IAEA 2016 Red Book Sees Production Capacity as Future Uranium Challenge?

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Exploration, Mining, Marketing, & Acquisitions

Date posted: 12/06/16

WNN reports that developing production capacity to meet the world uranium needs, rather than the availability of uranium resources, is a likely challenge over coming years according to the latest edition of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) joint report on uranium resources, production and demand. Known as the Red Book, Uranium 2016 - Resources, Production and Demand was published on 30 November. It is the 26th edition of the report, currently updated every two years, and provides a reflection of information current as of 1 January 2015. The report provides analyses and information from 49 uranium producing and consuming countries based on official data from 37 countries and national reports prepared by the NEA and IAEA on a further 12. As well as assessing uranium supply and demand in 2015, it includes projections to 2035. The report identifies total (reasonably assured and inferred) uranium resources of 5,718,400 tU recoverable at costs of up to $130 per kgU - down 3.1% on the January 2013 figure. Taking its highest cost category of up to $260 per kgU, total identified resources were found to be 7,641,600 tU, which is 0.1% higher than the total reported for 2013. A 10% increase in overall worldwide uranium exploration and mine development expenditures since the previous edition of the Red Book could largely be attributed to development activities at only two projects ... Cigar Lake in Canada, and Husab in Namibia. Exploration expenditures themselves continued to decrease because of low uranium prices, the report found, and no significant resources were added to the resource base during the reporting period. The latter seems to be bogus based on the numerous announcements of new discoveries in the Athabaska Basin in Canada, and elsewhere for that matter. For example, see: http://fissionuranium.com/project/pls/ and http://www.visualcapitalist.com/athabasca-basin-the-worlds-highest-grade-uranium-district/