Moab uranium

What many people do not know when traveling to Moab is that Moab uranium was the most popular uranium in the USA for years. Atlas corp. placed an Uranium mill right outside of Moab. The Uranium was part of Project Manhattan, which was the first atomic bomb. In fact, there were no places on earth in that time that produced more Uranium than Moab.

The mill is named Atlas Uranium Mill and was abandoned in the 1980s. At first Atlas Uranium mill pumped they industrial radioactive waste directly into the Colorado river. Then soon after they placed the waste in huge ponds several miles south of the Mill. You can see the Mill when going to Arches national park from moab on your left side.

The local Indians that worked in the mine under really bad conditions very soon after encountered cancer and birth defects. They called Miners' coughing red dust. Red dust because some of them coughed blood.

I attached a satellite picture of the Atlas uranium mill where you can see how closely Moab is related to Uranium production:

View Larger Map

I am not really sure if the Moab uranium is so healthy for the town of Moab. I did not read any reports in my travel guides.

The US government now finances a 600 million $ project named UMTRA, which will start relocating the radioactive waste from Moab into other final deposits. I wonder, they got 60 million $ out of the mine and now it costs 600 million $ to relocate it?