Uranium Spot Price On The Move Higher

Published on Tuesday November 19 2013 (AEST)  

 Australia's leading pure-play uranium miner, Paladin Energy , has been undertaking an extensive cost-cutting program. As a relative newcomer in Australia's legacy uranium industry, Paladin suffers from a comparatively high cost base, made no easier by the fact the company's two operating developments are in Namibia and Malawi. The company is also significantly geared.

Thus Paladin has been burning cash at current spot uranium prices. The company attempted to sell off a stake in its premier Langer Heinrich project, but found no buyers at an acceptable price. There followed a capital raising, but not to a level that offers a buffer against ongoing low uranium prices. Cost cutting has become essential.

Still in Australia, Russia's state-owned Rosatom announced this week it was putting its Honeymoon uranium project in South Australia ? one of only four government approved uranium mines in the country ? on a standby setting, while halting further investment in uranium production worldwide.
Kazakhstan is the global swing producer of uranium, boasting a level of resource that requires production volume controls in order not to flood the market and kill the uranium price altogether. State-owned miner Kazatomprom has announced it will now curtail any expansion of production and maintain output at 2013 levels.

Cameco, Canada's globally significant uranium producer, has also announced cost cutting.
Across the globe, the uranium supply side is being forced to respond to stubbornly weak uranium prices through project deferrals and shutdowns and general cost cutting. The response is potentially having some impact, given the spot uranium price has managed to tick up now for two weeks in a row.

The connection is not lost on industry consultant TradeTech, who further notes the US-Russian HEU supply agreement formally came to an end last week.

TradeTech reports a total of 900,000lbs of uranium changed hands in the spot market last week over seven transactions, with speculators moving into the buy-side and producers and intermediaries making up the sell-side. 

The result is a US75c increase in TradeTech's spot price indicator over the week to US$35.85/lb. The previous week the price bounced US85c off a low of US$34.25/lb.

TradeTech's term market price indicators remain unchanged at US$37.25/lb (mid) and US$50.00/lb (long). 


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Nymex U3O8 Spot Futures Jump To $36.25 p/lb

November 16, 2013  

Building on previous week rises, again overnight we saw the Nymex November futures move to $36.25P/Lb, building further upward momentum onto last weeks Uranium Spot of $35.35


The early Green shoots do seem to be evolving.


*** Note this recent move is the highest since July 2013 ***

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Russia Sends Last LEU Uranium Shipment To US

Published on Thursday November 14 2013 (AEST)

 
Russia sends last uranium shipment to US in accordance with HEU - LEW agreement

Russia has started Thursday dispatching the last shipment of low-enriched uranium ( LEU ), obtained from high - enriched uranium ( HEU ), completing to supply the US with uranium in accordance with the HEU - LEU agreement, the Russian mass media report.

The last LEU shipment is due to be sent from a St Petersburg port to a Baltimore port. Russian and US officials and representatives of Russian and foreign companies, which took part in the implementation of the HEU-LEU program, attended the ceremony of shipping off the cargo.

A Rosatom representative specified that 10 cylinders with uranium, which total weight stood up to 160 tons, are to be shipped.

The US - Russia HEU - LEU agreement was reached in 1993. The program, unofficially dubbed "Megatons to Megawatts" was agreed to last for 20 years and envisioned converting 500 tons of Russian HEU into LEU to produce fuel for US gas stations.

The Russian Techsnabexport company signed a contract with USEC ( United States Enrichment Corporation ) on January 14, 1994. The Russian-US HEU - LEU program allowed the US to produce more than seven trillion kilowatt of electricity.

Voice of Russia, RIA
Read more: 

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_14/Russia-sends-last-uranium-shipment-to-US-in-accordance-with-HEU-LEW-agreement-5423/




ST. PETERSBURG — Take a canister, fill it with down-blended uranium worth $2.5 million, secure it and 39 others to the deck of a container ship, send it off toward Baltimore, and you’ve just about completed a deal that provided commercial uses in America for the remains of 20,000 dismantled Russian nuclear bombs.
Thursday evening, under thick, wintry clouds, the M.V. Atlantic Navigator prepared to leave the dockyards here, closing out a 20-year joint U.S. and Russian program that safely defused 500 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium, known as HEU.


