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Uranium and Nuclear Power Industry

Column: Nuclear revival puts uranium back in the critical spotlight – by Andy Home (Reuters – Janaury 30, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

Is uranium a critical mineral? Not according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which dropped it from its critical minerals list in 2022 on the grounds it didn’t qualify because it was a “fuel mineral”. US President Donald Trump wants it to think again.

One of Trump’s many “Unleashing American Energy” directives requires the Secretary of the Interior to instruct the director of the USGS to “consider updating the survey’s list of critical minerals, including for the potential of including uranium.”

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Shipments of uranium ore can resume under agreement reached with the Navajo Nation – by Susan Montoya Bryan (Associated Press – January 29, 2025)

https://apnews.com/

Shipments of uranium ore from a revived mining operation just south of the Grand Canyon are expected to resume in February after the Navajo Nation reached a settlement with the mining company, clearing the way for trucks to transport the ore across the largest Native American reservation in the U.S.

The agreement announced Wednesday settles a dispute that erupted last summer when Energy Fuels Inc. began trucking ore from the Pinyon Plain Mine to a mill site in Utah. Navajo authorities attempted to put up roadblocks but the trucks already had left tribal roadways.

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Cameco hopes to repeat its 2018 success in fending off Trump uranium tariffs as threat looms once more – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – January 28, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canada’s Cameco Corp. fought off U.S. tariffs on uranium during President Donald Trump’s first term and it hopes to do so again as the global uranium heavyweight pushes for cooler heads to prevail in Washington.

After he was elected for a second term last fall, Mr. Trump said he was planning to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on all imports of Canadian goods. On the day he was inaugurated, he said those tariffs could take effect on Saturday. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday confirmed that Mr. Trump’s Saturday timeline for tariffs against Canada is still in the cards.

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Uranium price falls as DeepSeek disrupts tech – by Blair McBride (Northern Miner – January 28, 2025)

Global mining news

Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek is making a splash in the tech world with downloads surpassing ChatGPT’s, pushing major tech stocks down, while prices of uranium – which could help power the AI revolution – declined 5% Monday night.

The AI chatbot DeepSeek, founded by tech entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, has rocketed to the top of iPhone’s app downloads list, ahead of ChatGPT, Threads and Google. The chatbot has achieved that even though its AI model, known as R1, was made with leaner resources than other comparable programs. Top AI firms reportedly train their models with supercomputers using as many as 16,000 integrated circuits, while DeepSeek uses only around 2,000 chips from Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) H800 series.

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Wiring, energy, geopolitics drive 2025 metals: Sprott – by Staff (Northern Miner – Janaury 22, 2025)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Critical metals, uranium and gold will shine this year driven by accelerating deglobalization and energy security demands, Sprott said in a special report Monday.

Broader trade conflicts affecting allies and adversaries alike could reduce business investment and global GDP, while decoupling due to rising protectionism and trade tensions will likely accelerate in sectors that are strategic like AI, advanced technology, finance and defence, the asset management company stated.

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The ‘terrifying’ crackdown on mining companies in Africa’s coup belt – by Aanu Adeoye and Camilla Hodgson (Financial Times – January 13, 2025)

https://www.ft.com/

Military regimes in the Sahel have turned to tactics including arrests to assert control over critical mineral supplies

International mining companies are at the mercy of “terrifying” tactics from military regimes in Africa’s Sahel, whose leaders are using legal disputes, nationalisations and arrests to assert greater control over crucial minerals like gold and uranium.

Barrick Gold on Tuesday temporarily suspended operations in Mali after the government started seizing gold from its mine, weeks after the country issued an arrest warrant for chief executive Mark Bristow. Authorities separately detained Australian gold miner Resolute’s chief executive Terence Holohan for nearly two weeks.

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Uranium Fever Collides With Industry’s Dark Past in Navajo Country – by Jacob Lorinc (Financial Post/Bloomberg – January 14, 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

The world’s re-embrace of nuclear power creates tensions in the US Southwest

(Bloomberg) — A few miles south of the Grand Canyon, thousands of tons of uranium ore, reddish-gray, blue and radioactive, are piled up high in a clearing in the forest. They’ve been there for months, stranded by a standoff between the mining company that dug them deep out of the ground, Energy Fuels Inc., and the leader of the Navajo Nation, Buu Nygren.

Back in the summer, Energy Fuels had triggered an uproar when it loaded some of the ore onto a truck, slapped a “radioactive” sign over the taillights and drove it through the heart of Navajo territory.

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Canada aims to become world’s biggest uranium producer as demand soars – by Ilya Gridneff, Jamie Smyth and Camilla Hodgson (Financial Times – January 4, 2025)

https://www.ft.com/

Demand for emissions-free power and energy security mark a turnaround for the resource-rich

Canada is racing to become the world’s biggest uranium producer as prices for the radioactive metal surge in response to soaring demand for emissions-free nuclear power and geopolitical tensions threaten supplies.

