KEPCO IN TALKS TO BUY AUSTRALIAN URANIUM ASSETTS THIS YEAR - 2010

Korea Electric Power Corp., South Korea’s biggest electricity provider, is in talks to buy Australian uranium assets this year to meet demand for the nuclear fuel, an executive said.

“We’re talking with some Australian companies, so I think we can get a result this year,” Chung Jae Wan, general manager of the energy resources team at the utility known as Kepco, said in an interview today. Kepco is open to buying a stake in a project or a company, he said.

South Korean uranium demand is expected to double to 8,000 metric tons a year by 2020 because of increased construction of nuclear power plants, Chung told a conference earlier in Perth. South Korea, which imports about 97 percent of its energy requirements, plans to add eight atomic plants by 2016.

Kepco wants to buy mines that are in the construction stage, and isn’t interested in companies that only have exploration projects, Chung said. The Seoul-based utility is now progressing toward its goal.

“Given the uranium price, operating costs need to be reasonable,” he said. “If they’re too high, it cannot be developed into a mine. We need to be very cautious. We need some projects with reasonable operating costs which can be developed into mines under the current uranium price.”

Spot-market uranium prices fell 6.7 percent between the start of this year and early May on reduced purchases from China and concerns about U.S. Department of Energy plans to cut uranium inventories.

Resources Tax

In remarks to the conference, Chung said Kepco is “taking steps” to increase its holdings in uranium resources. “We will need one or two investments in uranium mines every year,” he said. Kepco is keen to buy stakes in uranium mines in Africa, Mongolia, Australia and Europe, the company said in March.

South Korea currently operates 20 nuclear power plants and had imported its uranium mainly from Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan until Kepco invested in overseas mines last year.

Australia’s proposed tax on resource company earnings won’t have a bearing on the South Korean company’s potential investment because Kepco is focused on uranium security more than the profitability of any purchased asset, Chung said.

“Kepco is a very big company,” Chung said. “We don’t have any limits in our investments. It depends on how attractive the investment is to Kepco.”

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HOW THE NEW AUSTRALIAN MINING TAX WORKS

HOW DOES IT WORK?

A mining company will need to calculate how much profit it makes from each of its Australian operations and declare that to the tax authorities. The profit is to be calculated as close to the ground as possible: that is, at the mine gate. But the details on this have yet to be hammered out, leaving wide scope for mining companies to agree on a more flexible approach.

For example, a miner with two adjacent operations may push for both mines to be included in one profit calculation for the tax authorities, if it felt this would lead to a lower tax bill.

These profit calculations are purely for the tax authorities and are not the group accounts drafted for investors, but they won't be entirely new arithmetic for global miners. South Africa and Canada and the U.S. mining state of Nevada already require them to produce accounts for profits-based taxes.




IS IT ALL PAIN & NO GAIN?

The Australian government knows there are very few votes to be lost from taxing rich miners that hire fewer workers per dollar of profit than many other sectors of the economy. But Canberra is still dangling some carrots for the mining industry in the form of a tax allowance and an exploration tax rebate.

The allowance represents an amount of profit that is exempt from the new tax. In principle, it is the government's estimate of a fair rate of return on mining assets.

Utilities world-wide understand this concept well because their returns on assets are routinely regulated in order to prevent them from unjustifiable increases in power bills.

For miners, there is a lot to play for here: the government wants untaxed returns on assets to be set at a rate equivalent to the 10-year government bond yield AU10YT=RR, now just 5.76 percent. But, if the miners lose their war against the tax, they could win a decisive battle by raising the tax-free return rate.


GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE

Say, a mine (not a miner) has assets worth A$100 million. Using the current bond yield, the company may deduct $5.76 million from its calculation of the mine's profit.

"Using a rate higher than the government bond rate would result in a significant subsidy to the resource sector...," the government said. Expect the miners to lobby for exactly that.


THE EXPLORATION FREEBIE

The government is also offering a tax rebate on exploration costs, which will be set initially at 30 percent. That means for every dollar spent on exploration, 30 cents will be available for miners as a tax credit. The industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on exploration in Australia.

And when mines are wound up, the owners can crystallise any leftover tax credits accumulated during the mine's life.


OUTBACK ACCOUNTING

Mines can be an auditor's nightmare: in Australia, they are scattered over the desert, thousands of km (miles) from any place where people go to work in suits. So auditing of a mine's assets could be trickier to confirm than a utility's balance sheet.

