Nuclear goals spark uranium deals (BBC)

A scramble by nuclear power firms for the world's scarce uranium resources has sparked a string of corporate deals and takeover bids.

With uranium prices at their highest since the 1970s, France's Areva is to buy up to 18% of uranium firm Summit Resources.

The move follows a 1bn Australian dollar (US$825m; £417m) hostile bid for Summit from Paladin Resources.

Japan's Mitsubishi aims to buy 50% of a CanAlaska uranium mining scheme.

As firms are vying to take advantage of the growth in nuclear energy, there have been fears over uranium shortages.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6544153.stm

It's about as common as tin.

What is scarce is mining infrastructure, since the world has been living on uranium reserves - chiefly from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons - for many years. This depressed uranium prices (they were about $10/lb only 5 years ago) and closed lots of marginal mines - mines that now will be profitable.

One of the major uranium mines in the world, Cigar Lake, has been plagued with flooding, and this has a short term impact on price.

As it happens, the uranium in spent fuel in the United States could under the right circumstances, fuel the entire planet, for 10 years - and I'm talking about banning all coal, all natural gas, and all oil.

The current price of uranium would support recovery from seawater, but no one will so invest because no one believes the price will remain that high.

:sarcasm:

Their stock is doing really well.

I wouldn't count on the uranium price remaining high forever though.

If these prices held, this would suddenly make the other options, all of which I support attractive.

Uranium prices increased 137% last year - and global uranium production fell by 5%.

Some folks think yellercake will go to $1000 a pound.

http://www.uraniumseek.com/news/UraniumSeek/1175695837.php

The price of sunlight and wind, however, has not changed appreciably over the last year or so...

Of course, a pound of uranium contains more energy than a $500,000 PV array would generate over 40 years, so it's only Hugh compared to really cheap uranium.

and, unlike 235U, sunlight and wind are renewable and abundant - and free for the taking...

Given the difference in atomic weights of uranium and oxygen, that $113 buys you essentially a pound of U238.

Your comment about "free for the taking" is a bit disingenuous. In every case of energy production it's the taking that costs money. Oil and uranium are "free for the taking" too.

and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

The solar industry, in particular, is a toy and is not discussed seriously.

Last year the average wholesale price of nuclear energy fell below two cents/kw-hr, and went in the opposite direction of nuclear fuel.

The cost of solar electricity has been rising for the last several years, even though the sun is supposedly "free." According to www.solarbuzz.com the price of solar electricity had just risen to 21.45 cents per kilowatt hour, or more than ten times what nuclear power costs.

Here's an article on how even the solar industry thinks it can't build, even though the rate of building is still trivial: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e50784ea-78cb-11db-8743-0000779e2340.html



The sun was "free" in 1954, when the solar cell was invented, but there still has not been one exajoule of solar energy, not one.

Not one gas plant on the face of the earth has been cancelled because of solar competition, not one, and natural gas electricity is now, by far, the most expensive fossil fuel, three times more expensive (even without external costs) than nuclear.

Renewable energy is only attractive to those who don't care about money because they live in a rarefied utopia of their own imagination. Solar energy is useless for the poor, poor people being that half of the world that has no decent access to clean water, reliable energy, food, health care etc.

It is unsurprising that the "renewables will save us" crowd is indifferent totally to the poor. Solar energy has long been a mindless consumerist conceit, even without the batteries.

My brother in law, an immigrant from a third world country, but now, by no means, a "poor" person, got his estimate on a new solar system and learned that after the New Jersey "brazillion solar roofs" tax break, the system would cost him $40,000. Free indeed. Did he buy one? No. He decided to write the Governor asking for new nuclear power (at my suggestion.)

and does not include the capital and decommissioning costs. When the capital/fuel/decommissioning costs are accounted for, nuclear electricity is far more expensive than coal, wind and natural gas.

Furthermore, $40k will buy more PV than most households require and does not include the cost after rebates and tax breaks.

A 2 kW PV system would be all that would be required for an energy efficient NJ home. It would cost $16k before tax credits and rebates and substantially less than $10k after NJ rebates and federal tax credits.

I had no idea physics was subject to negotiation. And your article does appear to be talking about uranium, not uranium oxide.

235U is fissionable 238U is not...

edit: ..and (according to that article) if yellowcake goes to $1000 a pound, the cost of nuclear electricity increases 5-fold.