Cameco, the country’s largest producer, said that production of uranium would jump by almost a third in 2024 to 37mn pounds at its two mines in the heartland of the country’s uranium industry in northern Saskatchewan.

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Australian uranium company given go-ahead to absorb Canadian counterpart – by Michael Joel-Hansen (Saskatoon Star Phoenix – December 30, 2024)

https://thestarphoenix.com/

Paladin Energy gets green light from federal government to take over Fission Uranium

A major acquisition in Canada’s uranium sector is going forward after getting approval from the federal government.

Paladin Energy Ltd., which is headquartered in Perth, Australia, has been given the green light to take over Kelowna, B.C.-based Fission Uranium Corp., which has been developing its Patterson Lake South Project (PLS) in northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca basin. The mine there is set to begin production in 2029.

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Cameco ‘disappointed and surprised’ by sudden suspension of its Kazakhstan mine – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – January 03, 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

The mine was expected to contribute 4% of global uranium production this year

Cameco Corp. kicked off the new year with a surprise for its investors: Its joint-venture mine in Kazakhstan suspended production without warning. “We are disappointed and surprised by this unexpected suspension and we will be seeking further clarification on how this transpired,” Cameco said in a press release on Thursday.

The Saskatoon-based company owns 40 per cent of the mine through Inkai LLP; Kazatomprom JSC, the national atomic company of Kazakhstan, owns the other 60 per cent.

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Canada Weighs Export Taxes on Uranium, Oil If Trump Starts Trade War – by Brian Platt (Bloomberg News – December 12, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Canada is examining the use of export taxes on major commodities it exports to the US — including uranium, oil and potash — if incoming President Donald Trump carries out his threat to impose broad tariffs.

Export levies would be a last resort for Canada, according to officials familiar with the discussions inside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. Retaliatory tariffs against US-made goods, and export controls on certain Canadian products, would be more likely to come first, said the people.

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Time to Reinvigorate the U.S. Uranium Mining Industry – by Duggan Flanakin (Real Clear Energy – December 12, 2024)

https://www.realclearenergy.org/

Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

As Donald Trump returns to the White House, his nomination of Christopher Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy points to a major effort to revive domestic uranium mining. That’s especially good news, given the Biden Administration’s recent decision to discontinue importing uranium from Russia.

Further complicating the worldwide uranium supply chain, the military authorities in Niger, who now control that nation’s uranium mining operations, are putting the squeeze on French reliance on Niger’s uranium for its nuclear reactors. Niger, which produces about 5% of the world’s uranium, had been supplying 15% to 20% of France’s uranium imports.

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Analysis-Mali arrests, Niger site seizure rattle Western miners – by David Lewis, Melanie Burton and Portia Crowe(MSM.com – December 11, 2024)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/

The arrest of mining executives in Mali, threats by Burkina Faso’s junta to strip permits and the seizure of a French-run uranium site in Niger have unsettled Western miners operating in West Africa and could limit further investments. Day-to-day production in Mali and Burkina Faso has so far been largely unaffected.

The escalation is expected, however, to hit firms seeking finance and insurance – curbing supply growth in Africa’s engine of gold output, more than a dozen people, including mining employees, financiers, insurance providers and government sources, told Reuters.

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How GE Vernova plans to deploy small nuclear reactors across the developed world – by Spencer Kimball (CNBC.com – November 30, 2024)

https://www.cnbc.com/

GE Vernova is aiming to deploy small nuclear reactors across the developed world over the next decade, staking out a leadership position in a budding technology that could play a central role in meeting surging electricity demand and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The company’s small modular reactor, or SMR, is designed to reduce the cost of building new nuclear plants, said Nicole Holmes, chief commercial officer at GE Vernova’s nuclear unit GE Hitachi.

GE Vernova is the spinoff of General Electric’s former energy business. The company’s stock has more than doubled since listing on the New York Stock Exchange last April, with investors seeing the Cambridge, Mass.-based company playing a key role in the future of the power industry through a portfolio of divisions that span nuclear, natural gas, wind and carbon capture.

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Paladin’s deal to acquire Fission Uranium in doubt amid deepening national security probe involving China – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – December 2, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Paladin Energy Ltd.’s proposed acquisition of Canadian uranium development company Fission Uranium Corp. is hanging in the balance amid a deepening national security probe and a punishing Paladin stock sell-off that has spooked investors.

The Australian miner reached a friendly agreement in June to buy Kelowna, B.C.-based Fission in an all-stock transaction worth $1.14-billion. Fission is developing the Patterson Lake South (PLS) uranium project in the Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan.

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