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Uranium and Nuclear Power Industry

Top-10 Canadian base metal and uranium explorers and developers (Mining.com – July 13, 2021)

https://www.mining.com/

Demand for greener energy has put companies with uranium and base metal projects under the spotlight. Here’s a list of the top ten Canadian-headquartered base metal and uranium juniors with no production. The ranking is based on the companies’ market capitalization as of June 3, and compiled by MiningIntelligence.

NexGen Energy – Market capitalization: C$2.7 billion ($2.3 billion)

NexGen Energy’s (TSX: NXE; NYSE: NXE) market cap has increased fivefold from last year, pushing it from third to first place in this year’s top ten ranking.

The exploration and development company’s valuation has been boosted as the spot price for uranium edged higher in May to pass $32 per lb., and comes after several years in which uranium was trading in the $25-30 per lb. price range.

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Investors Are Backing Uranium For Reliable Emission Free Electricity – OpEd – by Ronald Stein (Eurasia Review – June 29, 2021)

https://www.eurasiareview.com/

Ronald Stein is Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California.

As a reaffirmation of what Abraham Lincoln said back in 1858, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”, investors are not being fooled by the rhetoric that weather can provide for our electricity needs.

Share prices in uranium miners are on the rise, much to the horror of the weather dependent wind and solar industries.

The market seems to be taking the threat of looming net-zero emissions targets seriously. Knowing that the only serious measure of meeting any such target is nuclear power, the smart money is backing any company with uranium mining interests or even the mere prospect of developing such an interest.

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Russia brings back largest global uranium project – by Polina Leganger Bronder (The Barents Observer – June 8, 2021)

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/

Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev has instructed Rosatom to submit a plan for the resumption of uranium mining in Yakutia.

Rosatom, the state corporation specializing in nuclear power, in 2017 suspended the development of Yakut uranium deposits but is now ordered to resume mining in the region by Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Yuri Trutnev.

News online RBC reported that Tutnev announced his nudge towards Rosatom at a meeting on the efficiency of the utilization of minerals and the conduction of geological exploration in Yakutia on June 2nd.

The latest time at which the license freeze can be upheld is 2025, however, the process of revoking the license suspension is already on its way.

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Scientists raise proliferation concerns over nuclear plans in New Brunswick – by Matthew McClearn (Globe and Mail – May 26, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Canadian government’s financial support for a proposed reprocessing facility for nuclear waste in New Brunswick undermines global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, a group of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation experts and former government officials says.

Moltex Energy, a small, privately held company based in Saint John, plans to build a nuclear power plant in New Brunswick by the early 2030s. It would recycle spent fuel from Canada’s CANDU reactors (including NB Power’s Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station), and reprocess the waste in a 300-megawatt reactor called the Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner (SSR-W).

Moltex received a combined $50.5-million from the federal Strategic Innovation Fund and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) in March.

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The story of Rum Jungle: a Cold War-era uranium mine that’s spewed acid into the environment for decades – by Gavin Mudd (The Conversation – May 18, 2021)

https://theconversation.com/

Gavin Mudd is the Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, RMIT University.

Buried in last week’s budget was money for rehabilitating the Rum Jungle uranium mine near Darwin. The exact sum was not disclosed.

Rum Jungle used to be a household name. It was Australia’s first large-scale uranium mine and supplied the US and British nuclear weapons programs during the Cold War.

Today, the mine is better known for extensively polluting the Finniss River after it closed in 1971. Despite a major rehabilitation project by the Commonwealth in the 1980s, the damage to the local environment is ongoing.

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Saskatchewan Indigenous companies to explore SMR investments – by David Giles (Global News – May 12, 2021)

https://globalnews.ca/

Three Saskatchewan Indigenous-owned companies have signed an agreement to pursue small modular reactor (SMR) investments.

Kitsaki Management, Athabasca Basin Development and Des Nedhe Group say they are in a position to support this emerging technology from construction to operation and maintenance.

Sean Willy, CEO of Des Nedhe Group, said their companies have supported uranium mining in northern Saskatchewan since the 1980s and they want to make sure their voices are heard in this “new and exciting technology.”

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Moab uranium tailing cleanup still going after 13 years – by Max Roth (Fox 13 Salt Lake City – May 12, 2021)

https://www.fox13now.com/

MOAB, Utah — Before Moab was a Mecca for outdoor recreation in Utah, it was the hub of cold war uranium mining; and in the rush to process the ore for nuclear weapons, officials made a terrible decision we’re still paying for.

That decision made in 1956 was to build a uranium processing mill along the banks of the most important river in the American Southwest: the Colorado River.

“When they established a mill, there wasn’t very much thought given to protecting the river,” said Russell McCallister, the director of the federal cleanup.

