The Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that it is fast-tracking its review of Utah’s Velvet-Wood mine to meet U.S. energy needs. The review is part of the DOI’s newly established emergency procedures upon President Trump’s national energy emergency declaration.
Should the mine be approved, the project would “produce uranium and vanadium by accessing the old Velvet Mine workings and developing the Velvet-Wood mineralization,” the DOI explained. The plan would “result in only three acres of new surface disturbance given the proposed underground mining plan and the existing surface disturbance from the old Velvet mine.”
“America is facing an alarming energy emergency because of the prior administration’s Climate Extremist policies. President Trump and his administration are responding with speed and strength to solve this crisis,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement. “The expedited mining project review represents exactly the kind of decisive action we need to secure our energy future. By cutting needless delays, we’re supporting good-paying American jobs while strengthening our national security and putting the country on a path to true energy independence.”
Uranium is used for civilian nuclear reactors, medical systems, fuel in Navy nuclear reactors, and nuclear weapons, while vanadium is used in steel production.
The DOI’s release noted that the United States is “dangerously reliant” on foreign imports to meet its needs.
In January, President Trump declared a national energy emergency, stating that energy security is an “increasingly crucial theater of global competition.”
“Our Nation’s current inadequate development of domestic energy resources leaves us vulnerable to hostile foreign actors and poses an imminent and growing threat to the United States’ prosperity and national security,” Trump’s declaration read.
