CAMECO Q4 PROFIT BEATS ESTIMATES

Cameco, the world's No. 2 uranium miner, earned C$598 million ($566.8 million), or $1.52 a share, in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31. That compared with C$31 million, or 8 cents a share, a year ago.

Excluding one-time items, the company earned C$248 million or 63 cents a share.

This was driven by higher profits in gold, as realized selling price for gold stood at $1,129 per ounce in 2009 compared with $806 per ounce in 2008, the company said.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S had expected on average a profit of 46 Canadian cents a share, before exceptional items.

Quarterly revenue rose 3 percent to $659 million.

Uranium revenues fell 2 percent in the period, as a 5 percent decline in sales volumes was countered by the impact of a 2 percent increase in our realized price, the company said.

Costs of sales for the quarter was C$30.29 up from C$24.16.

Cameco mines uranium primarily from its home province of Saskatchewan in Western Canada, as well as Kazakhstan and the United States.

Its main project is the Cigar Lake deposit in Saskatchewan, which flooded in 2006 and 2008 while under construction.

This month, the company said it had pumped out the flooded mine and should have it secure by October, at which point Cameco will be able to start looking ahead to a restart of construction.

The company said it is well positioned to meet its goal to double its annual mined output to about 40 million pounds by 2018.

Uranium Spot Price Rises To US$45.50 P/Lb

Weekly Spot Ux U3O8 Price
as of November 30, 2009
Change from previous (week)


U3O8 Price $45.50 +2.50

CURRENT LONG TERM - MEDIUM & SPOT URANIUM PRICING
As At 2ND DECEMBER 2009

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Uranium Long Term Price

U3O8 Long Term Price

US$62.00

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Uranium Mid Term Price

U3O8 Current Spot Price
US$50.00

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Uranium Spot Price

U3O8 Current Spot Price
US$45.50

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URANIUM PRICING OVERVIEW

It wasn't until last week that the market got some much needed good news. A preliminary prospectus was filed in Canada for the formation of a uranium investment fund. Uranium Investment Corp is looking to raise as much as C$150 million to invest in uranium products. TradeTech reports that the company intends to use almost all of the money it raises to acquire uranium products.

The supply side saw a number of sellers hit the market ahead of the announcement from the DOE and this served to drive prices down during the first few weeks of the month. Buyers were quick to take advantage of the bargains on offer, with 14 transactions totalling 1.6 million pounds U3O8 equivalent concluded during the first three weeks of November.

However, there were another 8 transactions totalling over 1.1 million pounds U3O8 that were concluded in the last week of the month, despite it being a short week. These deals not only helped to clear the market of most of the discounted supply, buyers also seemed willing to pay more to secure material. TradeTech reports that by month-end, prices had increased US$1.25 from the November 27 Spot Price Indicator.

Fellow-consultant Ux Consulting reports that buying interest in the U3O8 spot market last week was widespread, with buyers including US and non-US utilities, traders, producers, and financial entities, which included both existing players as well as new entrants. This trend continued into this week, notes UxC, with buyers increasingly raising bids. This encouraged the now more discretionary sellers to raise their offers in turn.

All up, it is beginning to look like the aggressive sellers of the past few months are being replaced by increasingly aggressive buyers. Yet with the end of the year quickly nearing, it seems the sellers that had to sell have now pretty much shifted their goods. On the buy side, it's the new entrants in the market and the potential for more to follow that has extended increased interest.

Yet how much the spot price will rise is still a hard question to answer, as it depends both on the depth and aggressiveness of buyers and the price level that would make sellers happy enough to bring more supplies to the market.

The gap between the spot uranium price and the term price is also closing after longs months of an unmoved long-term price. Sellers in the term market have begun to lower prices in an effort to compete with various "buy and hold" options available to utility companies. This saw both mid- and long-term prices come under pressure during November.

TradeTech's Mid-Term U3O8 Price Indicator was down US$5.00 to US$50.00 per pound U3O8 over last month. The Long-Term Price Indicator for November 30 is US$60.00 per pound U3O8, which was also down US$5.00 from the October 31 level.

UxC's long term price indicator has now dropped to US$62/lb.

