Central north america (south of Canada) is relatively uranium poor - the mines that were|are in that region are relatively low grades and uneconomic to mine unless backed by DoD "prop up home supply" funding .. the bulk of the resources are trace leach mined deposits not especially detectable with a hand held from the surface.
There are already publicly available U-K-Th maps from USGS surveys over USofA federal lands, just as there are U-K-Th maps of Australia, Mali, Canada, Russia & the -stan states, etc.
There are geological reasons why other parts of the world are the major suppliers of economically feasible uranium ore.
I recognised that it was likely a quote and replied regardless to point out that the USofA isn't especially uranium rich .. making that oddball claim from some year back that "Hillary sold 'our' uranium to the Russians" all the more ludicrous.
When you buy uranium (or anything else) it becomes yours. It doesn't matter where it came from. Similarly if you are a uranium mining company that digs up and/or refines it.
You call that thing you're typing on "your" computer, don't you? That much of it came from Taiwan or PRC is irrelevant.
What was actually sold was a company that had mines all over the world, and several large scale refineries in the United States.
I'm familiar with the details - it was a Canadian company listed on the Toronto TSX put together as a grand package by a consortium of Anglo-Australian miners over the course of several years.
The meat in the package was the (contentious) leases to extremely high grade reserves in Russian adjacent territory, the contention came about due to a bit of "Brooklyn Bridge" style overselling by ministers from the former USSR country, the Clintons were called upon to add gravitas to the preferred ownership path in order to seal a deal that had as one result Russian miners RosAtom supplying the US with uranium from the former USSR grounds via the Uranium One leases.
The refineries in the US were very much the paperclips in an office table drawer that happened to go along with the company sale, in economic terms they weren't of any great interest, save to the pundits on the US right who spun mad tales about the deal.