The new tax calculations will be kinder to mines with lots of assets and conservative accounting for expenses, so tax officials will be on the lookout for any clever accounting. Armed with sophisticated data-matching systems, they will compare public accounts against the figures produced for tax purposes.

More than ever before, tax officials will keep an eagle eye on the outback.

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DEEP YELLOW & TORO ENERGY - EXECTION OF THE NAPPERBY OPTION AGREEMENT

CLICK Image below To Access
7th May, 2007 "Execution of Napperby Option Agreement"
Clickable Image


The legal framework for this agreement was 3 years,
and the legal binding date was from Announcement. 7th May, 2007
"Execution of Napperby Option Agreement".

Therefore, a decision WILL be made within the next few weeks from TOE management to further this project and purchase it from DYL.

Here are the Details As Per Announcement on 7th May 2007

* Should the area not be fully diverted to JORC standards by this time, 13.2 million pounds will be assumed.

* A reference against the spot price of 8% will be used OR capped between $6 pound and $4.5 pound. Current spot price by UxC is $41.50 and 8% of the spot price is $3.32. Therefore, if Toro choose to purchase this deposit they will still pay the lower bound of $4.5 per pound.

* The latest JORC from Toro which I could find was released on 3rd March, 2009 which equated to 7.39million pounds (using 200ppm cut-off)

* Therefore, under this agreement if TOE was to purchase Napperby they will need to pay for the 13.2million pounds at $4.50 per pound OR $59.4million. The agreement states this can be by any arrangement by cash or shares.


NEWS AWAITS
Early May 2010

Could be some good trading opportunity's Swing Trading DYL & TOE over the coming weeks .

BILL GATES CALLS FOR ENERGY MIRACLES

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is calling for "energy miracles" to help achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Speaking at the annual TED Summit in the US last week, he said that developed nations will need to completely decarbonize the energy they use within 40 years to avert the worst effects of climate change.

He added that reducing carbon emissions by between 50% and 80% by 2050 will be insufficient and more investment in researching green technologies is needed to help meet more ambitious targets.

However, he said that current levels of spending on zero carbon technologies are "ridiculously" low.

Mr Gates is himself investing in a nuclear technology project, an area he claims is often ignored by green tech investors.

The TerraPower project is a new Traveling Wave Reactor that promises to generate power from waste radioactive material. It burns uranium waste slowly, meaning a 60-year supply could be added to a reactor at once and not touched for decades.

According to Mr Gates, spent uranium supplies in the US alone could power the nation for 100 years.

TerraPower: How The Traveling Wave Nuclear Reactor Works

Well, first off TerraPower is a nuclear spinoff project from incubator Intellectual Ventures. Former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures, and Bill Gates is a principal owner of TerraPower. TerraPower uses a “traveling wave reactor design,” which is technology that has been researched since the 1990’s, but according to MIT Tech Review TerraPower is the first company to “develop a practical design,” for travelling wave nuclear reactors.

There’s been a lot written about TerraPower over the past few years, and the company has done a good job of explaining how travelling wave reactors work in these videos on its incubator website. TerraPower’s President John Gilleland explains the process in one video as a new type of nuclear reactor that can provide an infinite amount of power, and unlike the current reactor design that uses only enriched uranium for fuel, TerraPower’s reactor largely uses waste byproduct of that enrichment process, or waste uranium.

TerraPower uses a small amount of enriched uranium at the beginning of the process (see slides at the bottom of the post), but then the nuclear reactor runs on the waste product and can make and consume its own fuel. The benefits are that the reactor doesn’t have to be refueled or have its waste removed until the end of life of the reactor (theoretically a couple hundred years). Using waste uranium reduces the amount of waste in the overall nuclear life cycle, and extends the available supply of the world’s uranium for nuclear by many times.

Not surprisingly, with its Microsoft connection, TerraPower has leaned heavily on supercomputing to design and model the reactor and the lifecycle of the fuel. The TerraPower team is using “1,024 Xeon core processors assembled on 128 blade servers,” which is a cluster that is “over 1000 times the computational ability as a desktop computer.” On Intellectual Venture’s site, they explain the importance of computer modelling as:

Extensive computer simulations and engineering studies produced new evidence that a wave of fission moving slowly through a fuel core could generate a billion watts of electricity continuously for well over 50 to 100 years without enrichment or reprocessing. The hi-fidelity results made possible by advanced computational abilities of modern supercomputer clusters are the driving force behind one of the most active nuclear reactor design teams in the country.

