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When President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year to “unleash American energy,” he called uranium a critical mineral. That perked the ears of a small group of miners across the American West.

Like many minerals, uranium is highly dependent on markets. It doesn’t make sense to mine unless prices are high enough. The spot price of uranium jumped to $100 in January when Trump took office, the highest in five years. It has since stabilized around $70, and now uranium miners are looking to cash in.

It’s a sunny afternoon in the West End of San Miguel County, Colorado. Tucked into the side of Big Gypsum Canyon, a couple miles north of the Dolores River, sits the Sunday Mine Uranium Complex, an area that has produced uranium ore since the 1970s.

Behind it all is George Glasier, CEO of Western Uranium and Vanadium. A Nucla resident, Glasier has spent most of his life in the uranium business. He helped build the only operating uranium mill in the country, the White Mesa Mill, and founded Energy Fuels, the company behind it.

After entering the main portal of Sunday Mines, visitors spend 20 minutes driving underground. Turning on headlamps reveals a massive room dotted with piles of uranium ore.

“That’s oxidized uranium, whereas black that’s probably uranium vanadium. It oxidizes with air, turns yellow,” Glasier said.

Mining for uranium is part science, part art. Glasier and his crew of miners seek out seams of uranium through horizontal exploration drilling and probing to find a millable grade of ore—about a quarter of a percent of uranium per 5 pounds per ton of rock.

Bruce Norquist, general manager of mining operations at Sunday Mines, waved a Geiger counter around like a metal detector.

“This is in micro R per hour, but it’s still measuring gamma. We do everything—most of our probes for ore control are in percent uranium—but this will tell me whether it’s hot or not,” Norquist said. “It’s funny, when you see the yellow you see the gamma meter go up and obviously our U308 probes go up. Then you can get into zones that don’t look like nothing and you go on it and it gets even higher. Then you go into a black zone that looks like ore and it’s nothing. So it’s quite variable, but overall the average is a millable grade.”

Glasier and his team have been stockpiling uranium ore underground since 2023, betting that prices would rise so they could sell it to the White Mesa Mill for processing. That time has arrived. Glasier finalized an ore purchase agreement with Energy Fuels for the delivery of up to 25,000 tons of uranium ore over one year.

In a press release, the company said about 792 tons of material has been delivered just across the state line at White Mesa in recent months. It’s an interesting relationship, given that Glasier helped build the mill and later bought the Sunday Mines back from Energy Fuels.

“They probably regret selling these things, because these are some of their best,” Glasier said. “I think we’re friends”

Glasier has said he plans to open another uranium mill with his company, either in Utah or in nearby Paradox Valley.

What’s clear is that Glasier has a lot of ore. With Trump touting domestic energy production, he said his mining crew has doubled since last year and will double again if uranium prices climb higher. Most of his crew, Glasier said, are locals from the West End.

“I think you’re going to need domestic production here,” Glasier said. “We’ve got demand of 50 million pounds and growing in the United States, and a lot of the uranium is produced in the world in Africa. Don’t even know if they’re going to be able to ship to us. The Russians, Niger was a big uranium producer. The French had a big mine there and they kicked them out.”

The White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah, operated by Energy Fuels, has long drawn criticism from the neighboring White Mesa Ute community and environmentalists.

In a recent letter signed by more than 20 organizations to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, they wrote: “This practice perpetuates environmental harm and systemic injustice against Indigenous peoples who have long borne the disproportionate impacts of the nuclear industry.”

Despite shipments of uranium ore to Utah, Western Uranium and Vanadium said: “Given recent turbulence in global commodity and financial markets, along with geopolitical uncertainties, we have shifted to a more conservative stance, increasingly focusing on cost control.”

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