U3O8 Uranium.

[stolwyk]

Uranium to Fuel Chinese Economic Advance

http://www.uranium-stocks.net/uraniu...nomic-advance/

[Seti]

All Eyes On Next Week For Uranium Watchers

[stolwyk]

Cameco says Cigar Lake production delayed until 2010
Canadian Press

SASKATOON — Uranium miner Cameco Corp. said its Cigar Lake mining project will cost more and begin production later than it had anticipated because of massive flooding at the site last year.

Cameco said it aims to bring the mine into production by 2010. The original target date was 2008.

The Saskatoon-based company also said the capital costs related to Cigar Lake's production startup have risen to $508-million from the last estimate of $330-million. Cameco has already spent $234-million on construction so far, with another $274-million remaining.

But despite the increased capital costs, Cameco insists Cigar Lake, in northern Saskatchewan, remains a financially attractive project.

“While this extraordinary deposit presents its challenges, Cigar Lake will be developed and will enable Cameco to significantly increase its uranium production for years to come,” said Jerry Grandey, Cameco's president and CEO.

In addition to the capital costs, Cameco said its share of flood remediation is estimated at $46-million and will be expensed in the year they occur. The company spent and expensed $5-million of that amount in 2006.

Cameco said it will file a technical report on the mine's progress to the Canadian Securities Administrators' System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) by the end of the month.

The flooding at Cigar Lake sent uranium prices soaring in 2006.

Last April, water flooded a shaft at Cigar Lake used mainly for underground ventilation. Then in October, two massive bulkheads failed to hold back water from a flood after a rock slide in a shaft about a half-kilometre underground, flooding the entire mine.

Last month, Cameco said two rigs on site had drilled eight of the 14 holes planned for reinforcing and sealing off the flooded area.

In 2006, Cameco saw its earnings fall by more than half that of the previous year. But its 2007 outlook remains rosy. It says its revenue from its uranium business is forecast to grow by 45 per cent and its fuel services business will be 20 per cent higher than that of 2006.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../Business/home

[stolwyk]

Russia to increase uranium reserves
By Todd Flagg
16 Mar 2007 at 05:18 PM

As the demand for electriciy grows faster than production, Russia is expected to increase atomic power output and increase uranium reserves by a quarter, threatening to curb a nine-year economic boom, reports indicated.
"The need to diversify our fuel-energy balance is obvious,” Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said. "In the foreseeable future, Russia will take third place in the world in terms of uranium resources, which will be about 1 million tons.”

Russia plans to spend 674 billion rubles ($26 billion) in the next eight years to develop its nuclear industry, he said. The former Soviet state now has about 800,000 tons of uranium resources, lagging behind Australia and its 1.14 million tons and Kazakhstan, which has 1.13 million tons.

http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=29914

[tricha]

Stolwyk has already posted this. I just thought I would re-enforce some very important key points here,

In other words China can run on oil for two days, or uranium for a whole year, at the same fuel cost.Uranium to Fuel Chinese Economic Advance

By Bob Kirtley
March 12, 2007

www.uranium-stocks.net

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Kirtley/mar122007.html



The rapidly growing economy in China is causing more that just ripples across the economic, financial and business community. Its is growing at an alarming rate and shows no signs of slowing down as it's GDP has been growing at 8% per year since 1978. However the question arises, how is this rapidly growing economy going to get the power to maintain this level of growth or simply to sustain current levels?

Although China does have a great deal of coal reserves, nuclear power is a cleaner more efficient way of producing energy. The Chinese government has already announced that they will be building a number of nuclear power stations but these estimates are a drop in the ocean compared to what China requires. The Chinese are savvy enough not to announce how many they actually need, as this would send uranium prices sky high.

So let us consider how much it would cost for China to get its electricity from nuclear power. Electricity consumption in China is approximately 2.494 trillion kWh. The cost of energy from nuclear power is around 1.68 cents per kWh. This is inclusive of the cost of fuel as well as operating and maintenance costs. Therefore to supply all of China's electricity needs for one year by nuclear energy would cost nearly $42 billion. (2.494 trillion kWh x 1.68 cents / kWh = 4189920000000 cents = $41,899,200,000.00) Although at a glance this may seem like a large figure, it is relatively very low considering the cost of running on other fuels and the fact that China has $1 trillion in US Dollar reserves.