How close to reality is this technology? According to this presentation by Gilleland, “operation of a traveling wave reactor can be demonstrated in less than ten years, and commercial deployment can begin in less than fifteen years.”

So, that’s what Gates was talking about.

Paladin Energy Now On Cameco's Radar

Will Cameco Move Up The Nuclear Fuel Chain?

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Andrew Willis

Cameco has $2-billion burning a hole in its pocket, and BMO Nesbitt Burns has an interesting take on where one of the world's largest uranium producers will spend its cash.

Cameco is flush after selling its stake in Centerra Gold, and is expected to do something with this capital, as earnings will drop by 20 per cent without Centerra’s contribution. Most analysts have rolled out a list of junior uranium plays as potential acquisitions, with Paladin Energy considered the most attractive target, and junior miner Berkeley Resources another possible purchase.

However, BMO Nesbitt Burns mining analyst Edward Sterck surveyed the landscape, and highlighted a potential deal with the cash-strapped British goverment.

Cameco could move up the nuclear fuel chain by acquiring the U.K. government’s one-third stake in URENCO group, which has four plants that enrich uranium for use in reactors. The British-based company’s web site explains that this is the highest value-added stage of the fuel supply chain.

After crunching the numbers. Mr. Sterck said: “acquiring a one-third stake in URENCO for $3-billion would dilute Cameco’s net present value per share by 10 per cent but increase earnings by over 40 per cent by 2014. A stake in URENCO looks like the most accretive transaction, but Paladin is also a strong candidate from an earnings perspective.”

When it comes to Paladin, BMO Nesbitt Burns said a takeover would need to be pitched at a 40 per cent premium to where the stock is now changing hands, “resulting in a 27 per cent dilution to Cameco’s net present value per share, but increasing earnings per share by as much as 30 per cent by 2014.”

Paladin currently boasts a $2.9-billion market capitalization.

Go Nuclear, France Tells Australia

France - the world's most Nuclearised country - has thrown its weight behind a nuclear power industry in Australia.

The French government's environment ambassador, Laurent Stefanini, said nuclear power was a good fit for Australia, and offered his country's technological know-how to get the industry started.

"We think that Australia is certainly a country that would win much from putting in place ... a nuclear program," Stefanini told AAP in an interview in the ministry of foreign affairs in Paris.

"It's a reliable and useful way to avoid greenhouse gas emissions."

Australia, which has the world's largest uranium reserves, exports uranium to France but does not have any nuclear power reactors.

Close to 80% of France's electricity comes from 59 nuclear reactors dotted across the country.

Nuclear power has negligible greenhouse gas emissions; France's emissions are about one-third of Australia's on a per capita basis.

"You've got the primary material, you're a serious country which is democratic, organized, and has reliable institutions," Stefanini said.

"You've got plenty of space ... that makes it easier. You've got the territory to build (reactors) a certain distance (from towns)."

Some French reactors are located near towns and villages.

Stefanini said France's experience of more than 20 years of nuclear power was that the industry created jobs - in security and maintenance - and while construction costs were high, as a 30-year investment the price tag was not prohibitive.

There had been no major accidents in France's nuclear industry, but it was very tightly monitored and regulated, Mr Stefanini said. There was a national consensus on the utility of nuclear power but an accident would jeopardize that consensus.

An adviser to French president Nicolas Sarkozy was also positive about the potential for nuclear power in Australia.

"Nuclear should be one of the possible options ... we think it's one of the solutions for producing carbon-free energy," he told AAP in an interview in the French presidential palace, l'Elysee.

"Australia is a country which offers all the guarantees of an excellent mastery of technology, and there are no concerns about nuclear (weapons) dissemination."

The adviser said he didn't want to tell other countries what to do with their electricity generation, but nuclear power had worked well for France and had kept greenhouse gas emissions low.

Australia exports about 10,000 tonnes of uranium oxide a year and has the world's largest uranium deposit, at Olympic Dam in South Australia.

The vast majority of Australia's electricity comes from coal, which has high greenhouse gas emissions.

The federal government says there's no need for nuclear power because renewable energy - like wind and solar - is a better way to green up the electricity grid.

