Uranium Mining in the Colorado Plateau.--ln the heart of the Colorado Plateau, a kidney-shaped area covering roughly 50,000 square miles at the four adjoining corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, the quest for uranium is on in earnest these days. Modern miners are finding a crumbly yellow substance called carnotite from which are derived traces of uranium. Specially equipped International trucks are transporting the ore down the western slopes of the Rockies to processing mills. Refining extracts uranium from the carnotite scraps and processes it into black powder; the powder is collected and shunted to mysterious destinations for further secret processing.
The quest is an intricate one. Uranium's a tricky thing to count on; it does not run in veins. It runs in pockets. The quest takes prospectors to the rims of canyons and tops of mesas. To get four tons of the desired metallic element you have to dig a mine a mile deep and process something like two and one-half million tons of rock.
There's also the matter of delivering ore mined on the plateau to one of seven widely scattered mills at Grand Junction, Rigle, Naturita, Uravan, and Durango in southwestern Colorado, and Monticello and Rite in southeastern Utah. Big six-wheel trucks with hypoid-gear axles are the modern packhorses on this job. For every sixteen miles they travel with ore loads, fifteen miles are over hardly negotiable trails. The roads--if there are roads --are rocky routes blasted out by dynamite, or they are simply vague tracks, wandering up and down a great mass of talus and debris.
Mere trails, narrow defiles that wind between the mountains, primitive rock and dirt roads, grades that range from 15 to 30 per cent, breath-taking altitudes from 7000 to 13,000 ft. above sea-level, scorching desert heat, winter temperatures sometimes reaching 25 degrees below zero--all are encountered in this rugged task. The surfaces and inclines are dusty washboards in summer and slippery nightmares in winter. There is no room for passing. Rainstorms and melting snows in spring wash out trails. In the summer, the region dries into a dustbowl and landslides are a constant peril all seasons.
In spite of its inhospitality to man, the Colorado Plateau produced uranium for the atomic bombs that brought an end to World War If. Now scientists, engineers, and statesmen look to Plateau for the invaluable isotopes for medical and chemical research, bombs for national defense, and future power for industry. Colorado-produced ores have placed the United States in second place among free nations in the production of uranium, according to the Atomic Energy Commission.
Most of the carnotite is transported on International LF-210 and LF-190 model trucks, equipped with 16-ton-capacity dump bodies. They are driven to the mines, loaded, and then driven back to mills over rocky, sometimes indistinct, way. The braking test is severe---there are repeated stops because of obstacles. The transmission takes real punishment; the driver must continually run the range of the truck's five speeds forward, shifting on every curve and new rise as the truck roars upgrade.