nuclear-news

 Highly controversial plans to mine and mill a rich tract of uranium in Pittsylvania County are before the General Assembly. Plenty of studies, lobbyists and scads of money are being thrown about on both sides of the argument.

Yet a brief story on page B7 in today’s Wall Street Journal deals with a topic that may be the truly decisive factor in the project……

the piece notes that spot prices for uranium have slid from about $130 a pound around 2007 when the Virginia Uranium plan was announced to about $42.25 a pound today. It had been about $70 a pound when Japan’s Fukushima reactor disaster caused it to tank in 2011.

The pieces states: “The industry needs prices at $75 or $80 a pound for future mine production to be profitable.” Thus, the uranium market has a long way to go before the 119 million pound tract around Coles Hill Farm east of Chatham, said to be the largest in the U.S., can actually be profitable to mine.

This is a fact that Virginia Uranium hasn’t really advertised……. The Website has factually inaccurate material, such as claiming that uranium has been mined successfully in Florida when what happened was that phosphate miners managed to get some uranium from their byproducts but shut down when uranium prices got too low……. One other point stands out. If Virginia proceeds with uranium mining, the fuel likely won’t be used by Virginia reactors or even American ones. It will be shipped overseas to fast-growing Asian countries, most likely. If there are major negative impacts from mining, people in Virginia and to some extent North Carolina, would bear the burden.