Uranium is a common element in nature, and has been used for centuries as a coloring agent in decorative glass and ceramics. Today, uranium has uses that range from metal alloys to aircraft counterweights. The most significant modern uses of uranium, however, have been for national defense and electric power generation. The advent of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in the United States resulted in a full-blown exploration and mining boom, starting immediately after World War II and making uranium the most important commodity in the mining industry. The greatest period of uranium production spanned from approximately 1948 to the early 1980s (U.S. DOE/EIA 1992). Through 2005, the industry had generated over 420,000 metric tons (MTs) of uranium to foster U.S. dominance in nuclear weapons technology, and later to feed the growing number of commercial power plants utilizing the enormous energy contained in the uranium nucleus (U.S. DOE/EIA 2003a, 2003b, 2006). Another legacy of uranium exploration, mining, and ore processing was the creation of unreclaimed land workings wherever the uranium concentration in rock was either found or thought to be economically viable. Thousands of miners and prospectors, as well as large mining companies, searched the United States for veins, lenses, sedimentary deposits, and breccia pipes concentrating the valuable metal, echoing the California gold rush 100 years earlier. In many instances, they left behind unreclaimed and exposed wastes elevated in naturally occurring radioactive materials (uranium and its radioactive decay progeny), exposing people and the environment to its hazards. In this report, Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) is defined as: Materials which may contain any of the primordial radionuclides or radioactive elements as they occur in nature, such as radium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and their radioactive decay products, that are undisturbed as a result of human activities. Radiation levels presented by NORM are generally referred to as a component of natural background radiation.