Rising interest in nuclear power brings new life to uranium mining

Arandis, Namibia - This sandy little company town, with its tree-lined streets and concrete homes set amid a vast, forbidding desert, had all the signs of terminal decline just a few years back. Both banks closed. The only gas station shut off its pumps. And employable young men, realizing the bleak future of the giant uranium mine that gave Arandis life, began drifting away.

But something unexpected happened on the way to the funeral for Arandis: The nuclear industry, stagnant for two decades, reversed its fortunes at a time of rising oil prices and growing realization that burning fossil fuel caused global climate change. Nuclear went from being seen as a dirty source of energy to a comparatively clean, efficient one. From that shift in perception, mainly in the minds of Westerners thousands of miles away, the fate of this remote African town went from doom to boom.

"The future was very dark," said the energetic mayor of Arandis, Daniel Muhuura, who like hundreds of residents here has spent his entire professional life working for Roessing Uranium Mine. "Now the future is very bright."

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