Uranium is used in nuclear power plants in pellets. Typically a pellet of uranium weighs around 7 grams (0.24 ounces). This pellet is capable of generating as much energy as 3.5 barrels of oil, 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, or 1,780 pounds of coal. Therefore if you compare uranium with oil in terms of energy produced, 3.5 barrels costs about $210 assuming $60 per barrel. For Uranium, it costs around $1.125 to buy 0.24 ounces of uranium at the current price of $75/lb. This is a vast difference in cost and shows how cheap uranium is at current prices.




Yet even with this vast difference in cost, China continues to use oil at a rate of 6.534 million bbl/day. However China has seen that nuclear power is the far better option to supply its energy needs and they have started to switch fuels from oil to uranium. I will try to demonstrate the benefits to China of changing from primarily oil powered to nuclear.

If China was to replace its 6.534 million bbl/day oil consumption with energy from nuclear power they would need about 13,068,000 grams of uranium, around 28,810 pounds. So 28,810 pounds of uranium per day to replace oil would see China using 10,515,650 lb per year. Using the current uranium price of $75/lb that would cost China about $788,673,750 per year. The same cost in oil would be $392,040,000 a day at $60 per barrel, that's $143,094,600,000 a year.



In other words China can run on oil for two days, or uranium for a whole year, at the same fuel cost.

This is why China is moving away from oil and towards nuclear power. It makes sense for China to stop using oil and change to uranium. Of course they could still use fuels like coal, which they have great supplies of, but oil is simply too expensive, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of risk. Oil comes with great geopolitical risk with problems in the Middle East and in oil rich countries like Sudan

[shasta]

Article from theage.com.au website

Evans joins ALP pro-uranium push
Email Print Normal font Large font March 23, 2007 - 9:54AM

Labor resources spokesman Chris Evans has joined a growing list of senior party officials publicly supporting the dumping of Labor's long-held no new uranium mines policy.

Senator Evans, who admits he marched against the nuclear industry as a youth, said that campaign had failed and Labor's policy should be abandoned.

"I marched like the people of my generation. We saw the link with nuclear war at the time and that was a really hot topic," he told ABC radio.

"We feared that the world might end, so this was important stuff.

"(But) clearly the world's changed and the Labor Party has got to change with it."

He joins party leader Kevin Rudd and deputy Julia Gillard among those giving support for a policy change at next month's ALP national conference.

Senator Evans said his support for a policy change, in the face of greatly expanded interest in uranium mining in Australia, did not extend to supporting nuclear energy for Australia.

"We don't need to go down the nuclear path, and Labor won't," he said.

"The real energy challenge for Australia is the greenhouse gas problem.

"That's where I want to focus our energy debate, not on some arcane argument about whether we have three, four or five uranium mines."

A Labor opponent of a policy change, frontbencher Anthony Albanese, said old problems with uranium remained.

"I regard myself as a principled but pragmatic politician and I have a pragmatic attitude towards the nuclear fuel cycle, which is that the problems of economic cost, of safety, of disposal, of highly toxic nuclear waste and perhaps most significantly, nuclear proliferation, have not been resolved," he said.

"If they have been resolved, let's have a discussion.

"But those problems remain outstanding and the advocates of further expanding our involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle need to address those issues."

© 2007 AAP

[Seti]

The inexorable rise in the U price continues...

Spot Uranium Price Increases to US$95/pound

[shane_m]

mate NRU.AX uranium ann coming in 2 weeks from now, currently sitting at 30c, at least 40c in couple of weeks....

[shane_m]

mate this is a great article,

Is there Value Left in the uranium sector?

http://www.fnarena.com/index2.cfm?ty...A1EBA8B69E67D4

[Skol]

Yeah, it's a bit of a worry when IT companies suddenly become u308 companies, the opposite of what happened leading up to the tech wreck. It's a sure bet that many of these uranium start-ups won't see one ounce of uranium and the shareholders will be left with the wreckage. I've lightened up on the spec companies for that reason and stuck with PDN of late.

To hedge my bets a bit I own GCL and MCC but if you check out CEY as well you'll see that all the above coal shares are moving up nicely.