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Uranium and Nuclear Power Industry

TNM’s 2013 Mining Persons of the Year: Fission’s Ross McElroy and Dev Randhawa – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – December 23, 2013)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. Editor John Cumming MSc (Geol) is one of the country’s most well respected mining journalists.  jcumming@northernminer.com

Since the days of the Manhattan project, there have been three conventional rules for finding uranium mineralization in Saskatchewan: it occurs in the Athabasca basin, usually in the lowest sandstone unit that’s in contact with the basement rock; the best place to look is in the eastern part of the basin; and the shallow stuff has all been found, so you need to go deeper into the basin to find more.

Well, the new Patterson Lake South ultra-high-grade uranium discovery by joint-venture partners Fission Uranium (TSXV: FCU; US-OTC: FCUUF) and Alpha Minerals turns all that conventional wisdom on its head: the deposit is 8 km outside the southwestern edge of the basin in a relatively unexplored area, and it lies almost at surface, covered only by glacial overburden and a shallow lake.

And for this, we are awarding our 2013 “Mining Persons of the Year” to Fission president and COO Ross McElroy, the technical point man on the discovery, and Fission chairman and CEO Dev Randhawa, who has ably guided the company through not one, but two major corporate overhauls in a single year.

Ross McElroy is a veteran geologist with an uncanny ability to place himself at the heart of the discovery of high-grade Canadian mineral deposits.

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The battle between Cree First Nations and Strateco Resources heats up – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – December 21, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The grand council of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee, the Cree regional authority and the Cree nation of Mistissini on Friday said they had filed a declaration of intervention in the legal proceedings recently started by uranium explorer Strateco Resources against the Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet.

Strateco, who seeks permission to undertake underground exploratory drilling in search of uranium at its Matoush advanced exploration project, early this month asked the Superior Court of Quebec to nullify the minister’s decision to refuse to grant a certificate of authorisation for the exploration.

Strateco had also asked the court to force the minister to issue a certificate of authorisation for the project. In his decision of November 7, Blanchet said that he refused to authorise the Matoush project owing to the absence of social acceptability for the project, particularly among the Crees.

Through the intervention filed today, the Crees sought full rights of participation in the proceedings, and urged the court to dismiss Strateco’s request.

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Wyoming uranium miners look to capitalize on end of Russian exchange program – by Benjamin Storrow (Casper Star-Tribune – December 15, 2013)

http://trib.com/

It is hard to imagine, staring out into the expanse of the Great Divide Basin, how events in Russia could shape the future of the Lost Creek uranium mine.

The closest town, Bairoil (pop. 106), is some 30 miles of bumpy dirt road away. The Wind River Mountains to the west and Green Mountain to the east offer the only break on the horizon, an otherwise unabated sea of rolling sagebrush. And the sole inhabitants, besides the bands of roving wild horses, are the Lost Creek miners themselves, though to call them miners is slightly disingenuous. Lost Creek is more oil field than it is mine, and those that work here are far more likely to tap a keyboard than wield a pickax.

But as unlikely as it may seem, this isolated facility in south-central Wyoming is inextricably linked to the land of Catherine the Great, Lenin and, more recently, Vladimir Putin.

Lost Creek began production in June. On Dec. 3 the mine made its first shipment of yellowcake uranium to a conversion facility in Illinois. A few weeks prior, on the other end of the globe, the final shipment of weapons-grade uranium was packed into a shipping container in St. Petersburg and sent via boat to Baltimore.

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Strateco seeks to force deal on disputed uranium mine – by Jordan Fletcher (Globe and Mail – December 10, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

The battle over uranium mining in northern Quebec is heating up again. Strateco Resources Inc. petitioned a Quebec court on Dec. 5, seeking to force the province’s environmental minister to allow underground uranium exploration at the company’s Matoush project, located in the Otish mountains 200 kilometres northeast of Mistissini.

