Twitter

Uranium and Nuclear Power Industry

France’s $1.6 Billion Uranium Deal With Mongolia Faces Delays – by Ilya Arkhipov, Samy Adghirni and Francois de Beaupuy (Bloomberg News – February 22, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A $1.6 billion uranium mining deal between France and Mongolia that is part of French efforts to diversify supplies to power its fleet of nuclear reactors is running into political hurdles.

A debate about protecting strategic resources in Mongolia risks delaying the finalization of the agreement until after elections in June, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. Progress has also been hampered after the Asian country’s chief negotiator stepped down, a third person said, meaning the deal had to be redrafted.

Read more

Thousand Bagger in Uranium Mining – by Tom Humphreys (The Big Score – February 24, 2024)

https://www.thebigscore.com/

Stephen B. Roman led Denison Mines from 8.5 cents to $87 per share in 13 years, tussled with prime ministers, and dominated the INSANE 20th century uranium business. This is his story.

Rage filled Stephen Roman’s stout frame as he stormed Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson’s office in 1965. Exploding over a ruined $700 million uranium contract, Roman hurled “son of a bitch” at Pearson, who would later quip that Roman was a relic, lagging “fifty years behind the apes.”

It wouldn’t be Roman’s last battle with a prime minister. His improbable rise from tomato picker to mining king is a tale of grit and the dramatic turns in 20th century uranium mining. Pope John Paul II even blessed Roman’s sprawling Toronto estate. Merging business, politics, and the biggest uranium mine, this is how Stephen Roman built an empire.

Read more

How an 1872 law is being exploited to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon (Fast Company.com – February 20, 2024)

https://www.fastcompany.com/

It’s just one of multiple sites where companies are allowed to mine on public land—without paying a dime of royalties to the U.S. Treasury.

When Congress opened U.S. public lands for mining in 1872, the nation was less than a century old. Miners used picks, shovels, and pressurized water hoses to pry loose valuable minerals like gold and silver.

Today, mining is a high-technology industry, but it’s still governed by the Mining Law of 1872. As was true 150 years ago, companies can mine valuable mineral deposits from federal lands without paying any royalties to the U.S. Treasury.

Read more

Uranium Prices Are Warming. Now Consider the Bear Case: Lithium. – by Jack Hough (Barrons – February 9, 2024)

https://www.barrons.com/

Uranium dipped in price this past week after hitting its highest level in 16 years. Is it about to get lithium-ed? Lithium, the lightest metal, multiplied more than five times in price in less than a year after CME Group launched a futures contract in 2021. Then it collapsed, and now it’s lower than it started.

Uranium, one of the heaviest metals, doubled in price since summer to a recent $106 per pound before dipping to just below $100. Two niche exchange-traded funds, Global X Uranium and Sprott Uranium Miners, together took in more than $1 billion in fresh investor cash over the past year, as assets under management swelled to a combined $5 billion.

Read more

OPINION:The strengthening case for nuclear – by Marcus Gee (Globe and Mail – February 10, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Last week, the Ontario government announced plans to spend many years and billions of dollars refurbishing an old nuclear plant in Pickering, just east of Toronto. Pure folly, said its critics. In fact, the decision makes good, solid sense, both for Ontario and the planet.

Winning the battle to control global warming depends in large part on powering more things with electricity – specifically electricity that isn’t produced by burning fossil fuels. Making that energy shift is a huge task, but Ontario has two big advantages.

Read more

OPINION: The folly of Ontario’s nuclear power play – by Mark Winfield (Globe and Mail – February 7, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Mark Winfield is a professor of environmental and urban change at York University and co-chair of the faculty’s Sustainable Energy Initiative. He is also co-editor of Sustainable Energy Transitions in Canada (UBC Press, 2023).

The Ontario government’s announcement last week of its intention to pursue the refurbishment of the Pickering B nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Ontario between Toronto and Pickering represents a strategic triumph for the provincially owned Ontario Power Generation utility. The project would significantly reinforce the utility’s already dominant position in the province’s electricity system.

How well the decision serves the interests of Ontario residents, taxpayers and electricity ratepayers, and advances the sustainable decarbonization of the province’s electricity system, is another question altogether.

Read more

Ukraine Emerges as Battleground in US-Russia Nuclear Contest – by David Brennan (Newsweek – February 04, 2024)

https://www.newsweek.com/

Apivotal nuclear showdown is simmering behind Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, as Kyiv pushes its international partners—primarily the U.S.—to kneecap one of Moscow’s most influential and lucrative strategic industries.

While Ukraine’s troops weather fresh Russian winter offensives in the south and east of the country, Kyiv’s energy minister is advancing a long-term plan to pivot away from Russian-designed and fueled nuclear energy reactors, the export of which has given the Kremlin powerful leverage over a raft of European nations.

Read more

Activists, Hollywood take down top 50 mining company – by Frik Els (Mining.com – January 31, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

The ranks of the most valuable mining companies in the world were throughly scrambled in 2023 as governments intervened, lithium and nickel prices tumbled, gold hit records and a new listing went ballistic.

At the end of 2023, the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners reached a combined $1.42 trillion, up a healthy, if far from spectacular $48.7 billion over the course of 2023. Mining’s top tier is also worth $330 billion less than in March 2022.

