By Wyatt Myskow

The Hualapai Nation sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Friday over its approval of a lithium exploration project near Wikieup, Arizona, alleging the federal agency did not properly evaluate the project’s potential impacts on the local aquifer that feeds a nearby spring that is sacred to the tribe. 

By Noel Lyn Smith

CAMERON, Ariz.—The Navajo Nation doesn’t allow radioactive uranium ore to be transported through its lands without permission, but that’s exactly what a mining company began doing this week on roads administered by the state—which has no such restrictions.

By Noel Lyn Smith

RED WATER POND ROAD, New Mexico—As Tony Hood walked along New Mexico Highway 566 last Saturday, he thought about where he was 45 years earlier, when an earthen dam broke at the site of a uranium mill operated by the United Nuclear Corp., releasing 94 million gallons of radioactive water and 1,100 tons of uranium waste across portions of New Mexico, Arizona and the Navajo Nation.

By Noel Lyn Smith

PHOENIX—Members of environmental groups stood together in the lobby of the Arizona State Capitol Executive Tower late last month to deliver a petition to Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, requesting that she stop uranium mining activities near the Grand Canyon National Park.

By Alexa Robles-Gil

The birds are like clouds in Bahía Lomas. Far off in the southern tip of South America, in the province of Tierra del Fuego, migration takes its highest form in this bay in the eastern mouth in the Straits of Magellan. 

Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Host Steve Curwood with Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

By Brett Chase, Dan Gearino

This article is published in partnership with the Chicago Sun-Times.

By Daniel Rothberg

Over the past few decades, the United States has imported most of its lithium from Chile and Argentina, but there’s one major domestic source of the mineral—Nevada. Clayton Valley, a remote basin in the nation’s driest state, is home to the Silver Peak mine, where lithium is extracted in gridded ponds that turn neon blue as they recover one of Earth’s lightest elements through solar evaporation. 

By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune

This article was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans—and engages with them—about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

By Noel Lyn Smith

COVE, Ariz. – In a corner of the Cove Chapter house on March 15, members of the Navajo Nation were silent as they looked at photos the Environmental Protection Agency showed of abandoned uranium mines in the Lukachukai Mountains Mining District during a visit by EPA officials to highlight the area’s placement under the agency’s Superfund program.