Nuclear boom... it has an ominous sound, doesn’t it? It conjures visions of mushroom clouds and shock waves that flatten everything in their path.
It was a pair of nuclear booms that convinced the Empire of Japan that their dreams of world conquest were over.
But it may also signal the beginning of Wyoming’s second venture in a resurgent uranium industry. The remnants of the first boom are still evident in hot spots around the Big Empty, and we’ll have to wait and see if Nuclear Boom, Part Deux pans out.
Wyoming’s preeminent geologist, Dave Love, started the first uranium frenzy when he mapped the geology of the Cowboy State and pinpointed a uranium deposit near Pumpkin Buttes in the early 1950s.
I remember that one.
My dad was a geology student at UW, but dropped out to enlist after Pearl Harbor. He remained keenly interested in geology for the rest of his life.
His ears must have perked up when Rawlins Outlaws Bob Adams and Doc Jeffrey (Jeffrey City’s namesake) started mining uranium up in the Sweetwater country.
So Dad bought a geiger counter and started prospecting on the ID. Prospecting might be too strong a word, rather he took his gizmo along when he irrigated or fixed fence.
Mark and I were little more than toddlers when we went with him on these jaunts. Dad taught us how to listen to the geiger counter, and when it buzzed like a rattlesnake, it meant we hit pay dirt!
Having been instilled with a healthy respect for rattlesnakes and atomic bombs, we both ran back to the pickup like our hair was on fire when the damn thing started clicking.
Later, in elementary school, I learned that the only thing that would save me from a nuclear bomb was to crawl under my desk and put my history book over my head. But don’t try that with rattlesnakes, they’ll get to you under a desk, history book or not.
Be that as it may, Wyoming might be on the cusp of a new energy revolution that will see radioactive minerals and rare earths supplant hydrocarbons as the targets of choice for our shovels and drill rigs.
Neutrons just might be what we’ll drag out of the ground in the near future to sell for money to pave our roads and build our schools.
A sea change like this always creates drama and plenty of conversation fodder in our bars and coffeeshops. It's interesting to watch ourselves as we try to get our noggins around something new and try to come up with ways to cope with change.
Typically, we run back to the pickup like frightened kids at the first sign of change. Or we crawl under our desks and protect our skulls with a history book.
We, in Wyoming, have perfected the art of dragging ourselves kicking and screaming from one change to another. And we come by that trait honestly. It's what our forebears did.
But, in a dynamic universe like ours, change is inevitable whether we like it or not.
The first uranium boom in Wyoming was likely deep-sixed by splashy events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima – names as scary as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And we ignore those names at our peril.
But our species also learns from its mistakes, albeit sometimes slowly. And our complex world has a nearly insatiable appetite for electrons.
So here we are, listening closely with one ear to the insistent click of a geiger counter telling us that what we are hearing are electrons for the taking. And our cell phones, electric cars and data centers are whispering in the other ear, telling us to dig ‘em out.
All that’s left to us is to be smart about how we deal with this change.
Rod Miller can be reached at: rodsmillerwyo@yahoo.com
