Atom May Be the Future for Canada
Saskatoon-based Cameco is the world's largest uranium producer. Its uranium products are used to generate electricity in nuclear power plants around the world including Ontario, where Cameco is a partner in North America's largest nuclear electricity generating facility.
For much of that decade and into the new century, prices for uranium oxide or "yellowcake" remained in a deep freeze that had set in when the Western world went cold on fission after the notorious partial meltdown of the No. 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979. Smacked hard again by the vastly more serious Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine in 1986, the price had plunged to less than $9 (U.S.) a pound by early 1990 from its 1979 high of $43, as the United States and other nations abandoned plans to expand their fleets of atomic power plants, driven off by multibillion-dollar price tags and public opposition, leaving too much mining capacity in operation for too few customers.
Since bottoming out at just over $7 a pound in December, 2001, uranium has redeemed itself and them by rocketing skyward, recently hitting $37.50 on the spot market.
The rise has been fuelled by a variety of developments, including a growing interest in atomic power in electricity-starved China and India, both of which are planning to double their reactor fleets over the next 15 years, and by a renewed interest in the West, where, in the age of global warming, there is a growing push to reduce fossil fuel emissions. In all, the International Atomic Energy Agency is now forecasting 60 additional plants will be added by 2020 to the approximately 440 currently producing power in 31 countries around the world.
The icing on the yellowcake has been the entry of hedge funds and other speculators into the spot market, buying up millions of pounds of uranium, betting the value will continue to rise.
The new speculative interest has had a significant impact in an industry that currently mines only about 108 million pounds of uranium a year, but where demand is running at 180 million pounds.
Cameco, whose rich mines in northern Saskatchewan's famed Athabasca Basin and elsewhere have given it control of a startling 20 per cent of world uranium production -- and a nickname as the Saudi Arabia of the business -- is, of course, a key beneficiary.
For much of that decade and into the new century, prices for uranium oxide or "yellowcake" remained in a deep freeze that had set in when the Western world went cold on fission after the notorious partial meltdown of the No. 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979. Smacked hard again by the vastly more serious Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine in 1986, the price had plunged to less than $9 (U.S.) a pound by early 1990 from its 1979 high of $43, as the United States and other nations abandoned plans to expand their fleets of atomic power plants, driven off by multibillion-dollar price tags and public opposition, leaving too much mining capacity in operation for too few customers.
Since bottoming out at just over $7 a pound in December, 2001, uranium has redeemed itself and them by rocketing skyward, recently hitting $37.50 on the spot market.
The rise has been fuelled by a variety of developments, including a growing interest in atomic power in electricity-starved China and India, both of which are planning to double their reactor fleets over the next 15 years, and by a renewed interest in the West, where, in the age of global warming, there is a growing push to reduce fossil fuel emissions. In all, the International Atomic Energy Agency is now forecasting 60 additional plants will be added by 2020 to the approximately 440 currently producing power in 31 countries around the world.
The icing on the yellowcake has been the entry of hedge funds and other speculators into the spot market, buying up millions of pounds of uranium, betting the value will continue to rise.
The new speculative interest has had a significant impact in an industry that currently mines only about 108 million pounds of uranium a year, but where demand is running at 180 million pounds.
Cameco, whose rich mines in northern Saskatchewan's famed Athabasca Basin and elsewhere have given it control of a startling 20 per cent of world uranium production -- and a nickname as the Saudi Arabia of the business -- is, of course, a key beneficiary.
posted by Ottawa Gas Prices | 8:37 AM
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