Russia's Limit on Uranium Exports Sends Prices Higher (excerpted) (Bloomberg, 5 May 2004)
http://npc.sarov.ru/english/digest/142004/section4p1.html Cameco Corp. plans to boost annual output 18 percent at Canada's McArthur River mine, the world's richest uranium deposit. Areva SA of France is investing $90 million to develop a mine in southern Kazakhstan. And International Uranium Corp. is searching the Gobi Desert.
Producers are scouring the world for uranium. The price of the radioactive element has risen 51 percent since the Russian government decided in October to limit its uranium exports, which are used to generate half of all U.S. nuclear power. At the same time, world demand will outpace supply by 11 percent in the decade ending in 2013 as inventories decline, the World Nuclear Association trade group forecasts.
"You just have to look at the supply and demand of uranium to see there's going to be a huge shortage," said Len Racioppo, president of Montreal-based Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., Cameco's second-biggest shareholder, with 3.44 million shares as of March.
Uranium reached a 20-year high of $17.75 a pound on the spot market in March after Russia decided to use more of the metal for 25 nuclear plants it plans to build by 2020. To keep prices from rising further, power companies began avoiding spot purchases, and prices leveled off in April. Buyers are instead focused on material needed in 2005 and 2006.
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There is no 3000 year supply of uranium.
Extraction of uranium from seawater would consume more energy that it would yield, and on a scale needed to supply current US U demand would be an environmental disaster.
Furthermore, there are no thorium cycle reactors - and there is no thorium cycle to support them.
More flat-earth-green-cheese-moon-pseudoscience nonsense.