More than 1,400 feet below an Arizona pine forest, miners are blasting tunnels in search of a radioactive element that can be used to make electricity.

Two states north, in central Wyoming, drillers have been digging well after well in the desert, where that element — uranium — is buried in layers of sandstone.

Uranium mines are ramping up across the West, spurred by rising demand for electricity and federal efforts to cut Russia out of the supply chain for U.S. nuclear fuel.

Those twin pressures have helped lift uranium prices to their highest levels in more than 15 years, according to the consulting firm TradeTech, helping to resuscitate mining regions that entered a steep decline toward the end of the Cold War.