Trends on future energy needs and implication on uranium demand

The paper presents the trends on the growing needs for energy and the implications on uranium demand. Several predictions on the evolution, time dependence, of the world primary energy sources, and the world population are available, showing similar results up to 2030/2050. The discrepancies appear beyond that period. Based on these forecasts, the different scenarios are presented and analyzed for the electronuclear production. Until 2050, the different predictions are quite consistent; while they differ by a factor 2 or more for year 2100. Thus, the installed nuclear capacity for year 2050 corresponds to a mean value of about 1100 GWe within a reasonable range between 700 to 1200 GWe. While for year 2100, these installed capacities range from 2404 GWe to 5773 GWe. However, it should be noticed that all scenarios, whatever their assumptions, show an increase of the electronuclear capacity. Then, evolution of uranium consumption and cost with time, according to various scenarios is calculated. The Uranium consumed in 2050 jumps from a value ranging between 5 and 8 Mtons, to a value reaching 17 Mtons, in order to account for the uranium needs for the new nuclear reactors built before, which are aimed to last 60 years. In 2100, a minimum level of 20 Mtons can be reached, for the scenario that is the least conservative. The sharp increase of uranium price due to extraction from ores with very low uranium content (academically from sea water) can be foreseen before end of the century. This increase leads to clear tension on the uranium market. In spite of this high price of uranium, and in spite of higher anticipated construction costs of Gen IV systems in comparison to those of Gen-II or Gen-III reactors (20 to 30% more expensive), Gen-IV systems still appear more competitive economically between 2050 and 2080 due to their recycling/reprocessing capacities, allowing also to save the specific resource for long term storage of spent fuels. (authors)