Tiny Jeffrey City may soon see an influx of new residents.
Nearly 170 permanent employees -- three times the town's population -- may eventually punch the clock at the Sheep Mountain uranium mine, about eight miles south of the central Wyoming town. That number doesn't include construction personnel needed to build the mine.
Representatives of Energy Fuels, the company looking to revive the historically-proven property, gave Fremont County commissioners an update on their project Tuesday.
The Lakewood, Colo.-based company has since last year planned to reactivate the idled open-pit and underground mine, a relic of a more friendly uranium market from the 1960s through the early 1980s. The company acquired rights to the mine from Titan Uranium, which had also planned to revive it.
Among the information shared was that mine construction could start in late 2015, with construction on an on-site processing facility slated for the next spring. The company is still working to clear federal and state regulatory hurdles, but Energy Fuels spokesman Curtis Moore said the schedule is realistic.
"The main thing we’re doing out there right now is working on the permitting side of things," he said. "There is a very complex set of permits and regulations you have to go through to get a project like this up and running."
The potential reopening of the mine is good news to some current Jeffrey City residents, including the proprietor of the town's only watering hole.
"It would be a godsend here," Isebel Hiatt, owner of the Split Rock Bar and Cafe, said. "The more people the better we’ll be."
It will take about 130 employees to run the mine -- which is projected to produce uranium for 15 years -- and another 35 to run an on-site production plant which will eventually churn out 1.5 million pounds of uranium every year.
The company plans to hire as many positions locally as possible, with most workers coming from Riverton, Lander and Rawlins.
Large construction crews will also temporarily inhabit the area. Moore said the company will hire about 110 to build the processing plant. Energy Fuels will also need 40 workers to construct the open pit and another 50 to work on the underground mine. The different construction projects will be handled in phases.
When operational, Sheep Mountain will become Energy Fuels' second-leading production facility. The company also owns properties in Arizona and Utah and sells most of its product to utilities in the United States and South Korea.
The Sheep Mountain project is one of at least four in the greater area nearing production. Cameco Resources, Inc., owner of an active mine site north of Glenrock, is planning a facility on the Fremont-Natrona County line. Environmental study of a Strathmore Minerals proposal similar to Energy Fuels' plan started recently.
Production is also expected to start this year at the Ur-Energy-owned Lost Creek facility north of Rawlins.
The uranium market has stagnated lately, with prices settling at about $42 per pound. Moore said Energy Fuels in confident the market will pick back up by the time its project comes online, in part because a U.S. uranium supply deal with Russia is about to expire.
The company will need about $60 million in startup costs to begin construction, with about that amount expected in down-the-road spending. But Moore said the project's potential and history easily justify the cost.
"It’s a very viable project," Moore said. "It’s been a historic producer. We’re expending a lot of resources in bringing it back to production."
And what's more, the new blood could also help revive Jeffrey City, at one time a thriving mining town of 5,000. The town collapsed in the early '80s thanks largely to dying uranium prices.
"It would be great," Hiatt said. "If they actually were mining, it wouldn’t be a boom town like it used to be, but the more people the better the community will be."