Denison’s 100% owned White Mesa mill is a fully licensed, conventional uranium processing mill with a vanadium co-product recovery circuit. Located six miles south of Blanding, Utah in the southeastern part of the state, White Mesa is the only conventional uranium mill currently operating in the United States. It is strategically located within hauling distance of all of Denison’s current U.S. mine and exploration properties.

The mill uses sulfuric acid (H2SO4) leaching and a solvent extraction recovery process to extract and recover uranium (U3O8) and vanadium (V2O5). The mill is licensed to process an average of 2,000 tons per day of ore and produce 8.0 million pounds of U3O8 per year. In full operation, the mill employs approximately 150 people.

White Mesa is also licensed to process alternate feed materials – uranium-bearing materials derived from uranium conversion, tantalum and other metal processing facilities or material from U.S. government cleanup projects. Usually classified as waste by the generators of the material, Denison processes the material, reclaiming uranium that would otherwise have been disposed of in licensed waste facilities and disposes of the remaining by-product in the mill’s licensed tailings cells.

In 2009, an alternate feed processing circuit was constructed at the mill enabling the processing of alternate feed materials in parallel with conventional ore. The circuit was completed in June 2009, and has been in use continually since then. This circuit not only improved the flexibility of mill operations, but also reduced the alternate feed processing cost.

In 2009, White Mesa produced approximately 423,000 pounds of U3O8 and 501,000 lbs of V2O5 from conventional ore processing and 191,000 pounds of U3O8 from alternate feed materials. It is expected that 2010 production at White Mesa will yield 879,300 pounds of U3O8 and 2.8 million pounds of V2O5 from conventional ore processing and 299,700 pounds of U3O8 from alternate feed materials.

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