It provided jobs to nuclear technicians at a time when Russia was in chaos; it sparked the development of a dilution process that enables bombs to become fuel for power plants; and it may have helped to keep poorly secured nuclear materials out of the wrong hands — at least that’s what Americans say. Russians strongly deny that.

Both sides agree that it was a hardy example of the ways in which Americans and Russians can cooperate, if they have a mind to do so. Despite the tensions between Moscow and Washington, Russian uranium today provides 50 percent of the output of American nuclear power plants, or 10 percent of all U.S. electricity.
Gennady Solovyov traveled from the Ural Mountain industrial city of Novouralsk to watch the last canisters get loaded. From the bridge of the Atlantic Navigator, he looked out as a huge blue crane picked up the canisters, four at a time, and lowered them gently to the deck.

“Russia was in dire straits,” he said, and it was his job, at the Urals Electrochemical Combine, to figure out nearly two decades ago how to blend HEU, or highly enriched uranium, down to a level of enrichment that would work in a power plant. Some Americans had suggested that Russia didn’t have the capability, but he proved them wrong.

The work kept hundreds of highly trained people employed at his plant over the years.
The commercial value of the agreement was $17 billion. The money came from American utilities, and it provided a significant income flow to a struggling Russia. The agreement was due to expire this year, and Russia is now signing straight commercial deals directly with buyers abroad. Both countries continue to down-blend their excess uranium,

“The program has been tremendously successful,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said in a telephone interview from Washington. “It met its goals in terms of scale and in terms of schedule.”
Its conclusion, long in sight, should not dislocate the commercial uranium market, he said, or have any sharp effect on electricity prices.

 

It provided jobs to nuclear technicians at a time when Russia was in chaos; it sparked the development of a dilution process that enables bombs to become fuel for power plants; and it may have helped to keep poorly secured nuclear materials out of the wrong hands — at least that’s what Americans say. Russians strongly deny that.

Both sides agree that it was a hardy example of the ways in which Americans and Russians can cooperate, if they have a mind to do so. Despite the tensions between Moscow and Washington, Russian uranium today provides 50 percent of the output of American nuclear power plants, or 10 percent of all U.S. electricity.
Gennady Solovyov traveled from the Ural Mountain industrial city of Novouralsk to watch the last canisters get loaded. From the bridge of the Atlantic Navigator, he looked out as a huge blue crane picked up the canisters, four at a time, and lowered them gently to the deck.

“Russia was in dire straits,” he said, and it was his job, at the Urals Electrochemical Combine, to figure out nearly two decades ago how to blend HEU, or highly enriched uranium, down to a level of enrichment that would work in a power plant. Some Americans had suggested that Russia didn’t have the capability, but he proved them wrong.

The work kept hundreds of highly trained people employed at his plant over the years.
The commercial value of the agreement was $17 billion. The money came from American utilities, and it provided a significant income flow to a struggling Russia. The agreement was due to expire this year, and Russia is now signing straight commercial deals directly with buyers abroad. Both countries continue to down-blend their excess uranium.

“The program has been tremendously successful,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said in a telephone interview from Washington. “It met its goals in terms of scale and in terms of schedule.”
Its conclusion, long in sight, should not dislocate the commercial uranium market, he said, or have any sharp effect on electricity prices.

“It is the most successful nonproliferation program to date,” said Philip Sewell, who is a senior vice president at USEC, the Bethesda-based receiver of Russian uranium under the deal. Now a private company, it was formerly owned by the U.S. government.

“We never considered there to be a nonproliferation threat. The material was secured,” countered Vladimir Kuchinov of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency. But the program, he said, was the most sensible way to dispose of weapons material.

The program had to take into account the concerns of disarmament people, nonproliferation people and electric utility people, said Rose Gottemoeller, who was in on its beginnings and is now acting undersecretary for arms control and international security at the U.S. State Department.
“It didn’t sound very practical to me,” she said. “We had to figure out ways to fit this program into normal market competitiveness.” 

But months of talks, she said, produced “a model for how to make a lot of disparate forces work together.”
It nearly foundered in the late 1990s, when the Russian economy collapsed again, NATO went to war in Yugoslavia and USEC was privatized. But the two countries worked out ways to keep it going, and there was plenty of pride over that among those who gathered for Thursday’s going-away.
“This is one that worked well for both countries — not easy to achieve,” said Rick Shannon, president of Atlantic Ro-Ro Carriers, which operates the Atlantic Navigator.