DAILY ASX MARKET ANALYSIS
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Hyperion Reveals Design Details Of Its 25 MW Reactor

Firm kicks-off effort to prepare a submission to the NRC for safety review

Hyperion-Nuclear Power Generation, which is designing a small, 25 MWe, nuclear reactor, revealed design details on November 18, about the company's product at the Winter meeting of the American Nuclear Society taking place in Washington, DC.



This is the first release of reactor design information by the company. It marks the kick-off of the firm’s pre-application process with the NRC for safety analysis review that leads to a reactor design certification decision by the agency.

No matter where, globally, Hyperion plans to build their reactor, the NRC certification is a critical success factor because the agency’s regulatory review is considered to be the “gold standard” by other countries.

According to John Grizz Deal, Hyperion CEO, the firm plans to submit its design to the NRC in late 2010 or early 2011. Hyperion technical staff said the NRC learning curve is a challenge since it is not a light water reactor.

“We hope that it will not be too hard for them to understand our design. We choose technologies for fuel and fuel cladding that are well understood from a safety perspective.”


Design details

The sealed core, which is good for up to 10 years, does not require refueling at the customer site. Instead, the entire mechanism is replaced by a new one. The first use of the reactor at a customer site will be to produce electricity. The planned output of the reactor will be 25 MWe. Other applications include process heat and power for remote military applications. The company claims to have numerous customers lined up to buy the units.


Features Include

* Each unit will generate approximately 70MWt and 25MWe – enough to power 20,000 average American homes.

* The temperature of the secondary loop is 450-500 F. The secondary loop is a liquid metal circuit to produce steam so that there is no contact between the primary reactor and water in any form.

* Overnight costs are estimated by the firm to be $2,000 - $3,000 per KW capacity. The bottom line market goal is to generate electricity for approximately US$0.10 per kWh anywhere in the world.


Hyperion Reactor Information

* Operation is limited to reactivity adjustments to maintain constant temperature output and it has much fewer in-core components than a light water reactor. Hyperion claims that operational reliability is enhanced by the reduction of moving mechanical parts. Staffing will be at least two people at all times to comply with NRC requirements.

The reactor is intended to meet requirements for dedicated power by hospitals, factories, foundries, government centers, water treatment, or irrigation and desalinization. Resource intensive uses at remote sites include mining and oil production & refining. Military facilities that cannot compromise tactical readiness relative to having enough electricity may find the small footprint of the reactor and ease of transport to be of interest.


Safe shutdown

The reactor has two shutdown systems which provides redundancy. In event of a problem, there is a space in the center of the core into which the operator can rapidly dumped marble size boron pellets which will lead to rapid shutdown of the reactor.


Hyperion Plan Review of Active Core



Once reactor comes to end of fuel cycle, in about 5-10 years, it takes two years to cool down via air circulation. Then the entire reactor can be removed for disposition. Ideally, a customer will have two setups for these reactors so that one slot is empty at startup of the first one. When it’s done, you put the new one in the empty space, and let the old one cool off in place for two years. Then the customer can arrange for Hyperion to remove it. It gives new meaning to the term “plug and play.”


Future fuel fabrication plans

Fuel will be enriched to between 15-19.6% because this small reactor needs more highly enriched fuel to get power levels to point of economic value. Fuel is a uranium nitride alloy. No fuel has been fabricated or tested so far. A system engineer at Hyperion said in an interview INL’s ATR is an option for testing fuel. Other international sites (unnamed) are also interested if ATR is not available. The firm’s goal is to verify that fuel meets requirements for higher burn-up rates.

Hyperion said in October it plans to build a factory to make the reactors in the UK. CEO Deal is making a simultaneous announcement there about design details this week. Nuclear Engineering International Magazine published a technical update 11/19/09.

DAILY ASX MARKET ANALYSIS
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Uranium Company Quarterly Cashflow Reports For Current June 2009 Quarter

*** NOTE ***
NEW SEPT 2009 QUARTERLY REPORTS UPDATE
COMING SOON !

Please Click Company Logos Below
To Reveal Company Quarterly Cashflow Report for June 2009 Qtr

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