uranium in the course of obtaining confirmation from the department of justice that it had no present intention to take legal action to prevent or otherwise challenge the gener al electric-utah merger both companies agreed by an amendment to the merger agreement to divest themselves of man agement control of utah's entire uranium assets until the year 2000 while retaining the beneficial ownership thereof this was accomplished shortly after the end of utah's fiscal year by depositing in a dela ware voting trust all of the outstanding shares of common stock of lucky me ura nium corporation a wholly owned sub sidiary of utah utah's uranium business had been transferred to lucky mc uranium corporation before the end of the fiscal year in anticipation of this arrangement most of the uranium company's person nel are former employees of utah and ed win c demoss formerly senior vice pres ident and manager of the mining division of utah is its president m ian ritchie re signed as utah's vice president and man ager of technical services to become vice president and manager of operations at lucky mc uranium corporation both men are directors of lucky me the uranium company's lucky mc and shirley basin mines are located in wyo ming mills at the two sites currently are operating at a combined capacity of ap proximately 4.2 million pounds of uranium oxide in concentrate per year in order to increase ore throughput circuit changes were made in the shirley basin mill during 1975 and the crushing grinding and other facilities of the lucky mc mill were ex panded during 1976 as a result the plants are able to process lower'grade ores with out reducing the output of uranium oxide although 1976 shipments of 3.8 million pounds of uranium oxide in concentrate were 9 above the 3.5 million pounds shipped in 1975 the sharply higher profit contribution from uranium operations was made possible largely by an average sales price realization which was more than 100 higher than that attained in 1975 the higher price level resulted from a com bination of significant spot sales made during the year at prevailing market prices of about 40.00 per pound of uranium oxide and moderately revised prices for contracts made prior to the market price increases of recent years 1 at lucky mc uranium corporation's mines i in wyoming enormous quantities ot over burden are removed by scrapers shovels ! and trucks to expose the small thin occur | rences ot uranium-bearing material which are then selectively mined by backhoes alter being loaded into trucks by the back hoes the ore is processed to yield a sale able product ot only 3 to 6 pounds per ion at shirley basin mine alter detecting the presence ot uranium-bearing ore with a geiger-mueller counter a probeman di rects the actions ol the backhoe operator