Dr. Conca reports that we have more uranium than we need for hundreds of years of nuclear power as a big chunk of our energy generation. Which is critical, since we need to double nuclear power to address climate change and replace coal, even as we ramp up renewables. We also need to provide an extra 300 billion kWhs each year to charge the 100-million-plus fleet of fully-electric vehicles America needs by 2040 in order to have any chance of putting a real dent in our fossil fuel use.
There is a plethora of U in the world, and more keeps being discovered by the outstanding uranium geologists in the world, all valued by price and cost to produce yellowcake, the raw fuel. According to the reports of the AAPG Energy Minerals Division Uranium Committee (disclosure, Dr. Conca is a member of the UCOM Advisory Group), U resources increased about 25% over the last decade, maybe much more. See 2017 UCOM Annual report: https://i2mconsultants.com/downloads/corp/2017EMDUraniumAnnualReport.pdf
But do we have enough in North America to fuel our own nuclear future? Fortunately for us and our northern neighbors, the highest grade U deposits in the world are found in the Athabasca Basin of Saskatchewan in Canada, often referred to as the Saudi Arabia of Uranium. One of the latest developments is by NexGen Energy of Canada who just announced a large discovery on their Rook I site, named the Arrow Deposit, again in the Athabasca Basin. In the last three years, NexGen has discovered the high-grade Arrow deposit and others. But the Arrow deposit could become the world largest uranium deposit so far with estimates at 3,480,000 tons with 201,900,000 lbs of U. says Leigh Curyer, NexGen, the importance of Arrow is not necessarily its size, but the ore grade that will be produced by the new mines, when developed. For more, see Search Results for ... Athabasca Basin, containing, at present, 47 articles from the I2M Web Portal via: https://i2mportal.com/search_resource.php?search_value=Athabasca+Basin#page=1
Original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/05/04/we-have-plenty-of-uranium-in-north-america/#34c75e8867ce
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