AAAS: "Troubled Waters." Energy Fuel's uranium mine 'sits on top of the aquifer that feeds the tribe’s waterfalls with the unusually blue water their name refers to: Havasupai, or Havasu ‘Baaja, meaning people of the blue-green waters.' "Biden’s administration enacted the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument last year to protect 3700 square kilometers flanking the canyon and ban new mining claims." But this protection failed to affected the Pinyon Plain Mine, site of a long-running dispute 'that has mobilized scientists and pitted the tribe and environmental groups against the mining company and the state—because it had existing mining rights that were protected under federal law.' Opponents fought the mine in court but lost a final appeal in 2022. A 'review, published earlier this year in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, collates decades of research in the region and argues that the rock layers aren’t impervious.' “There’s no question that there is a risk to the groundwater,” says study author Laura Crossey, a geochemist at the University of New Mexico.' The study 'concluded that the main, lower aquifer—which sits about 1000 meters below the surface—is vertically connected to a smaller, upper aquifer by fractures and faults.' The 400-meter-deep mine shaft plunges through thick layers of limestone, gypsum, shale, and sandstone, as well as the upper aquifer, to reach a breccia pipe, which is laced with uranium. Energy Fuels holding pond 'contains uranium concentrations six times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recommendation for drinking water, but the company says the pond is lined with plastic and specialized geofabric that prevents the water from seeping into the ground.' The US has a generous supply of nuclear weapons + a plummeting demand for commercial nuclear reactors. World history is littered with failed nations that followed will-o'-the-wisp projects into disaster.