The Clay West plant was designed to produce a 2,200 pounds/day of U₃O₈ yellow cake and became operational in late 1977. The large-scale plant used in-situ carbonate leach process. The ammonium carbonate solutions were injected into the ore body, and the pregnant uranium solutions were pumped out through a series of wells. Fluor designed both the well gathering systems and the porter resin ion exchange process units. Loaded resin was trucked to the elution facility.

At the central plant, resin from each of the four satellites was eluted. The eluted resin was then returned to one of the production field ion exchange plants. Elute was purified for molybdenum removal. Finally, yellow cake was precipitated, dewatered, washed, and dried for marketing.