www.miningmx.com | energy Downward pressures remain on uranium prices

Downward pressures remain on uranium prices
miningmx Allan Seccombe
2 Oct 2008 – “………………uranium companies face difficulties raising finance, raising the possibility of consolidation, Australia’s Resource Capital Research said.The spot price, according to Trade Tech, is $55/lb, down from last year’s all-time high of $138 reached in July.“Forward indicators (fund implied price – FIP) currently indicate an expectation for the uranium price to trade in the range $50-65/lb, potentially with downside trending pressure,” RCR said in a statement……………………………….Uranium companies, particularly the smaller players, have been hit hard by the down turn in the markets and global economic turmoil……………………….“Producers, however, could face significant challenges in financing and developing new projects, including spiralling cost pressures and potential delays variously relating to permitting, infrastructure development and commissioning,” it added.

Tags: uranium

October 3, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Labour, land woes may dog Indian nuclear power | Top News | Reuters

Labour, land woes may dog Indian nuclear power

By Himangshu Watts

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A U.S. civilian nuclear deal with India opens the taps to the country’s fuel-starved reactors, paving the way for them to double output, but building new capacity looks tricky.

Obstacles such as land acquisition — already putting the brakes on projects like Tata Motors’ low-cost Nano car — and a shortage of engineers mean the industry could struggle to attract what the Confederation of Indian Industry hopes will be $27 billion in 18-20 nuclear plants over the next 15 years………………………

For a nuclear plant, additional concerns about the environmental and health impact could also anger activists and local residents.

Last year, tribesmen in Meghalaya staged a five-day campaign to protest against government plans to mine uranium, saying this could affect the health of villagers in the area, home to the largest deposits in the country.

Labour, land woes may dog Indian nuclear power | Top News | Reuters

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive

October 3, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

How Washington Cripples The Energy Industry – Forbes.com

 Energy Outlook 2009

Forbes.com Joshua Zumbrun 10.01.08, – “……………………….Creating energy is a particularly cash-intensive business. And for no sector more so than nuclear power. The costs of building a single nuclear reactor could run over $5 billion. Building such a plant (even assuming that loan markets are normal) requires a great deal of faith in a stable energy policy. Proponents of nuclear power say construction of new plants would likely require the extension of a federal loan guarantee program, also created by the 2005 energy act, that’s set to expire in 2009………………………………”.

Tags: October1, 2008

October 2, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Let’s look at the issues: Energy

Let’s look at the issues: Energy

Independent Political Report September 29th, 2008

“……………………….Nuclear is the largest source of electricity that is not a fossil fuel. It does not generate any greenhouse gases, but the mining of uranium, which is used by nuclear plants, does considerable environmental damage. However, many environmentalists and policymakers still champion it as a solution to climate change, which it has the potential to be. Nuclear waste is also a problem with nuclear power, in that spent nuclear fuel has no safe place to be stored right now. Perhaps the greatest problem with nuclear power is the price to taxpayers. Each new nuclear plant built in the United States will cost at least one billion dollars in federal subsidies……………”

Let’s look at the issues: Energy

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 30, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

antinuclear

Running on empty Beyond Nuclear Linda Gunter 26 Sept 08 With the retreat of the “Gang of 20” in the Senate last week – where a bill that would have included unlimited federal loan guarantees for nuclear energy was never introduced

– will the failing economy now spell the end of heavily subsidized nuclear energy expansion plans?

Not necessarily.

Although the push for unlimited loan guarantees has been staved off, the previously approved nuclear loan guarantees lurch forward. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 approved nuclear loan guarantees, and in December 2007, Congress and President Bush approved $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for new reactors (and an additional $2 billion for new uranium enrichment)………………………

DOE admitted this week that $18.5 billion would build just two new reactors. However, DOE seems poised, along with the nuclear power industry’s army of lobbyists, to continue to seek expanded, or even unlimited, nuclear loan guarantees..

For example, Platt’s reported this week that, given the crises on Wall Street, DOE’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, Dennis Spurgeon, said that “government” (meaning taxpayers) may need to take on an even bigger role in financing the “nuclear renaissance.” ……………………….

Despite what’s being described as a financial “meltdown,” the real risk of meltdown – due to expanded nuclear power in this country propped up by multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies – is routinely ignored in the press.

All the more reason to remain vigilant lest the nuclear industry and its friends in government attempt quiet money grabs as part of the Wall Street bailout plans, or hidden in energy or climate bills.

Tags: Althoughthe push for unlimited loan guarantees has been staved off, the previously approved nuclear loan guarantees lurch forward. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 approved nuclear loan guarantees, and in December 2007, Congress and President Bush approved $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for new reactors (and an additional $2 billion for new uranium enrichment)………………………

September 26, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Uranium export value tipped to fall 8pc – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Uranium export value tipped to fall
ABC News 26 Sept 08 The value of Australia’s uranium exports is forecast to drop by 8 per cent or $60 million this financial year.The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) says that is because of a significant fall in spot prices, due to an increase in world production.