Quebec’s Minister of Sustainable Development, the Environment, Wildlife and Parks had denied Strateco’s permit on Nov. 7 after the local Mistissini Cree community refused to consent to uranium development near its hunting grounds and trap lines.

“Many Cree work in the mining industry; we are not anti-development,” said Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come. “But uranium is a special case. The tailings will remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. It is a burden for future generations that we are not prepared to assume.”

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Miner Cameco Trains Canadian Aboriginals to Beat Shortage – by Greg Quinn (Bloomberg News – November 27, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Phil Morin is in demand. Mining companies are recruiting worldwide to find skilled workers like him they need to develop projects in remote parts of Canada.

The problem, Morin says, is that they’re hunting in the wrong place. They could more easily solve their shortage if they looked closer to home, hiring and training aboriginals like him, the industrial mechanic said.

Cameco Corp. hired Morin 13 years ago to drive a truck between uranium mines and mills in northern Saskatchewan. With company training, he now has certifications for industrial mechanics and electrical work. About half the company’s 3,300 workforce at its Saskatchewan sites are natives, who are also known as First Nations or Indians.

“That opens a lot of doors not only for yourself but your family’s future, your children’s education,” Morin, 41, who is also head of the local union, said in a phone interview. “I would love to see this grow right across Canada and to help with aboriginal people.”

Cameco is implementing its policies of training and hiring aboriginal workers as the country prepares for C$650 billion ($616 billion) of resource development over the next decade.

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Saskatchewan: the place to be [Mining and Oil] (Regina Leader-Post – November 13, 2013)

http://www.leaderpost.com/index.html

When it was announced in late September that Saskatchewan’s population had surpassed 1.1 million for the first time ever, Premier Brad Wall was quick to offer comment, and understandably so. According to the figures from Statistics Canada, the province had added 100,000 people since 2007. At the time of the announcement, it had grown by 6,895 in the preceding quarter-the largest increase in any quarter since Statistics Canada began keeping quarterly estimates.

“Saskatchewan is the place to be in Canada right now,” Wall said. “We have the strongest job growth and lowest unemployment in Canada, and we have a great quality of life in this province. “It’s a great place to find a job or start a business. It’s a great place to live and raise a family. It’s no wonder our population is growing.”

Such a statement is not hyperbolic. There are approximately 100,000 new Saskatchewan residents who apparently agree with Wall’s assessment of where their fortunes are potentially brightest. It’s one of the fastest and most sustained periods of population growth the province has experienced in living memory, and the latest signs of a sea change for a province that once saw its residents, its investment dollars and its economic fortunes trickle across its borders to other jurisdictions.

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Better Than Ping Pong: Panda Diplomacy Builds [Resource] Relationships – by Cassie Ryan (Epoch Times Oct. 31 – Nov. 6, 2013)

http://www.theepochtimes.com/

Cute bears involved in uranium sales and free-trade agreements

A new study from Oxford University holds that the 50 something giant pandas on loan around the world are aimed at building ‘guanxi’ or deep, long-lasting relationships in exchange for “trades and foreign-investment deals.”

Australia, France, and most recently Canada received panda loans when uranium deals were struck with the Chinese regime. Panda transactions also took place with Asian nations like Malaysia and Thailand as part of free-trade agreements.

Published in the journal Environmental Practice, the study points to an emergent third phase in the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy of gifting and loaning pandas, whereby countries with important resources and technology can lease the black and white bears for a hefty fee. This new pattern appears to be related to the 2008 earthquake that struck Sichuan Province and damaged the Wolong Breeding Center, meaning that the 60 pandas there needed rehousing.

In phase one, during Mao Zedong’s era in the 1960s and 1970s, pandas were gifted to build strategic friendships. During Deng Xiaoping’s regime, starting in 1978, phase two involved loaning the bears in a capitalist lease model based on financial transactions.

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Uranium investors eye NAFTA challenge in Quebec – by Nicolas Van Praet (National Post – November 8, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

MONTREAL – U.S. investors are readying legal action against the Canadian government over Quebec’s resistance to Strateco Resources Inc.’s Matoush uranium mining project, the company’s chief executive says.