The opposition has been more open to the nuclear option, with former prime minister John Howard floating the idea at the last election and various MPs recently calling for it to be considered afresh.

Opinion polls in Australia show that the long-running hostility towards nuclear power is breaking down, and roughly half the population now thinks it could be a good idea.

France's nuclear reactors are state-owned and the country is an electricity exporter.

No country gets more of its electricity from nuclear sources than France. France also has nuclear weapons.

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URANIUM SPOT PRICE UPDATE
UPDATE JUST OUT

The uranium spot market was relatively quiet last week, with uranium market consultant TradeTech's U3O8 Weekly Spot Price Indicator slipping just US$0.50/lb to US$46.00/lb after a drop of US$3.50/lb the previous week.

There were only three transactions totalling approximately 400,000 pounds U3O8 equivalent registered by TradeTech for the week.

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Britain To Accelerate Plans For New Nuclear Plants

Britain will face a serious energy crisis unless plans to build new nuclear power plants are speeded through without having obstacles placed in their way, the Government will warn next week.

Published: 9:30AM GMT 07 Nov 2009

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will give the go-ahead for a new generation of power stations and explain how new planning guidelines will speed up the time it takes for them to come into operation.

In a major series of policy statements on Monday Mr Miliband will say that “saying no” to nuclear is no longer an option.

The move is certain to arouse opposition in Labour ranks, sweeping away many of the concerns on the traditional left. But Mr Miliband said that business backs his plans and companies need to have confidence that they will not be thwarted if they invest in Britain’s new energy order.

Last night he told The Daily Telegraph: “Saying no is not a good energy policy. In fact we’ve got to say yes to all of the key technologies, nuclear, renewable, clean coal. It isn’t just about the green thing it’s about doing the right thing by way of energy security.

“We are going to have to see significant infrastructure built in the coming years. We have to understand people's concerns and where they’re coming from but to say no to all of these things isn’t an option because it will be bad for Britain in terms of our security of supply and it’s bad in terms of low carbon as well.”

He added: “We can’t have endless delay. I don’t think that’s good for people themselves whether they’re for or against. It’s not good for business and it’s not good for Britain as a whole.

“So it’s an important, significant moment because it’s saying we’re pressing ahead with these plans and it’s the right thing to do for Britain and people need to get behind them.”

The list of sites will include many that have previously had nuclear reactors. They include two in Sellafield, Wylfa in North Wales and Dungeness in Kent.

It is understood that after a six month consultation period the sites are considered the best because of the existing infrastructure and a local community that is not resistant to the prospect of a new installation.

The new planning rules are designed to stop nuclear plans being bogged down in legal wrangles for years. Instead, Mr Miliband said that he wants to new power stations in place by 2017-18.

He said: “The truth is that we need to reform the planning system because the current system involves duplication, it involves delay and it won’t get the infrastructure built in time. So that’s why I think it’s right to do the reforms.

“We’re putting in place a planning system that actually enjoys the support of business, the support of investors and I think its time that they recognised that and supported it.”

Ministers were angered when the Conservatives used government figures to claim Britain risked being plunged into an era of 1970s-style blackouts because of poor energy planning

While maintaining that blackouts will not happen, Mr Miliband makes it clear that Britain cannot afford delay if it is to avoid having to import energy in the coming years.

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Nuclear Restart For Refurbished Canadian Units Gets The Green Light

3rd November 2009

Two reactors at Canada's Bruce A nuclear power plant that have been out of service for over a decade have been given regulatory approval for refueling and restart. At the same time, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has announced five-year operating Licence renewals for the Bruce A and B nuclear power stations.



Units 1 and 2 at the Bruce A plant have been undergoing a major refurbishment to replace their fuel channels and steam generators plus upgrade ancillary systems to current standards in an operation that should enable them to operate for a further 25 years. The announcement by regulator CNSC that refueling can go ahead means the project looks to be on line for the projected 2010 restarts.

The regulator also announced that it had decided to renew the operating licences for Bruce A and the four-unit Bruce B plant, with the new licences valid from 1 November 2009 to 31 October 2014. (The five-year renewal is in line with Canadian regulatory practice, whereby nuclear power plant operating licences are granted for a fixed term and must be renewed periodically.)



