The world is decarbonising and Australia has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to capitalise on the inevitable surge in global uranium demand that will accompany it.
Global financial institutions are taking a new look at the Australian uranium sector, and with good reason. Civil unrest over the past week in Kazakhstan – the world’s largest exporter of uranium – and the consequent impact on uranium prices highlights the geopolitical sensitivity of the commodity.
(Bloomberg) The last few months have been a rollercoaster for energy markets in Europe. Even before winter began, traders were freaking out that the continent might run out of natural gas before spring. Some even bought the fuel at 10 times the average price in 2020.
In the middle of all that, Germany moved ahead with a plan to shut off nearly 50% of its nuclear power plants, with the rest scheduled to close by the end of 2022.
Does the energy transition need a “Circular 5”? Back in the late 1940s the US Atomic Energy Commission fretted that it could not procure enough uranium on the private market to meet the requirements of its nuclear weapons production programmes.
The initial supply of Congolese uranium for the wartime Manhattan project had been scavenged in late 1942 from a warehouse in Staten Island, NY, where it had been sent in 1940 by an anti-Nazi Belgian businessman.
At the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, a large part of Ken Darlington’s job involves convincing the public that the latest generation of nuclear technology is safe — so safe, in fact, that it can be mass produced.
The USNC-Power, as the U.S.-based company is known in Canada, is developing the smallest nuclear reactors around — designed to produce enough power to provide electricity for about 5,000 homes, or roughly five megawatts. If all goes according to Darlington’s plans, as vice president of corporate development in Canada, there could be around 100 reactors around the country in two decades.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/
A small town in northwestern Ontario is facing a big question: How to determine whether people in the community want to host a site that would store nearly 5.5 million spent nuclear fuel bundles from across Canada.
The issue’s been ongoing for years in Ignace, with a population of about 1,300, 250 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. But now, it’s one of two communities left in the search by Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to find a host community for its proposed deep geological repository.
Canadian project developer Global Atomic has broken ground at its Dasa uranium project, in Niger, almost two months ahead of schedule. The board in November made a production decision to proceed with the Dasa project, after a feasibility study determined that the project was economically viable at a base price assumption of $35/lb.
“With the activity already occurring at site, we have broken ground almost two months ahead of schedule. The team is growing and fully engaged at site, with the goal of building our mine and mill to produce yellowcake for sale by January 2025,” CEO Stephen Roman reported on Monday.
California is approaching an energy crossroads. In three years, its last nuclear plant will begin to power down and the state will lose its largest single source of emissions-free electricity.
A 2018 law requires state regulators to “avoid any increase in greenhouse gases” as a result of closing the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the Central Coast. But if they don’t move more quickly to replace its electricity with renewable energy from wind, solar and geothermal, the void will almost certainly be filled by burning more natural gas, which increased last year to account for nearly half of California’s in-state electricity generation.
Six months ago, the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust didn’t exist. Now it holds almost a third of the world’s annual supply — and it’s getting bigger.
The fund’s arrival and explosive growth are sending waves through the market for nuclear fuels and have helped spur a 50% rally in uranium this year. Sprott reports that its assets have swelled to $1.9 billion, forcing the product to almost double its financing limit two weeks ago to $3.5 billion — the second time it’s had to raise it in two months.
Nuclear power will play a major role in helping to increase electrification while also phasing out carbon-intensive sources of energy. Governments have been reluctant to support nuclear power because of its rising costs since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, and its potential environmental impacts.
But with the world realizing the imminence of the climate emergency, many are seeing uranium’s potential of providing reliable low-carbon electricity, which has been a big boost for developers and miners.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
As land defenders work to prevent a pipeline from ripping through Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia, cast your eyes to Northern Ontario, where First Nations are also trying to push back against colonial governments looking to plunder the land.
Just a month after Canada talked a good game at the United Nations’ COP26 climate summit – but many years after Indigenous people first sounded alarms about the perils of what Canadians were doing to the land – two potential climate change catastrophes are playing out on Treaty 3, Robinson Superior and Treaty 9 territories. That territory comprises most of the area in Ontario north of Lake Superior.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Canada’s biggest city is fortunate to have two founts of clean, green, plentiful energy just down the road. One, of course, is Niagara Falls. Water diverted from the towering cataract to hydroelectric turbines has been keeping lights lit in Toronto for more than a century.
The other, less-heralded source is the two massive nuclear power plants that stand just east of the city at Pickering and Darlington. Though much of the city’s juice comes from there, most people barely give them a thought.
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.
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.
