The central thorn in Fort Collins’s dilemma, some land-use and energy experts say, is that local and global simply do not mean what they once did.

“Politically it’s going to become more complicated,” said Bill Klein, the director of research at the American Planning Association, a nonprofit group that works with local governments. “There’s always been this weighing of our individual desires against the greater good, but now we’re becoming much more attuned to a global responsibility,” Mr. Klein said. “We’ve got to question some of the knee-jerk responses that we’ve had in the past.”

What green energy even means these days is probably the next question to ask.

Gov. Bill Ritter Jr., a Democrat who was elected last year and who has made what he calls “the new energy economy” a centerpiece of his administration, does not include uranium mining in the green portfolio, said Tom Plant, the director of the governor’s energy office. Mine regulators still handle questions about uranium, Mr. Plant said.

Ron Cattany, the director of the division of reclamation, mining and safety at the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said that Powertech had not yet filed a formal application, but that the hurdles to opening any kind of new mine in Colorado, regardless of the location, were high.

Image Scientists tested the chemistry of the groundwater at the planned mine site. Credit... Kevin Moloney for the New York Times

There is no doubt that new money is chasing new energy. Company officials at Powertech, which is based in Denver, said they had spent more than $2 million so far buying land, or the option to buy, in the area where their proposed drilling would take place. They bought the minerals beneath the surface last year for an undisclosed price, and under what is called “split estate,” that gives them title to the uranium, no matter who owns the land on top of it.

Test drilling in the 1970s confirmed the existence of about 9.7 million pounds of uranium in deposits under 5,700 acres, according to the company’s Web site. At the current market price, which has risen about 30 percent in the last year, the ore would be worth about $860 million.