Uranium mining past, present and future feat. Jerry Grandey

Its a basic truism but every material object that we use as humans
that we did not farm or harvest from the land was mined. In the
developed world we have offshored much of this mining activity and
it is thus largely invisible to us. How do we decouple mining from
its environmental impacts? Stringent regulation of environmental
and labour practices. How does modern Uranium mining measure
up?  With plans for an energy transition away from fossil
fuels comes major mining implications. Replacing energy dense coal,
oil and gas with dilute sources and storage mediums like wind,
solar and batteries will lead to the biggest expansion of mining in
world history according to Mark P Mills. Meanwhile the
decarbonisation impact of uranium mining is uttlery
overlooked.  Uranium has by far the lowest mining impact per
unit of energy of any comparable fuel source. Several mines in
Saskatchewan, Canada, that occupy a tiny land footprint produce
enough Uranium to supply 20% of the world's nuclear power fleet
which provides 4% of global primary energy. Thus Saskatchewans
uranium mines can meet almost 1% of global primary energy
demand.  Jerry Grandey was previously the CEO of Cameco
Corporation, one of the world’s largest Uranium producers. In 2011,
he was nominated for the Oslo Business for Peace Award in
recognition of his efforts to facilitate the dismantling of 20,000
Russian warheads (The Megatons to Megawatts program), with the
resulting uranium used in nuclear energy plants for the generation
of electricity.