The Uranium Producers of America (UPA) is the industry trade association committed to the maintenance of a viable domestic uranium mining and conversion industry to support clean-air nuclear energy. Currently, the United States has a fleet of 99 nuclear reactors supplying approximately 20 percent of the electricity generated in our country, accounting for more than 60 percent of the nation’s clean-air energy. Alarmingly, 95 percent of the uranium that fuels U.S. reactors is imported from foreign sources. In essence, the U.S. is almost entirely dependent on foreign uranium for 20 percent of our electricity, putting our economy at risk to foreign supply disruptions. Although the U.S. contains vast uranium deposits and the industry is cost competitive with global producers, the viability of the domestic uranium industry is now in peril as a result of depressed uranium prices, government overregulation and government dumping of its excess uranium inventory into the market.
The U.S. was once the world’s largest uranium producer, but domestic production peaked in the late 1970s near 44 million pounds of annual production (equivalent to over 80% of current US utility requirements). By 2016 production dropped to less than 2.7 million pounds and further decreases are expected in 2017. The Energy Information Administration recently reported that U.S. production is now at the lowest annual level since 2005. Various factors have contributed to the decline, including strong competition from developing countries with less regulatory requirements and the megatons to
megawatts programs that transformed Russian warheads into U.S. reactor fuel. Other circumstances include a strong dollar relative to other foreign currencies, and protracted regulatory and redundant permitting processes in the U.S.– in many cases, it can take longer to permit a uranium In-Situ Recovery (ISR) operation than a nuclear power reactor.
See graphics on supply and demand: http://www.theupa.org/supply_and_demand/
For an updated view of the Energy Minerals Division's Committee on Uranium (Nuclear & REE), see the 2020 Virtual AAPG-EMD Conference Report: https://youtu.be/Nel3jOOEl5I
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