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A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas

State leaders want nuclear reactors to provide consistent, low-carbon power for AI, oil extraction, and more. But in South Texas, people worry mining for fuel will poison their water.

“I think the vast majority of these nuclear power plants are going to be for things like industrial use,” said Cyrus Reed, a longtime environmental lobbyist in the Texas Capitol and conservation director for the state’s Sierra Club chapter. A nearby landowner named David Michaelsen organized a group of neighbors to hire a lawyer and challenge UEC’s permit to inject the radioactive waste product from its mine more than half a mile underground for permanent disposal. In hearings before an administrative law judge, he presented evidence showing that nearby faults and old oil well shafts posed a risk for the injected waste to travel into potable groundwater layers near the surface.

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