“We have been informed that certain important American shareholders have the intention to sue under Chapter 11 of the [North American Free Trade] agreement,” Guy Hébert said in an interview Thursday.

Mr. Hébert said he has advised them to wait for the outcome of the company’s own separate case against Quebec’s environment minister on the matter, in which it is seeking to get a definitive answer on whether the project can move forward. Some industry players say privately the confusion surrounding Matoush has made Quebec a laughing stock abroad, preventing other firms from being able to raise capital for mining projects in Canada’s second-largest province.

“Investors are telling us ‘You’re too risky’ because you’re in Quebec,’” said one senior mining executive who asked that his name not be used. “They’re saying ‘We don’t know if you can get your permitting and we don’t know how long it will take.’”

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Saskatchewan Premier presses Ottawa for Asian free-trade deals – by Iain Marlow (Globe and Mail – October 29, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

TORONTO — In late September, a Shanghai-bound cargo ship left the port of Seattle bearing containers stuffed with drums of uranium concentrate dug from a Saskatchewan mine, the first ever shipment of Canadian-sourced uranium concentrate to China.

For Cameco Corp., the Saskatoon-based mining giant behind the shipment, the demand from China, the world’s fastest-growing nuclear energy market, has translated into two agreements struck in 2010. Those deals, combined with subsequent accords, are worth about $3-billion.

Increasing shipments to Asia, such as Cameco’s, helped push the prairie province’s exports to $32.6-billion earlier this year, surpassing British Columbia for the first time, according to Statistics Canada. That made Saskatchewan Canada’s fourth-largest provincial exporter.

Premier Brad Wall, who was in Toronto on Monday to speak to a business lunch at the Shangri-La hotel, used Cameco as an example and said much of the province’s success is a result of seeking out emerging markets and cultivating ties with countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

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Cameco welcomes Greenland’s decision to lift uranium mining ban – by Jan Olsen (CTV News/The Associated Press – October 25, 2013)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Greenland’s parliament has agreed to remove a 25-year-old ban on uranium mining, paving the way for an industrial boom that the Arctic island hopes will help it gain independence from former colonial master Denmark.

Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, wants to step up its mining of rare earths, valuable elements used in the production of smartphones, weapons systems and other modern technologies. But uranium is often found mixed into rare earths, so the ban was blocking key mining activity.

Cameco (TSX:CCO), one of the world’s largest uranium producers, welcomed the decision, adding that it would be open to setting up projects in Greenland.

“We are pleased to see that Greenland has opened the door to safe and responsible uranium mining,” said Rob Gereghty, a spokesman for the Saskatoon-based company.

“Currently, we are focusing our exploration efforts in Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and the United States. As we look forward, the removal of this barrier will allow us to consider Greenland for potential uranium exploration projects.”

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NEWS RELEASE: Steelworkers Question Uranium Changes in Canada-EU Deal

TORONTO, Oct. 22, 2013 /CNW/ – The Conservative government must come clean on reports that the European Union trade deal will remove foreign-ownership limits from Canada’s uranium industry, says the United Steelworkers (USW), Canada’s largest union of uranium miners.

“We ask the federal government to clarify how this trade deal will affect foreign ownership of Canadian uranium mines,” said Ken Neumann, USW’s National Director for Canada.

“The lack of transparency about this important issue begs the question of what other controversial policy changes are hidden in this agreement. Canadians need to see the full text before our governments sign onto it,” Neumann said.

Last Thursday the federal government released a 44-page summary of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that features the word “transparent” 15 times, but does not mention the word “uranium.”

However, the Saskatchewan government issued a press release Friday that stated: “The new agreement will also ease Canadian restrictions on EU investment, including in the uranium mining sector.”

