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What’s behind the red-hot uranium boom
Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney
Supply crunch, demand from nuclear power plants push metal prices higher; NYMEX getting in on the action.
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Uranium is hot, and it’s not just because of its protons and neutrons.
Two years ago the metal, used mostly to power nuclear reactors, traded around $20 a pound, according to the research firm Ux Consulting Co., which tracks uranium prices in the market by surveying buyers and sellers each week.
Last week prices hit $113 a pound and the pace of increase isn’t slowing but rather accelerating. Last week’s prices were up 19 percent jump from the prior week – the biggest weekly gain since Ux began tracking prices back in 1968.
“You haven’t had a down week since 2003,” said Christopher Ruppel, a senior geopolitical analyst with the energy consulting firm John S. Herold.
The runup is due partly to basic economics.
While demand for the metal has been steady, it’s expected to surge as a host of new nuclear plants come online in coming years. And supplies are running short, thanks to severe flooding at two of the world’s biggest mines and a dwindling amount of element number 92 that can be salvaged from old nuclear warheads.
And, oh yeah, speculators, did we mention them?
(19 April 2007)
How Uranium Depletion Affects the Economics of Nuclear Power
Miquel Torres., The Oil Drum
The main criticism made to my previous post about a paper by the Energy Watch Group, was that it is irrelevant whether current reserves are depleted because of three reasons…
Conclusions …
- There are enough Assured, Inferred and Undiscovered Prognosticated uranium resources with a price lower than 130$/kgU for current nuclear energy capacity to be maintained for the whole 21st century. Nuclear energy critics should drop any such claims to the contrary (this assumes reserves estimations are reliable and 80%+ downgrades don’t ever again occur as in the French and USA cases).
- Claims that include reserves lasting thousands of years while increasing nuclear energy capacity are not true. You would need four figure uranium prices. That is clearly too expensive.
…I therefore adhere myself to Jerome a Paris’s conclusions, slightly modified:
- First, conservation and energy efficiency. “Negawatts” are the cheapest and most underexploited resource we have;
- Second, renewable energies, starting with wind. They are proven technologies, are scalable and wind is already competitive, price wise. Solar thermal could soon become competitive for base load capacity;
- Third, coal should be dismantled as quickly as possible from its current high levels of use – and new construction should be stopped;
- Fourth, gas-fired plants. Gas is less polluting than coal, gas turbines are very flexible to use. Such plants will probably be needed (in places that do not have sufficient hydro) to manage the permanent adjustment of supply to demand that electricity requires;
- Last, nuclear power can grow to maintain current production share. Any further growth has to be carefully evaluated for uranium availability, as it could become more expensive than other alternatives.
Miquel Torres. Miquel has a degree in Physics from the University of Valencia, he currently lives in Germany and works in secondary education and in the field of energy investment.
(18 Apr 2007)
Eye on Iran, rivals pursuing nuke power: report
William J Broad and David E Sanger, The New York Times via IranMania
Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.
So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.
“The rules have changed,” King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everybody’s going for nuclear programs.” ..
(15 Apr 2007)
Contributor John L Langhus writes: This article focuses primarily on the proliferation risks of increased interest in nuclear power among Middle Eastern countries. It does not, however, seem far fetched to imagine that peak energy production concerns are also drivers in this trend. The desire for energy security and a nuclear deterrent are not mutually exclusive, whether for Iran or any other country.