As part of its ruling, CNSC has requested that detailed information on the status of the refurbishment of the Bruce A units and on the status of Bruce Power's follow-up monitoring be included in its own annual Status Report on Power Reactors. It has similarly requested detailed information on the status of Bruce Power's follow-up monitoring, ageing management, any safety-significant dates for equipment, and any forecasted end of life plans, be included in the annual Status Report for Bruce B.

Units 1 and 2 at the four-unit Bruce A plant started up in 1977, but unit 2 was shut down in 1995 because a steam generator suffered corrosion after a lead shielding blanket used during maintenance was mistakenly left inside. In the late 1990s then-owner Ontario Hydro decided to lay up all four units at the plant to concentrate resources on other reactors in its fleet, and unit 1 was taken out of service in December 1997 with units 3 and 4 in following in 1998. The four units at sister power station Bruce B continued to operate. Bruce Power took over the operations of both Bruce plants from Ontario Hydro in 2001 and restarted units 3 and 4 by early 2004. Bruce A units 3 and 4 are likely to undergo a similar refurbishment once units 1 and 2 are back in operation.



The decision to refurbish the units followed a 2005 agreement by Bruce Power and the government of Ontario to refurbish the two 769 MWe Candu reactors as a faster option than building new ones in the face of impending power shortages. A similar approach has been adopted elsewhere in Canada, with refurbishment work already completed at Pickering A units 1 and 4, ongoing at Point Lepreau 1 and planned to commence at Gentilly 2 in 2011.

Bruce Power decided to withdraw its application for a third nuclear power station at Bruce in July, saying it would focus on the refurbishment of the existing Bruce plants rather than building Bruce C. It also announced it was scrapping plans for a second new nuclear plant at Nanticoke in Ontario.

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James Dines Talks About The Next " Super Major Bull Market"

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Dines Take On The Next Phase Of
"The Coming Uranium Boom"
9th May 2009


AUDIO LINK
(Be patient slight delay on Audio Access)
Click Image Below For
James Dines Audio


_____________________________

LINKS TO JAMES DINES LATEST AUDIO'S
Monday, September 7, 2009 AUDIO
PART I

James Dines: Part II
Monday, September 14, 2009

Legendary James Dines has come out with a new prediction for a “Super Major Bull Market” on May 22nd of this year which has already made tremendous amounts of money for his subscribers. This is the first time in 9 years that James Dines has issued a call for a new “Super Major Bull Market.” In this Part II interview Mr. Dines covers gold, silver, deflation, inflation, hyperinflation, dictatorships, financial corruption, the Fed, uranium and nuclear energy, oil and more.

LINK TO JAMES DINES LATEST
Monday, September 14, 2009 AUDIO
PART II

“The Hulbert Financial Digest has just updated its results through August.

They show that the Dines Letter, edited by octogenarian James Dines, is up 87.5% over the year to date, versus 13.93% for the dividend-reinvested Wilshire 5000 Total Stock Market Index”.

One of the world’s foremost financial forecasters

Biography from The Dines Letter (dinesletter.com)
James Dines - Founder of The Dines Letter

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Australian Uranium Stocks Updated Monday 24th August 2009 Consists Of Approx 100 Companies.

About Uranium Prices
Uranium Price Reporting
Click Image For Latest Spot Price


~~~ Please Click Company Logos Below ~~~
~~~ To Reveal Each Company Web Site ~~~

ACB

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ADN

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AFR

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AUQ

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ALK

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AGS

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ARU

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ARV

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AXY

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ATQ

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AEE

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BMN


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BKY

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BLR

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BLZ

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BOM

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CAS


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CUX


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CUY


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DYL

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DSN

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EKM

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ENR

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EME

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EMA


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ENT

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EPS

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EQN

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ERO

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ERN

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EXT

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FTE

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GIR

 

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GBE

 
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GCR
 
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GDN

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GGG
 
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IPT
  
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JRL
  
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KOR

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MHC

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MRU
 
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MEU


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MXR
 
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MLS

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MRC

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MLI

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MKY

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MRO

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MOX

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MTN

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NGM

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NTU

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NUP

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OKU

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PDN

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PEN

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PNN

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QUR
 
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RDM

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RCP

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RSL

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REX

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ROY

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RUM

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SXX

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SNU

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SMM

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TUC

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TRF

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THX

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TEU

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TOE

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UTO

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URL

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UEQ

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URA

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UNX

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UXA

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USA

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WME

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WWW

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