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Nuclear suppliers still hope for new Ontario reactors – by John Spears (Toronto Star – October 22, 2013)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Companies that supply Canada’s nuclear industry still hope Ontario will build new reactors

Canada’s nuclear industry isn’t taking the province’s decision to scrap plans for two new reactors as final, says the spokesman for nuclear suppliers. “I think the province will, in a year or two years time, once again open the file and look at new construction,” said Ron Oberth of the Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries.

Oberth expressed the hope in an interview after speaking to the Toronto Star’s editorial board. Energy minister Bob Chiarelli said earlier this month that Ontario won’t proceed with two new reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington nuclear station.

“It is not wise to spend billions and billions of dollars in new nuclear when that power is not needed,” Chiarelli said.
Over-all demand on Ontario’s power grid dropped 10 per cent from 2005 to 2012. (The figures don’t capture power supplied from some renewable energy projects).

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‘New day’ for Canada’s uranium market as free trade deal pushes industry past Cold War era – by Peter Koven (National Post – October 22, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

More than 20 years after the Cold War ended, Saskatchewan’s uranium sector is finally moving past it.

Following years of lobbying from Premier Brad Wall, the federal government has agreed to strike down foreign ownership restrictions on uranium mining in its proposed free trade deal with Europe. It opens the door for eager foreign companies like Areva SA and Rio Tinto Ltd. to make much larger investments in Saskatchewan’s uranium-rich Athabasca Basin.

“From the moment we were elected [in 2007], we’ve been working with the federal government on this,” Mr. Wall said in an interview. “In terms of uranium mining, it’s certainly a new day.”

The investment restrictions have been in place since 1970, when Ottawa introduced the non-residential ownership policy (or NROP). The law prevents foreign companies from owning more than 49% of a uranium mine in Canada, unless they cannot find a Canadian partner. It is a direct result of Cold War-era concerns about nuclear proliferation, and has looked increasingly dated in the years since then. Saskatchewan is the only province with producing uranium mines, so it is the only one affected by the law.

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Scrapped reactors ‘a psychological blow’ for Candu – by Richard Blackwell (Globe and Mail – October 11, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Ontario’s decision not to build new nuclear power plants will keep Canada’s home-grown atomic power company, SNC-Lavalin subsidiary Candu Energy Inc., dependent on maintenance and refurbishment of its existing reactors around the world.

Ontario Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli confirmed Thursday a report in The Globe and Mail that the province scrapped a plan to spend as much as $10-billion new nuclear reactors as part of its long-term energy strategy. Declining demand for electricity in the province, the potentially huge nuclear build-out costs and decreasing prices for natural gas and other power sources undercut the economic justification for nuclear plants. Ontario will, however, continue an ongoing refurbishment of Darlington Nuclear Generating Station’s four reactors.

The Energy Ministry’s decision “is a psychological blow, although not a huge surprise,” said Mark Winfield, an environmental studies professor at York University in Toronto, who follows the nuclear industry. “The writing has been on the wall for several years,” he said, since the provincial government balked at an earlier plan for new reactors back in 2009.

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Cameco, Sierra Club face off over uranium licences – by Canadian Press/CBC News Saskatchewan (October 04, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/sask/

An environmental group is raising pollution concerns about Cameco’s uranium mining in northern Saskatchewan to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But Cameco says the Sierra Club’s allegations that it massively exceeded regulatory limits are false.

The commission heard from both sides during public hearings that ran Tuesday to Thursday on Cameco’s application to renew its mine and mill licences for its Key Lake, McArthur River and Rabbit Lake facilities.

“The most disturbing thing we discovered in the process of preparing the submission were huge, very huge numbers, in terms of pollution that’s coming from the plant and getting into the environment,” John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, said Monday.

“Every kind of pollutant that comes out of them, their numbers are way over the limits and no one’s been enforcing it.” The Sierra Club says that as of 2010, water releases from the Deilmann tailings facility in cadmium exceed the Saskatchewan standard by 5,782 per cent. It says the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment allows Cameco to release water from tailings ponds directly into the environment at Horsefly Lake.

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