Uranium Market

The main fuel component for commercial nuclear power reactors is Uranium. When compared to fossil fuels, it has a competitive edge due to factors such as economics and environmental conditions and in particular due to its international market availability. Uranium world demand reached to 67 320 tU in 2004, which was covered with additional sources. To project the uranium markets behavior requires to know and to accept some conditions tied to the demand, such as the electrical world consumption, the greenhouse effect; water desalination, production of hydrogen, industrial heat, the innovative development of nuclear reactors, and the average time of 10 years between the beginning of exploration programs and definition of deposits, which it owes mainly to the difficulty of achieving the legal, environmental and local community authorizations, to open new mining centers. Uranium market future projections, made by IAEA experts in 2001, that considered middle and high demand scenarios, concluded that cumulatively to year 2050, with regard to demand it will be required 5.4 and 7.6 million tons of uranium respectively, and with regard to the uranium price, it should present a sustained increase. In the last years the situation of the uranium market has changed dramatically. In August 2006 the price of uranium reached to USD 106/kgU in the spot market, surpassing all the made projections. The increase in price that has stayed in rise in the last five years is reactivating the prospection and exploration efforts anywhere in the world, and competition between prospective areas of potential resources mainly in less explored territories