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 26, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Chaotic Markets See Spot Uranium Slide – International Business Times –

Chaotic Markets See Spot Uranium Slide
International Business Times

By Andrew Nelson

23 September 2008 – “…………………….After months of holding firm, last week’s decline in the uranium spot price has been followed with another decline this week. Four transactions in the spot uranium market this week sees the consultant’s weekly spot price indicator down US$3.00 to $60.00 per pound…………………………..TradeTech advises broader market pressure this week was a main contributor to price weakness, reporting that one distressed seller completed a sale for about 100 thousand pounds U3O8 (uranium oxide) at a price several dollars below published prices.

Chaotic Markets See Spot Uranium Slide – International Business Times –

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium, nuclearcosts

September 24, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Govt predicted to face uranium mining challenges – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Govt predicted to face uranium mining challenges
ABC News

Posted Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:27pm AEST

A market analyst says the incoming Western Australian Government will face challenges when processing applications for uranium mining because it is not equipped with the skills for assessing the mining of the resource.

Govt predicted to face uranium mining challenges – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 24, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Financial crisis may undermine participation in nuclear tender

Financial crisis may undermine participation in nuclear tender
Today’s Zaman 23 Sept 08 The current worldwide financial crisis seemed poised to hit the nuclear tender process in Turkey when companies expected to take part in a tender for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Akkuyu said yesterday they have had difficulty lining up financing due to the global financial turmoil……………………………….The companies demanded that Turkish Treasury guarantee that any losses in the event of unexpected problems, such as a court order to cease the plant’s operation or a change in the government’s nuclear policy, will be reimbursed. The companies asked that certain conditions in the contract be clarified and made subject to the relevant laws.

This will be the fourth tender to be held for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Turkey; the previous three tenders failed.

Financial crisis may undermine participation in nuclear tender

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, raduioactive

September 23, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Uranium Won’t Pay the Bills | newmatilda.com

Uranium Won’t Pay the Bills
New Natilda, Scott Ludlam  18 Sept 08 Colin Barnett hopes to raise billions by lifting WA’s ban on uranium mining. But this dangerous policy doesn’t even make economic sense, writes Senator Scott Ludlam
Uranium mining is frequently presented as the only solution to a range of economic power security and climate change challenges. In reality, however, the uranium industry creates far more problems than it claims to solve…………………….

Decades of deep community opposition is only one of the reasons there has never been a commercial uranium mine in Western Australia. Another is the inherent volatility in the uranium market.

Barnett’s hopes for uranium as the newest phase of WA’s quarry economy should be treated with deep suspicion by West Australians, not only for the serious environmental and social concerns this type of mining raises, but also because the economic reasons for uranium mining are far more shaky than the industry would have us believe.

The fortunes of the uranium miners — and their political supporters — now depend entirely on three factors: the long-term profitability of the global nuclear power industry; the geopolitics of multiple nuclear arms races and the potential for acts of nuclear terrorism; and the determined opposition from those in the community who stopped believing the lies of this industry a long time ago. All three of these factors are entirely out of the hands of the new Premier………………….. A recent status report of the global nuclear industry concluded that on the basis of faltering construction rates, rising costs, legal and political challenges, the ageing of the world’s current reactor fleet and the uncompromising nature of the technology, “…the number of nuclear power plants operating in the world will most likely decline over the next two decades with a rather sharper decline to be expected after 2020.”

Uranium Won’t Pay the Bills | newmatilda.com

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 22, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Multinational Monitor

Nuclear’s Power Play: Give Us Subsidies or Give Us Death Multinational Monitor By Tyson Slocum SEP/OCT 2008 Most energy analysts in the early- and mid-1990s assumed nuclear power in the United States was dying a slow death. Utilities were saddled with unmanageable debt, mainly from the $60 billion in cost overruns and plant shutdowns due to the industry’s misadventures in the 1970s (when nukes were promoted as a solution to crippling high oil prices and calls for energy independence). Components in aging plants were failing, solutions to highly radioactive waste were non-existent, and the industry was still haunted by the Chernobyl catastrophe and the near meltdown of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island reactor………………………..

To top it off, 9/11 and its aftermath placed nuclear power facilities at-risk as targets, which prompted some to begin writing nuclear’s obituary. After all, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others boasted that Al Qaeda had commercial nuclear reactors on their hit lists.

But a funny thing happened on the way to nuclear’s funeral. In 2008, nuclear power is on the brink of a revival, as unprecedented federal subsidies offered as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, combined with generous state incentives, have triggered a race to build the first commercial nuclear reactor in the United States in a generation………………………….

The nuclear industry has aggressively touted nuclear power’s low-carbon emissions as a reason to heap nearly all “clean” technology subsidies on expensive new reactors.

