This IAEA-sponsored proceedings is based on the conference held in Vienna, Austral in June, 2005. The papers opine on the growth potential of nuclear power that depends on the adequacy of uranium resources to meet future reactor uranium requirements and on the ability of the industry to deliver resources to the marketplace in a timely manner. Uranium supply is generally divided into two broad categories – primary supply or newly mined and processed uranium and secondary supply, which includes highly enriched uranium from dismantling of nuclear weapons, inventory drawdown, reprocessed uranium, mixed oxide fuel and tails re-enrichment.
Uranium production or primary supply exceeded demand until about 1990, and the excess was held as inventory. By 1990, however, primary supply was no longer adequate to meet demand and secondary supply was increasingly required to ensure a balance between supply and demand. The disparity between primary supply and demand grew rapidly until in 2003, total demand was satisfied about equally by primary and secondary supply. Availability of secondary supply is, however, expected to decrease to about 15% of reactor uranium requirements by 2020; primary supply will have to increase in proportion to the decrease in availability of secondary supply to ensure a balance between supply and demand. The challenge for the uranium production industry will be to ensure that there is adequate production capacity to replace declining secondary supply and that there are adequate resources to sustain production.
This 2005 proceedings contains 49 papers/extended abstracts relating all important aspects of uranium, from exploration to waste management.
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