Uranium developer Global Atomic would move ahead with construction of its Dasa uranium project, in Niger, and would break ground in January, president and CEO Stephen Roman said this week, announcing the results of its feasibility study.
The study confirmed that the Dasa project was economically compelling, even at a price of C$35/lb of uranium oxide. The decision to proceed was based on the feasibility study, the strong uranium market and anticipated supply deficits, the company stated.
Greenland’s parliament has passed a bill to ban uranium mining and exploration in the Danish territory, effectively blocking the development of the vast Kvanefjeld rare earths project, one of the world’s biggest.
The project was being developed by Australia’s Greenland Minerals (ASX: GGG). It was granted preliminary approval in 2020 and was on track to gain the previous government’s final endorsement.
Before the euro, Schengen, “Ode to Joy”, butter mountains and the Maastricht treaty, there was the atom. “The peaceful atom”, wrote Jean Monnet, the cognac salesman turned founding father of the eu, was to be “the spearhead for the unification of Europe”.
Europe was a nuclear project before it was much else. In 1957 the eu’s founding members signed the Treaty of Rome to form the European Economic Community, the club’s forebear. At the same time they put their names to a less well-known organisation: Euratom, which would oversee nuclear power on the continent. The idea of the common market was nebulous; the potential of nuclear energy was clear.
Nuclear power once seemed like the world’s best hope for a carbon-neutral future. After decades of cost-overruns, public protests and disasters elsewhere, China has emerged as the world’s last great believer, with plans to generate an eye-popping amount of nuclear energy, quickly and at relatively low cost.
China has over the course of the year revealed the extensive scope of its plans for nuclear, an ambition with new resonance given the global energy crisis and the calls for action coming out of the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow.
Bill Gates’ nuclear energy firm TerraPower and power company PacifiCorp — owned by Warren Buffett’s holding company Berkshire Hathaway — teamed up in September 2020 to launch the Natrium project. It’s about a small modular reactor they say will be commercially viable by 2030.
Many countries are weighing smaller, so-called modular, nuclear reactors as a way backing up low emission energy production during the transition from fossil fuel dependence to one based on renewable energy sources.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
SABRE is a non-entry, surface-based mining method that uses a high-pressure water jet placed at the bottom of a drill hole to excavate a mining cavity. The cuttings from the excavation process are then air lifted to the surface, separated and stockpiled. The method is the culmination of a mining equipment invention and development initiative that began in 2004.
Denison and Orano – the joint venture partners in McClean Lake Joint Venture (MLJV) – said the final stage of a five-year field test was completed from May to September 2021 with four mining cavities successfully excavated to produce around 1500 tonnes of “high-value” ore with grades in the range of 4%-11% U3O8.
(Bloomberg) — Nuclear power once seemed like the world’s best hope for a carbon-neutral future. After decades of cost-overruns, public protests and disasters elsewhere, China has emerged as the world’s last great believer, with plans to generate an eye-popping amount of nuclear energy, quickly and at relatively low cost.
China has over the course of the year revealed the extensive scope of its plans for nuclear, an ambition with new resonance given the global energy crisis and the calls for action coming out of the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/
(Bloomberg Opinion) — Until 2011, Paul Bossens was an entrepreneur quietly running a small IT business in Leuven, not far from the Belgian capital of Brussels.
Aside from an interest in the environment — he’s an enthusiast for electric cars who delights in his shiny gull-wing Tesla Model X — Bossens, 68, wouldn’t have called himself politically committed. “I was never really one to be an activist or a protester,” he says.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
In 1957, the Cutler acid plant opened in Serpent River First Nation (SRFN) after the Canadian government negotiated a 99-year lease with mining company Noranda Mines, which was at the time involved in the uranium mining industry in Elliot Lake. The plant was established to process uranium from Elliot Lake’s mines.
SRFN member, Lianne Leddy documented the story of the effects of the acid plant in her book, ‘Serpent River Resurgence.’
Lianne Leddy, a member of SRFN and professor from Wilfred Laurier University said in a recent interview, “When the plant was in operation, the fumes caused deforestation in the area, damage to roofs, community gardens, cars and even holes in the laundry drying out on the line.
Rita Capitan has been worrying about her water since 1994. It was that autumn she read a local newspaper article about another uranium mine, the Crownpoint Uranium Project, getting under way near her home.
Capitan has spent her entire life in Crownpoint, New Mexico, a small town on the eastern Navajo Nation, and is no stranger to the uranium mining that has persisted in the region for decades. But it was around the time the article was published that she began learning about the many risks associated with uranium mining.
Kazatomprom, the world’s largest uranium miner, is backing a new uranium fund that aims to invest in the radioactive metal used to power nuclear reactors.
ANU Energy OEIC Ltd. was established as a fund to hold physical uranium as a long-term investment, with initial purchases financed from a $50 million investment by Kazatomprom, the National Investment Corporation of the National Bank of Kazakhstan and United Arab Emirates-based fund manager Genchi Global Ltd., Kazakhstan’s national atomic company said in a Monday statement.
In virtually every country that has closed nuclear plants, clean electricity has been replaced with dirty power.
For years, the proponents of wind and solar energy have promised us a green future with electricity too cheap to meter, new energy infrastructure with little environmental impact on the land, and deep cuts in carbon emissions.
But despite the rapid growth of renewable energy, that future has yet to materialize. Instead, many of the places that are furthest along in transitioning to renewable energy are today facing a crisis of power shortages, sky-high electricity prices, and flat or rising carbon emissions.
Toronto, ON: Global Atomic Corporation (“Global Atomic” or the “Company”), (TSX: GLO, OTCQX: GLATF, FRANKFURT: G12) has signed a letter of intent with CMAC-Thyssen Mining Group to collar the portal and complete initial underground development at the Dasa Uranium Project in the Republic of Niger. The selection of CMAC-Thyssen resulted from a multi-party bidding process that required bidders to have project experience in West Africa.
The Box-Cut excavation is scheduled to begin in January 2022 using local contractors in Niger. CMAC-Thyssen plans to mobilize to the Dasa Site in February 2022. Once the Box-Cut excavation is complete, CMAC-Thyssen are expected to Collar the Portal in April 2022 thus initiating the Dasa Underground Development Campaign.
It is a year since Horizon Nuclear Power, a company owned by Hitachi, confirmed it was pulling out of building the £20 billion Wylfa nuclear power plant on Anglesey in north Wales.
The Japanese industrial conglomerate cited the failure to reach a funding deal with the UK government over escalating costs, and the government is still in negotiations with other players to try and take the project forward.
After languishing at historical lows for the better part of the last decade, uranium suddenly came back from the dead. Prices have surged about 40% just in September, outpacing all other major commodities.
In just a few weeks, millions of pounds of supply was scooped up by the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. It’s a massive bet on nuclear energy’s prominence in a carbon-free future. The problem is — at least for the investors who poured more than $240 million into the fund — the debate is still raging over whether and how nuclear can come to the forefront.