Without those subsidies, there would be no prospect of a nuclear revival. “The supposed nuclear revival is a carefully manufactured illusion that seeks to become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” write Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, “yet it cannot actually occur in a market economy, as many energy-industry leaders privately acknowledge.”……………..nuclear power is so uneconomic that there is no reason to debate how safe it is — the technology should be ruled out on economic grounds alone. Write Lovins and Sheikh, “In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded and obsolete — so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe.”………………………..political power gives utilities the ability to extract various supports from state governments, including authorizations to charge consumers to cover the costs of utilities’ failed investments. It also gives them considerable influence with their state’s Congressional delegation.The second asset of the industry is its willingness to spend lots of money to influence political outcomes. The nuclear power industry has made $67 million in campaign contributions to federal candidates since 2001, with 63 percent going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics……………………………..The nuclear industry’s very existence is predicated on the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the liability of a nuclear reactor operator for any accident…………………………..Wall Street investment banks joined the nuclear industry in pushing for a large-scale loan guarantee program. Investment banks would like to broker financing deals for nuclear plants, but they know no deals will be forthcoming without government guarantees………………………

Chronic Corporate Welfare Federal loan guarantees and Price-Anderson are not the only subsidies that the nuclear industry has obtained or is seeking.

The 2005 Energy Policy Act provided $2 billion in “risk insurance” payments to cover delays in nuclear reactor construction, and promised nuclear power companies 1.8 cents for every kilowatt of power produced from their new facilities. Taxpayers also cover half of all administrative and legal costs associated with new reactor applications.

Even as the industry aims to build new plants, there remains no U.S. system for managing high-level nuclear waste. The industry favors initiation of a dumpsite in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Not only does this proposal pose grave safety risks — including those related to shipping high-level waste across the country — it would impose tens of billions of dollars of costs on taxpayers.

At the state level, utilities are obtaining pledges of full cost recovery — state regulatory agency assurances that the utilities will be able to pass costs of nuclear construction, whatever they are, on to ratepayers.

Multinational Monitor

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radiation

September 20, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Capital News 9 | 24 Hour Local News | HEADLINES | More problems for Vermont Yankee nuke plant

More problems for Vermont Yankee nuke plant 17 Sept 08  MONTPELIER, VT. — There’s been more trouble at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, as officials there have reduced power to 55 percent after a problem with a cooling tower.


A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said three sections of the plant’s east cooling tower were leaking, forcing it to shut down. Officials say the leak appeared to be about 60 gallons per minute because of faulty packing material in an expansion joint.
n 2007, a section of the plant’s west cooling tower collapsed, and new problems were found with the tower this July.

Capital News 9 | 24 Hour Local News | HEADLINES | More problems for Vermont Yankee nuke plant

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 18, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Nuclear power, LLC

Nuclear power, LLC
This potent form of energy wouldn’t be feasible without the law that limits plant owners’ liability. We should keep that in mind amid calls for expansion.Star Tribune By KENNETH ZAPPLast update: September 15 2008

Republicans, from John McCain to congressional candidates, claim that nuclear power is safe and should be expanded in order to solve the energy crisis. But nuclear power would be impossible without the Price-Anderson Act, which shields nuclear power plant owners from free-market forces.

Specifically, the law caps the amount of insurance a nuclear plant owner must carry and limits the liability the owner would face in case of catastrophic accident or terrorist attack………………………………..Without the protections of the Price-Anderson Act, owners of nuclear power plants could not afford to purchase enough insurance to cover the full range of risks associated with their operations. If nuclear power were safe, private companies would not need the government to protect them from the risks……………………………Any claim that nuclear power is safe should be subject to two simple tests. Will insurance companies write policies to cover the full range of possible disasters? Will any local government accept the waste from nuclear power plants?

Nuclear power, LLC

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 16, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Honeymoon turning sour – Local News – News – General – The Independent Weekly

Honeymoon turning sour
The Independent Weekly BILL NICHOLAS12/09/2008 Toronto-based Uranium One, the world’s tenth largest uranium producer which gained SA Government approval to mine at Honeymoon in January this year, cannot fund the capital cost and is seeking a financial partner for the project.

Uranium One’s Adelaide manager Greg Cochrane confirmed the project depended upon finding a new partner for which investment bank Rothschild had been engaged………………………………

A perusal of Uranium One’s financial situation in Canada reveals the reason for an inability to fund Honeymoon. An expansive CEO left the company earlier in the year, the share price is down 72 per cent, “non-core” assets are being prepared for sale and the new acting CEO is saying things shareholders are never crazy about. “The company has sufficient liquidity and capital resources to meet approved development plans for at least the next 12 months.” Except for Honeymoon, obviously.

Acting CEO Jean Nortier said shareholders can expect to see an “impairment charge” against Honeymoon being made in the second half

Honeymoon turning sour – Local News – News – General – The Independent Weekly

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 13, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment