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Uranium and Nuclear Power Industry

OPINION: Russia’s dominance of nuclear-energy supply chain is cause for concern – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – April 26, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ending Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas may be the easy part. It could prove much harder for the continent to replace Russian nuclear fuel and technology after decades of underinvestment in the West’s nuclear-energy industry. Russia supplies almost half of the world’s enriched uranium and dominates the global market for new reactors. And most of Europe’s more than 100 reactors rely on Russian fuel.

This explains why Russian state-owned nuclear energy powerhouse Rosatom has not faced Western sanctions since the country’s invasion of Ukraine. It is also why last week Canada joined the United States, Britain, France and Japan in a bid to end Russia’s dominance in the field.

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Germany Retires Last Nuclear Plants in Hopes of Greener Pastures – by Carolynn Look, Petra Sorge and Josefine Fokuhl (Bloomberg News – April 15, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — At 10 p.m. on Saturday, the Isar-2 nuclear plant near Munich will begin winding down its power generation in steps of 10 megawatts per minute. After about 45 minutes, it will drop to 30% capacity and automatically sever from the national electricity grid.

The other two plants still in operation, Neckarwestheim-2 and Emsland, will by then be in the midst of a similar process. By midnight, all three will be offline, ending Germany’s tumultuous six-decade reliance on nuclear energy.

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[Elliot Lake] Local historian recalls city since his family’s arrival in 1957 – by Kris Svela (Elliot Lake Today – April 14, 2023)

https://www.elliotlaketoday.com/

According to him there were at least two major shopping spots, Kressge and Hudson Bay, where he would eventually have one of his first jobs

Elliot Lake’s Historical Society hosted its monthly meeting Wednesday with special guest speaker and local historian Bill Gareau talking about his memories of the community since his family moved here in 1957.

Gareau is well known on Facebook as he regularly posts historical pictures of mining works in Elliot Lake from 1955 to the mid- 1990s when uranium mining operations closed here. His parents settled during in Elliot Lake with the mining rush is 1957 and Gareau and his own family have lived her ever since.

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Tribes want US protection for areas next to the Grand Canyon – by Anita Snow (Associated Press – April 11, 2023)

https://apnews.com/

PHOENIX (AP) — Tribal leaders in Arizona said Tuesday they hope to build on the momentum of President Joe Biden’s recent designation of a national monument in neighboring Nevada to persuade the administration to create similar protections for areas adjacent to the Grand Canyon, which they consider sacred.

“This designation is of the highest priority to the Hopi people,” said Timothy Nuvangyaoma, chairman of the tribe in northern Arizona. “We have to protect the beauty and grandeur of this place many tribes call home.”

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Will Washington Halt the Global Renaissance of Nuclear Power? by Ted Nordhaus and Adam Stein (Foreign Policy – April 8, 2023)

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Hopes to slash emissions using nuclear energy are being dashed by U.S. regulators.

For anyone hoping to reboot the nuclear power sector as a source of zero-carbon energy in the age of climate change, the news has not been good. On Feb. 28, the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) forwarded a proposed licensing framework for next-generation reactors to the agency’s five politically appointed commissioners. That proposal came little more than a year after the NRC summarily rejected Oklo Power’s license application for its Aurora reactor. The application was the first attempt to obtain a license to operate an advanced nuclear reactor in the United States.

The new rules, mandated by the U.S. Congress, were supposed to provide a modern, streamlined licensing process for the new small reactors in advanced stages of development by multiple U.S. and international companies. Instead, the NRC staff simply cut and pasted the existing rules for large conventional reactors into a mammoth 1,200-page regulation for new reactor types.

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Red Book / Global Production Down 12% With Kazakhstan ‘By Far’ World’s Largest Producer – by David Dalton (Nucnet.org – April 6, 2023)

https://www.nucnet.org/

Global uranium mine production decreased by nearly 12% from 2018 to 2020 with major producing countries including Canada and Kazakhstan limiting total production in recent years in response to a depressed uranium market, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency.

In the latest edition of Uranium Resources, Production and Demand, known as the Red Book, the NEA says uranium production cuts deepened suddenly with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

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Saudi Quest to Become a Nuclear Player Is Coming Up Short – by Jonathan Tirone (Bloomberg News – April 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia’s efforts to break into the ranks of global uranium suppliers — and feed a nascent nuclear power program — are coming up short, with exploration investments failing to find any significant deposits of the heavy metal.

The amount worth developing is smaller than that found in Botswana, Tanzania or the US, according to an assessment published by the Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is the first time the Saudi government submitted data for the biennial Red Book, which is used by geologists prospecting for the commodity that fuels nuclear reactors.

