Worldwide uranium resources and production capacity - the future of the industry

The worldwide uranium resource base is distributed across a broad range of confidence levels and projected production costs. High confidence low-cost resources (RAR) are, however, not geographically well diversified, with up to 75% of the resources located in just four countries. Therefore, to minimize the risk of production being delayed by environmental opposition, exploration should be diversified to include additional areas where mining will likely be accepted. Though the total resource base is extensive, a large part of it requires additional exploration, development drilling and engineering studies to be elevated to the high confidence RAR classification. Exploration investment needs to be made available now to ensure that resources are adequate to satisfy future uranium demand. For this to happen, however, the uranium industry must be confident that the recent increase in the market price will be sustainable over a long enough time period for it to accept the risks inherent in uranium exploration. Among the known uranium deposits that have near-term development potential, relative few have projected production capacities in excess of 3 000 t U/year. Therefore, the industry may be facing the need to develop large numbers of relatively small projects with production capacities in the 400 to 1 000 t U/year range. This scenario could well over load government agencies responsible for project permitting and licensing, potentially leading to delays in the start of production for lack of required permits. (author)