Nuclear Horizon: An atomic economy is booming in New Mexico Santa Fe Reporter

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(Free-Press-Release.com) May 23, 2011 -- “The state currently has a stake in a lot of aspects of this cycle--the mining, the enrichment, the storage,” Mat Lueras, vice president for corporate development at Uranium Resources Inc., a mining outfit that owns 183,000 acres of uranium mineral rights in New Mexico, tells SFR. Because of that, Lueras says, URI has “seen widespread local and state support from New Mexico politicians” for its efforts to restart uranium mining.

To Daniel Fine, a research associate at New Mexico Tech and at the Center for Energy Policy in Hobbs,

such enthusiasm is simply an acknowledgment of the inevitable.

“Nuclear energy, worldwide and in the United States, has a very strong future,” Fine says. “Twenty percent of our electricity is nuclear. There’s potential planning for 50 percent more.”

In Fine’s view, New Mexico’s role in that future remains to be determined. But given what’s already here, and the gradual buildup of a nuclear fuel cycle complex in the state’s southeastern counties, a nuclear future may indeed be unavoidable. Take the beginning of the fuel cycle, for instance.

“New Mexico,” Fine says, “is the Saudi Arabia of uranium.”

Daniel Fine of New Mexico Tech predicts a bright future for nuclear energy.

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