The Future of Uranium

How big is the boom in uranium? How long will it last? Last week, for the first time, the Atomic Energy Commission gave businessmen a dazzling glimpse into uranium's future. After "phenomenal development" in discovery and mining since 1948, said AEC's Raw Materials Chief Jesse Johnson, uranium prospecting, mining, milling and construction have become a $100 million-a-year operation. The U.S., which imported 90% of its uranium ore before the Korean war, may soon become the world's biggest uranium producer.

Nor is any peak in sight. Despite the upswing in uranium strikes (TIME. Jan. 31), AEC needs still more ore, estimates that most known deposits will be exhausted by 1962. Said Johnson: "A high rate of discovery will be required to maintain scheduled production levels." Although at least twelve ore deposits containing 100.000 or more tons each have been discovered since 1948 (v. three up to then), mining has climbed even faster. Seven years ago the U.S. had 15 small mines with a total of 50 employees; now it has more than 800 sizable mines with more than 4,000 employees.

The AEC, which plans to buy all uranium ore mined until at least 1962, is considering a longer-range government buying program "to cover a period between the defense market and a commercial market of reasonable size." Even low-grade ore may turn out to be profitable, said Johnson, because "these deposits may be called upon to supply the nuclear fuel for future industrial power."

Out in the uranium-rich West another major strike was confirmed last week. Its name: Blue Rock Mine, in Arizona's Rincon Mountains, some 40 miles east of Tucson. The finders: Dentist Garth Thornburg, 35, and his brother Vance, 33, onetime farmer. Pioneers of the Grand Junction uranium rush, the Thornburg brothers collected promising claims on the Colorado plateau in 1950, built them into their Uranium Enterprises. Inc. On their 116 claims in the Blue Rock area, they believe they have at least 25,000 tons of commercial ore, hope to prove out 150,000 tons.

As reports of this and other strikes came into Salt Lake City, uranium's Wall Street, brokers were happily riding the crest of a new boom in trading, the biggest rush since last May's frantic buying of penny stocks. The boom then was founded on paper claims and hope; now the penny-stock companies are merging, or being taken over by companies with enough capital to start mining. At least 20 of the nation's biggest mining companies, e.g.. Phelps Dodge, Anaconda Copper, Climax Molybdenum and Vanadium Corp. of America, were looking over companies with promising claims. Thus out-of-town investors, who hooted at uranium stocks nine months ago, have changed their tune. Now three of every four orders come from outside the city.

The biggest claim buyer of all is Atlas Corp.'s Floyd Odlum, who bought out Vernon Pick's Delta uranium mine for $9,000,000 (TIME, Sept. 6), is now on his way to gathering up the biggest acreage. His Federal Uranium Corp. will combine his Federal Uranium Co. with six companies (Kentucky-Utah Mining Co., Western States Uranium Co., Interstate Uranium Co., Utida Uranium Co., Howell Mining Co. and Uranium Inc.) holding total claims with an estimated $6,000,000 to $7,000,000 in ore reserves. Much of the new buyers' rush is for Federal or one of the companies that it will gobble up, and Federal stock has jumped from $3.25 to $5.25 in a month.

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