The ship is under the command of Roman Elokhin, a Russian sea dog with a full head of white hair, and in addition to the 60 tons of uranium canisters, it’s carrying the usual load of aluminum, steel and containers. In early December, it will call at Ruckert Terminals in Baltimore, across the water from Fort McHenry.
The uranium, last loaded, will be first to go ashore. Then it will be taken to one of three plants to be fabricated into usable fuel.

The North Atlantic in winter, it gets a little bit hairy out there,” Shannon said. “But the old captains in the Russian fleet are some of the best in the world.”

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Small Nuclear Reactors Hold Great Potential for US

Published on Thursday November 14 2013 (AEST)  

The development of small reactor technology in the United States advanced with the announcement by the Babcock & Wilcox Co. today that it is accelerating its search for additional equity partners for its mPower small modular reactor program. The U.S. Department of Energy last year implemented a private-public partnership program to license small modular reactor designs. Babcock & Wilcox Co., in partnership with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bechtel International, won DOE's first award for developing and deploying small reactor technology. Following is a statement from the Nuclear Energy Institute.



"Small, scalable reactors hold great potential for our nation. This innovative technology is supported by nearly 4,000 combined reactor-years of operating experience in the United States.

"Small reactor concepts offer the promise of reducing greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from the electric, transport and industrial sectors. They can generate electricity for remote locations and provide secure electricity to our military bases. They can be added as needed to match growth in electricity demand. And by powering desalinization, they can produce vast quantities of drinking fresh drinking water. The ability to build small reactors in controlled manufacturing facilities, greatly improving quality control and reducing production time, is another advantage that adds to the technology's potential for rapid commercialization.

"This action by Babcock & Wilcox demonstrates the maturation of its small reactor project. It is a timely step to keep the project on track with the resources and assets it will need for wide commercialization. As the United States advances this exciting new technology, thousands of jobs will be created. Babcock & Wilcox already has more than 600 employees working to develop the advanced mPower reactor design."

The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear energy industry's policy organization. This news release and additional information about nuclear energy are available at www.nei.org.

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Buyer Interest Heats Up For Uranium

Published on Tuesday November 12 2013 (AEST) 

U3O8- Buyers Re - Emerge For Uranium
FNArena News - November 12 2013

By Greg Peel

As to whether last week saw some light at the end of the long, dark uranium tunnel last week is yet to be determined. Often in the post - Fukushima era we have seen the spot price rebound briefly off lows considered to be a line in the sand, only to suffer further drift - offs soon afterward. Once upon a time US$50 / lb appeared to be an obvious floor, then 40 seemed ridiculous, until 35 was breached. Either way, last week industry consultant TradeTech's spot price indicator rose US85c to US$35.10 / lb.

October saw both traders and producers eager to offload unwanted inventories ahead of year - end. There has been plenty of material hanging over the market for some time, but until last month the sellers were hopeful of buying interest appearing at lower prices. Yet when that interest faded away, the sellers decided to bite the bullet, sending the spot price down US75c over the month.

Last week those eager sellers found buyers. Indeed, as the week progressed renewed buying interest saw prices increase and sellers with larger quantities back off, TradeTech reports. Seven transactions totaling 1mlbs of U3O8 equivalent were completed with both utilities and traders on the buy-side. Prices rose steadily over the week.

There were no transactions completed in the term markets last week. TradeTech's term price indicators remain unchanged at US$37.25 / lb (mid) and US$50.00 / lb ( long ).

Floor price or head fake ?  Cash - burning producers can only pray.

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Uranium Is Heating Up

Published on Saturday November 09 2013 (AEST)

Jeb Handwerger, publisher of Gold Stock Trades newsletter, discusses his outlook on uranium. Jeb points to toxic air pollution in China and the country's need for more power as the reason why China is leading the world in the construction of new nuclear power plants. 

India and Russia are building nuclear power plants. Even oil rich countries like United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are investing in nuclear to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. 

Australia and Greenland have recently lifted bans on uranium mining. Volumes moving into uranium stocks are rising and last week, Cameco shocked markets by posting a profit, even with uranium at 8 year lows. M&A in the uranium sector has been exceptional over the past year, particularly in the Athabasca Basin.

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