Metal and mineral markets are volatile at the best of times – the nickel, cobalt and lithium price collapse in 2023 was extreme but not entirely unprecedented. Rare earth producers, platinum group metal watchers, iron ore followers, and gold and silver bugs for that matter, have been through worse.

Read more

Uranium price bound for US$160 record: Sprott – by Colin McClelland (Northern Miner – January 26, 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

The price of uranium could surpass 2007 highs this year as utilities ramp up demand for nuclear fuel and miners hit snags in boosting supply, the world’s largest investment fund in the physical metal says.

Uranium’s highest-ever price was US$140 per lb. some 17 years ago and it could hit US$160 per lb. in 2024 from US$106 per lb. on Friday, according to John Ciampaglia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management. It runs the US$6.5 billion Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (TSX: U.U for $US; U.UN for $CAD).

Read more

Mining to resume at McClean Lake (World Nuclear News – January 25, 2024)

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/

More than 15 years after mining was suspended at McClean Lake in Saskatchewan, joint venture partners Orano Canada Inc and Denison Mines Corp have announced that production is to restart using the patented Surface Access Borehole Resource Extraction (SABRE) mining method.

The companies intend to begin mining at the McClean North deposit in 2025, targeting production of 800,000 pounds U3O8 (308 tU, 100% basis) in 2025. Around 3 million pounds U3O8 (100% basis) has been identified for potential additional production from a combination of the McClean North and Caribou deposits from 2026 to 2030.

SABRE is a non-entry, surface-based mining method that uses a high-pressure water jet placed at the bottom of a drill hole to excavate a mining cavity. The cuttings from the excavation process are then air lifted to the surface, separated and stockpiled.

Read more

Is uranium poised for a renaissance? – by Jonathan Thompson (High Country News – January 25, 2024)

https://www.hcn.org/

As prices climb, mining proposals proliferate. But it might just be hype.

In December, Canada-based Energy Fuels announced plans to begin production at three of its uranium mines, including the controversial Pinyon Plain (née Canyon) Mine, near the Grand Canyon, as well as two operations near Moab, Utah.

It seems like everywhere you look these days, some firm — maybe one with an unusual name (Okapi or Kraken, say) — is announcing that it’s acquiring or staking of thousands of acres of public-land mining claims, embarking on exploratory drilling or has “exciting,” if enigmatic, survey results to report. Does this mean that the long-moribund domestic uranium-mining industry is sauntering down the comeback trail?

Read more

The US plan to break Russia’s grip on nuclear fuel – by Jamie Smyth and Sarah White (January 21, 2024)

https://www.ft.com/

Demand for atomic energy is surging but Moscow dominates the world’s supplies of enriched uranium

Shortly after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the US banned all imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal. But not all energy supplies were included in the US sanctions, nor in those of its European allies. On the contrary, western powers have taken care not to interrupt the flow of raw materials and services from Russia’s state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom and its subsidiary Tenex.

Moscow’s invasion exposed many vulnerabilities in US and European energy supplies, not least in the nuclear sector, where more than a fifth of the enriched uranium fuel required to power both regions’ nuclear fleets comes from Russia.

Read more

Ontario is about to decide whether to overhaul Canada’s oldest nuclear power plant. Does it deserve a second life? – by Matthew McClearn (Globe and Mail – January 22, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Pickering Nuclear Generating Station’s dull, mottled-grey concrete domes testify to its more than half a century of faithful service. Lately, its six operating reactors have produced enough electricity to supply 1.5 million people, about one-tenth of Ontario’s total population.

In the coming weeks, Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith is expected to reveal whether the province will extend the plant’s life. A study last summer from Ontario Power Generation, the station’s owner, examined the feasibility of refurbishing Pickering’s four “B” reactors, commissioned between 1983 and 1986.

Read more

Why the U.S. might just set its sights on Canadian-owned Westinghouse Electric – by David Olive (Toronto Star – January 18, 2024)

https://www.thestar.com/

Westinghouse Electric Co., a Canadian-owned company, is at the centre of a geopolitical struggle between the West and Russia for dominance in the global nuclear-power industry.

Westinghouse is among the nuclear industry’s few vertically integrated companies, designing reactors and providing them with nuclear fuel and maintenance services.The U.S. will be looking to Westinghouse to help triple America’s nuclear power capacity by 2050 to meet soaring U.S. power demand and fight climate change.

At some point, Washington is likely to exert pressure on Westinghouse to play a bigger role in the global nuclear-industrial complex, David Olive writes. Westinghouse also stands to gain from an end to Russia’s near-monopoly on nuclear fuel supplies in Eastern Europe.

Read more

Alberta’s Capital Power partners with Ontario Power Generation to build province’s first nuclear power reactor – by Emma Graney and Matthew McClearn (Globe and Mail – January 16, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

An Alberta power producer aims to build the province’s first nuclear power reactor by 2035. Capital Power Corp., which currently generates electricity using a diversified portfolio featuring natural gas, wind and solar, announced Monday a new partnership with Ontario Power Generation (OPG), operator of a large reactor fleet.

Over the next two years, the companies will jointly assess the viability of building small modular reactors in the Western province. If actually constructed, those SMRs might be jointly owned and operated, OPG says. The announcement is the latest indication that Alberta’s dalliance with nuclear power is gaining momentum. Talk of using reactors to generate steam for industrial processes goes back many years, but none were built.

Read more