Saskatchewan wants feds to pony up its share of abandoned uranium mine cleanup – Estevan Mercury
July 22, 2020
During the 1950s and 60s, the demand for uranium was insatiable.
It was the dawn of the nuclear age, and uranium was needed to fuel a wave of new nuclear power plants across the continent. It was also the height of the Cold War, and the United States was building tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, made with plutonium which was derived from uranium. Canada supplied a substantial portion of that uranium.
A good chunk of that uranium came from Uranium City, in the extreme northwest corner of Saskatchewan, on the shores of Lake Athabasca. The Gunnar Mine, 40 kilometres southwest of Uranium City, was a source of a substantial amount of that uranium. But after operating just eight years, employing up to 800 people at a time, the mine closed down in 1963 and was abandoned.
There was no cleanup of the mine or facilities. With the people who operated the mine long gone, the Government of Saskatchewan was left holding the bag for the cleanup. They want the feds to pay up, to the point of taking the federal government to court.
