a $5 million bond to cover the cost of an accident, transporters are required submit an emergency response plan before travel.
Failure to comply with the regulations could cost a transporter up to $25,000 per day, or the tribe’s attorney general could file a temporary restraining order or permanent injunction.
These changes, according to Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch, will “ensure that our community doesn’t continue to get disproportionately burdened with radiation and uranium-based waste and contamination.”
An increase in the price of uranium has driven a renaissance in mining claims across the American Southwest, also motivated by the nation’s push for clean energy.
The uranium ore trucked to the White Mesa Mill in Blanding is processed there into yellowcake. That material undergoes further processing into nuclear fuel, which can generate clean nuclear power.
Correction • 1:35 p.m. Sept. 6, 2024: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect Curtis Moore’s reasoning for why he doesn’t expect his company to be held to new tribal rules.