The article you linked to doesn't mention "yellowcake" or "uranium oxide", it's talking about Uranium. Unless I'm missing something, you're the only person claiming yellowcake is going to hit $1k/lb. :shrug:

Nice to see you've got so much faith in an un-named "industry insider" on an investment website. Personally, I'll stick with the horoscope from "Hello!" Magazine as the source of all knowledge.

I merely pointed out that "others" have - and the current price of yellercake is much higher now than many analysts predicted.

and it will go higher in the future

much higher...

Your source for "yellercake" (sic) going to $1000/lb.?

Unnamed people quoted in investment advertorials.

--p!

No one is your article is claiming $1k/lb for yellowcake, although the mystery insider is claiming $1k/lb for uranium. "Some folks think yellercake will go to $1000 a pound." is what you said in #3, but that's just the voices in your head.

That is what is produced at uranium mines/mills and what is bought and sold by utilities, traders and producers.

At no point in the nuclear fuel cycle is it converted to uranium metal - it's either an oxide or UF6.

Does that clear that up for you???

I hope so...

edit: from the NRC glossary...

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/yellowcake.html

Maybe the voices are in my head, instead. :) I see your concern, this would make uranium a mere 1,000 times cheaper than PV, in terms of joules per dollar. Scary.

It would do a couple of things I would like to see.

First off, it would increase the economic justification for recycling fuel. It would suddenly convert the 75,000MT of spent nuclear fuel we're likely to see in the near future into a valuable resource.

It would lead to a restart of the IFR type reactor.

It would increase R&D on seawater recovery, possibly leading to the elimination of mining.

It would make all of the depleted uranium in the world a precious resource.

It would make the thorium fuel cycle a world standard, thus minimizing proliferation risk.

The effect of high uranium prices has trivial effects on the cost of nuclear energy in any case. Even at $1000/kg uranium is like gasoline at less than one cent a gallon.

But I don't think uranium prices will remain high. There's a lot of natural checks to the price, all of them involving the extremely high energy density of the fuel itself.

Some stories I linked up today - Don't really know much about all this, but together, they kind of make me go hmmmm.....

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/gen/ap/OH_Uranium_Plant.html

PIKETON, Ohio — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday issued a construction and operating license for USEC Inc.'s American Centrifuge Plant, which will enrich uranium in southern Ohio.
The license is good for 30 years.

USEC, based in Bethesda, Md., is developing the American Centrifuge enrichment project at a former atomic weapons plant in Piketon, about 65 miles south of Columbus. "With plans under way for more than 30 new reactors around the country, a stable, domestic source of enriched uranium is vital," said John K. Welch, USEC president and chief executive officer.



USEC plans to begin operations at the plant in late 2009, concentrating uranium isotopes into forms that can be used as fuel. The project would also generate tons of radioactive waste — enough over 30 years to fill 41,000 cylinders weighing about 14 tons apiece, according to the NRC.


http://www.usec.com/v2001_02/HTML/megatons.asp

http://www.ifpaenergyconference.com/transcript-sewell.html -

HERE'S A LOT OF INFO in this transcript OF WHICH I HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN UNAWARE - Interesting...

ATOMS FOR PEACE + 50
Nuclear Energy & Science
for the 21st Century
October 22, 2003
The Watergate Hotel
Washington, DC

Philip Sewell, Senior Vice President,
United States Enrichment Corporation, Inc. (USEC)

http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/fissmat/heudeal/overview.htm

Background

On 18 February 1993, after more than a year of negotiations, the United States and Russia signed the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Agreement (also referred to as Megatons to Megawatts and the HEU Purchase Agreement)—the first nonproliferation agreement with a commercial basis.

LOTS OF TECHNICAL INFO RE CONTRACT(S)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GB12Dj01.html

MORE COMMENTARY(?) - WHAT ABOUT THIS SOURCE?

Tons of "radioactive waste?"

The media, which is as dumb as a stump, can't say "nuclear" without saying "tons of radioactive waste." Of course, when they say "coal" they never say, "hundreds of millions of tons of waste," (and yes, it is radioactive). But hey.

The "radioactive" waste in this case is mostly so called "depleted uranium," which is, by the way, an invaluable resource for the future, containing exajoules quanties of energy, not that there is a reporter on the face of this planet with enough science education to know that. The uranium in this case is less radioactive than the uranium that goes into the plant, but hey, who's counting.

Oh my god! It's uranium! Terror! Terror! Fear! Fear!

The "waste" problem that is killing the planet is not uranium, not spent fuel, and not radioactive. The waste problem that is actually going to kill billions of people is carbon dioxide.