Janna Switzer did not expect to one day become a staunch advocate for uranium mining.

Originally from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Switzer studied environmental science at the University of Alberta before beginning her career in Alberta and northeastern British Columbia’s oil and gas sector.

She later returned to Saskatchewan to be closer to family; it was only then that she realized the scale—and significance—of Saskatchewan’s uranium industry. She joined Cameco’s McArthur River uranium operation in 2008.

“I quickly became aware of how stringent the regulations are around uranium mining from an environmental perspective,” she said. “That made me an advocate of uranium mining and nuclear power.”

This perspective led her to join Denison Mines in 2020 to work on the Wheeler River uranium project in northern Saskatchewan; the company was advancing the use of in-situ recovery (ISR) for its Phoenix deposit. This mining method circulates a solution through the ore body to dissolve the uranium and pumps it to the surface for recovery, eliminating the need for the large-scale excavation seen in conventional mining.

As vice-president of environment, safety, sustainability, regulatory at Denison, Switzer has helped to guide the Phoenix project through a strict regulatory process. That culminated earlier this year when the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) approved the project’s environmental assessment and issued the licence needed to begin construction.

The Phoenix project is the first ISR uranium mine approved in Canada and the first large-scale Canadian uranium mine approved for construction in over 20 years. Denison is now working on securing its operating licence and is targeting production by mid-2028.

For Switzer, the milestone represented more than a permitting victory. It reflected the increasingly complex reality of modern mine development, where success depends on connecting regulators, technical teams and communities around a shared understanding of risk and responsibility.

“What I find interesting about it is the ability to bring those groups together,” she said. “To make technical information accessible to regulators and our Indigenous partners.”

While ISR is widely used globally for uranium mining, provincial and federal regulators had no precedent for permitting an ISR uranium operation. That meant the approval process for Phoenix became a learning exercise not only for Denison, but for the regulators as well.

One of the major challenges involved pilot testing the ISR method in 2022 to demonstrate the project’s feasibility, said Switzer. Since there is no clearly established process for approving ISR for a uranium operation in Canada, the CNSC created a pathway that would allow Denison to complete the testing without undergoing the much longer approval process required for a fully operating mine.

“It was challenging, but the regulatory bodies were open to new ways of doing things,” she said.

The project also required years of consultation and relationship-building with local communities and Indigenous groups; Switzer is herself a member of Métis Nation-Saskatchewan. Today, Denison has support agreements with approximately 30 Indigenous nations, Indigenous groups and northern Saskatchewan municipalities.

Rather than a blanket approach to consultation, Switzer said the company focused on understanding what mattered most to each community individually.

“Each one is different,” she said. “[For] some, it’s employment; [for] some, the most important thing is protection of the environment.”

The permitting process, which stretched roughly seven years, demanded persistence and coordination across growing technical and environmental teams. For Switzer, that experience also became the defining accomplishment of her professional life.

“I am very proud of the team and the years of work to get both provincial and federal approval,” she said. “Going through the public hearing process and obtaining that approval is probably the highlight of my career.”