Sweetwater Uranium Mill, Wyoming

A uranium mill in a mining area south of Jeffrey City, associated with the Green Mountain mines, 20 miles north, and the Jackpot Mine. The operation, owned by Kennecott Uranium Company, opened in 1981, but ceased operations just two years later. It is currently on stand-by status. This is a conventional mill, meaning it processes ore that is mechanically extracted from a pit or underground mine, and is one of the largest in the country. There are less than a dozen of this type of mill in close to operating condition in the USA, and usually just one or two that are actively producing uranium. A more common method for collecting uranium now in the USA is by flushing water through the ore-bearing rock through a series of wells, and extracting the uranium in a wet extraction process, known as in-situ recovery.