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What happened to the atomic test dummies? – by Glen Meek (Nevada Independent – March 17, 2023)

https://thenevadaindependent.com/

St. Patrick’s Day always rocks in Las Vegas, but not like it did 70 years ago when a 16-kiloton atom bomb detonated atop a tower at the Nevada Proving Grounds, 65 miles north of the city.

The March 17, 1953 above-ground nuclear test destroyed or damaged various test objects placed at differing distances from ground zero, including houses, cars and mannequins meant to simulate real people who might get caught in a nuclear blast. The explosion sent a shock wave through southern Nevada and left behind an atom-age mystery: What happened to the life-like mannequins used in the test?

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Worry, mistrust meet plans to secure waste from Niger uranium mine (France24.com – March 15, 2023)

https://www.france24.com/en/

Arlit (Niger) (AFP) – Towering mounds dot the desert landscape in northern Niger’s Arlit region, but there is little natural about them — they are heaps of partially radioactive waste left from four decades of operations at one of the world’s biggest uranium mines.

An ambitious 10-year scheme costing $160 million is underway to secure the waste and avoid risks to health and the environment, but many local people are worried or sceptical. From 1978, France’s nuclear giant Areva, now called Orano, worked the area under a subsidiary, the Akouta Mining Company (Cominak).

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Why Russia Has Such a Strong Grip on Europe’s Nuclear Power – by Patricia Cohen (New York Times – March 11, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

New energy sources to replace oil and natural gas have been easier to find than kicking the dependency on Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear superstore.

The pinched cylinders of Russian-built nuclear power plants that dot Europe’s landscape are visible reminders of the crucial role that Russia still plays in the continent’s energy supply. Europe moved with startling speed to wean itself off Russian oil and natural gas in the wake of war in Ukraine. But breaking the longstanding dependency on Russia’s vast nuclear industry is a much more complicated undertaking.

Russia, through its mammoth state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, dominates the global nuclear supply chain. It was Europe’s third-largest supplier of uranium in 2021, accounting for 20 percent of the total. With few ready alternatives, there has been scant support for sanctions against Rosatom — despite urging from the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.

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The time young Jimmy Carter helped save Canada from nuclear disaster (National Post – February 20, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

Jimmy Carter, who entered hospice care at home on the weekend, has had long and surprising connections to Canada, including the time he helped save us from a nuclear meltdown.

fter Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, he was assigned to the early American nuclear submarine program when an accident at Canada’s NRX nuclear research reactor at Chalk River, Ont., caused a loss of coolant to the reactor and the core was left significantly damaged.

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Sask. ‘well-positioned’ to fill resource gaps left by war, sanctions on Russia: economic experts – by Dayne Patterson (CBC News Saskatoon – February 14, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/

Cameco signs uranium deal with Ukraine worth billions

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to significant gains for Saskatchewan’s resource-based companies, industry experts say.

Cameco Corp., a Saskatoon-based company, announced last week that it has agreed to a multi-billion-dollar contract with SE NNEGC Energoatom — Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy utility — to meet Ukraine’s full nuclear needs from 2024 to 2035.

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Uranium price expected to rise in 2023 on nuclear power revival – by Bruno Venditti (Mining.com – January 31, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

There will likely be a further recovery of uranium prices in 2023 as nuclear energy regains popularity, was the sentiment among uranium specialists who spoke on Monday at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference (VRIC).

With several of the world’s most developed countries announcing plans to extend the life of their existing nuclear power plants and some expanding their fleets, there was an optimistic buzz at VRIC.

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Grid Expert: Replacing Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant with Renewables ‘Can’t Be Done’ – by Carl Wurtz (Globe California – January 28, 2023)

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To go 100% renewable would drive electricity prices four to five times higher

With recent legislation limiting the lifetime of California’s last remaining nuclear power plant to eight more years, the debate about replacement power has once again been thrust to the forefront of environmental concerns: will higher emissions after the shutdown of Diablo Canyon doom California’s efforts to meet climate targets?

Though generating electricity with nuclear power produces no CO2, California agencies believe the answer is “no.” Every five years the California Air Resources Board (CARB) develops a plan to determine what sources will be needed to deliver clean electricity to 30 million customers.

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Federal gifts for the nuclear and mining industries – by Mark Winfield (Policy Options – January 25, 2023)

Policy Options

The government needs a more transparent and evidence-based approach to decision-making when assessing choices for decarbonization.

Canada’s nuclear industry got an important pre-Christmas gift from the federal government in the form of the announcement of its decision not to conduct an assessment under the 2019 Impact Assessment Act of a proposed small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick.

The Lepreau SMR proposal has been highly controversial, given its reliance on technologies where the performance, costs and risks are essentially unknown. Moreover, serious questions have even been raised about whether the project, intended to reprocess fuel from the Lepreau CANDU reactors, would violate the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

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