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Smuggling of Indian Uranium & Western Silence – by Imtiaz Gul [Pakistan] Daily Times – May 9, 2021)

Daily Times

Should the seizure of some 2.5 kilogrammes of unprocessed uranium from four Nepalese nationals and the arrest of Nepalese nationals in Kathmandu ring alarm internationally? Of course.

Why? Because India is a major beneficiary of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) as well as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and by implication must have strict surveillance system over radio-active materials.

Alarm is called for also because one of the arrested persons claimed that her father-in-law had “brought the material from India some 20 years ago”, where he worked in a uranium mine.

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White House Backs Nuclear Power Subsidies, Despite Green Qualms – by Ari Natter (BNN/Bloomberg News – May 5, 2021)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — The Biden administration is backing federal subsidies to keep U.S. nuclear power plants in operation as part of its infrastructure proposal, a move that is sure to set up a clash with environmentalists who have qualms with the carbon-free fuel source.

White House officials have told supporters in the industry and on the Hill it would like to see a nuclear production tax credit included in the $2.25 trillion infrastructure package it proposed in March, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.

The support comes as the industry, which provides about 19% of the nation’s electricity, has been beset by a wave of reactor closures as it struggles to compete with electricity produced from natural gas.

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Precious metals specialist Sprott takes over management of Uranium Participation – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – April 28, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Precious metals specialist Sprott Asset Management LP is wading into the uranium industry by taking over the management of Uranium Participation Corp., betting the out-of-favour commodity will benefit from a broader societal push toward lower carbon emissions.

Founded in 2005, Toronto-based UPC is one of the few companies in the world that stockpiles physical uranium. Still, over the past few years, with uranium in a protracted bear market, the Toronto Stock Exchange-listed company has struggled to attract investor interest and maintain large trading volumes.

Sprott Asset Management on Wednesday said it will pay about $14.5-million to reorganize UPC from a corporation into a trust. Sprott hopes to broaden the investor appeal of the uranium holding company by adding an additional stock listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Greenhouse gas emission targets boost enthusiasm for small modular nuclear reactors – by Dan Healing (CTV News Calgary/Canadian Press – April 25, 2021)

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/

CALGARY — The worldwide battle to control greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change is the best thing that’s happened for growth in the nuclear energy industry in decades, its proponents say.

They add that the development of smaller, scalable nuclear reactors to churn out reliable, emissions-free energy at a much lower than traditional cost makes nuclear an option that’s become impossible to ignore.

“Thirty years ago, the vision was that nuclear energy is going to be so cheap that we’ll be giving electricity away for free,” said Robby Sohi, president and CEO of Global First Power Ltd., a company trying to build Canada’s first small modular reactor or SMR.

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Toxic legacy of uranium mines on Navajo Nation confronts Interior nominee Deb Haaland – by Mary F. Calvert and Andrew Romano (Yahoo Finance – February 23, 2021)

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/

If, as widely expected, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland survives her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday and is sworn in as secretary of the interior, she will make history as the first Native American ever to serve in a presidential Cabinet.

But representation is only half the battle. From day one, Haaland will also be expected to address a festering backlog of problems left behind by predecessors who lacked her perspective as a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, one of America’s 574 federally recognized tribes.

Among the most daunting: how to finally help shield indigenous people from the hundreds of inactive yet still toxic uranium mines that have been scarring their lands and poisoning them for decades.

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Climate Change Activists Need To Get Serious About Nuclear Power – by John Stossel (Reason.com – April 21, 2021)

Reason.com

This Thursday, Earth Day, politicians and activists will shout more about “the climate crisis.” I don’t think it’s a crisis. COVID-19, malaria, exploding debt, millions of poor children dying from diarrhea—those are genuine crises.

But global warming may become a real problem, so it’s particularly absurd that Earth Day’s activists rarely mention the form of energy that could most quickly reduce greenhouse gases: nuclear power. When France converted to nuclear, it created the world’s fastest reduction in carbon emissions.

But in America, nuclear growth came to a near halt 40 years ago, after an accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. The partial meltdown killed no one. It would probably have been forgotten had Hollywood not released a nuclear scare movie, The China Syndrome, days before.

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Cleanup of Rayrock, the ‘Tłı̨chǫ Giant,’ to receive public scrutiny – by Ollie Williams (Cabin Radio – April 22, 2021)

https://cabinradio.ca/

Federal plans to clean up the former Rayrock uranium mine and its surroundings will be examined at a three-day public hearing to be broadcast live by Cabin Radio next week.

The area around the mine, known as Kwetıı̨ɂ̨aà to the Tłı̨chǫ people, is in some ways the Tłı̨chǫ equivalent of Yellowknife’s Giant Mine. Both left a toxic legacy that’s complex, time-consuming and expensive to deal with.

The Rayrock mine, around 60 km northeast of Whatì, only operated from 1957 to 1959. “The Tłı̨chǫ were never informed of the dangers of uranium mining before the mine was built, or soon after it was closed,” the Tłı̨chǫ Government has said.

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