Ambrosia Lake
Encyclopedia
Ambrosia Lake is a sandy area near Grants, New Mexico
Grants, New Mexico
Grants is a city in Cibola County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 9,182 at the 2010 Census. It is the county seat of Cibola County....

 that was heavily mined for uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...

 starting in the 1950s. It is in an anticlinal dome.

History

Kerr-McGee
Kerr-McGee
The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an energy company involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas. On June 23, 2006, Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corporation agreed to acquire Kerr-McGee in an all-cash transaction totaling $16.5 billion plus the assumption of $2.6...

 first learned about massive uranium deposits in the area in 1955. It ran a free assay
Assay
An assay is a procedure in molecular biology for testing or measuring the activity of a drug or biochemical in an organism or organic sample. A quantitative assay may also measure the amount of a substance in a sample. Bioassays and immunoassays are among the many varieties of specialized...

 service and some prospectors had sent in samples that the company found to be high in uranium. Kerr-McGee lied to the prospectors, told them the site was worthless, and sent an agent to buy the property. This agent instead double crossed the company and bought the site for himself. Various parties (including United Western Minerals Corporation of General Patrick Jay Hurley) rushed into the area to get sections of property. However Kerr-McGee
Kerr-McGee
The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an energy company involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas. On June 23, 2006, Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corporation agreed to acquire Kerr-McGee in an all-cash transaction totaling $16.5 billion plus the assumption of $2.6...

 wound up owning most of Ambrosia Lake.

Kerr-McGee then allied with Anderson Development Corp, and Pacific Uranium Mines Co. to form the Kermac Nuclear Fuels Corporation. They built a mill there. When Kerr-McGee Nuclear split into Quivira Mining
Quivira Mining Corporation
The Quivira Mining Corporation was a uranium mining company owned by Kerr-McGee Corporation. It was formed from the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation in 1983....

 and Sequoyah Fuels
Sequoyah Fuels Corporation
Sequoyah Fuels Corporation owned and operated a uranium processing plant near Gore, Oklahoma. The company was created in 1983 as a subsidiary of Kerr-McGee. In 1988 it was sold to General Atomics-Uranium processing plant :...

 subsidiaries in 1983, Quivira got the Ambrosia Lake property. When Quivira was sold to Rio Algom
Rio Algom
Rio Algom was a mining corporation that was purchased by Billiton in 2000. - Uranium :It operated many uranium mines and mills in the Elliot Lake region of Ontario, Canada, including the Lacnor Mine, Nordic Mine, Panel Mine, Pronto Mine, Quirke Mine, Milliken Mine, Stanleigh Mine, and the...

 in 1989, Rio got the mine and mill. Rio was later bought by Billiton which later became BHP Billiton
BHP Billiton
BHP Billiton is a global mining, oil and gas company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and with a major management office in London, United Kingdom...

.

Cleanup

By 1982, approximately 111 acre (0.44920146 km²) of radioactive tailings
Tailings
Tailings, also called mine dumps, slimes, tails, leach residue, or slickens, are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore...

 were left from almost 25 years of uranium extraction. Wind and rain spread the material over an area of 230 acre (0.9307778 km²). Between 1987 and 1995, the Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...

 remediated the site, encasing 5200000 cu yd (3,975,685.3 m³) of contaminated material in a 91 acre (0.36826426 km²) disposal cell.
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