It could be more impressive. The uranium sector, that is. Do you realise that there are only four companies with a market capitalisation over $1 billion (in Canadian dollars)? Cameco Corp (TSX:CCO) is way out front, worth $C7.78 billion (these figures were all compiled in November by Versant Partners and Capital IQ). Then it was quite a

It’s probably as good as one could hope for in the present climate: a prediction that the uranium market is “well-balanced”. This comes at a time when, at least, the uranium spot price is holding its own, unchanged this week at $US52/lb. There’s also some positive news: the Russians are to expand the Smolensk nuclear power station,

Uranium politics took a considerable shift this week in the state of Western Australia. The left-wing Labor party opened the door just a little. Not that it matters all that much because they’re unlikely to win the state election next year, and the pro-uranium Liberal government is well ahead in the polls. But - and no one

Anything faintly cheerful about uranium is welcome these days. Now we have a report that goes one better than faintly but still expresses some reservations about the economics of upcoming new projects. From Sydney, the analysts at J.P. Morgan Securities Australia have just upped their price forecasts. This be a welcome relief to the industry as it

We could be less than 10 years away from commercially viable, small scale nuclear plants. More likely by 2025, though (although the Russians may be only a year or two away). That’s the view of Matt Robinson at Australia-based engineering consultancy WorleyParsons. The company is now engaged in nuclear projects in 18 countries and is providing design

It once produced around 10 per cent of the world’s uranium, but the Ranger mine in northern Australia is going through a real bad patch right now. The mine’s operator, Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), had to close the processing plant in 2011 due to heavy rain; the close-down last from January 28 until June 15. And

If you have any plans to enlarge your uranium interests - and you have either readycash or still know a bank that is lending - this may be the time to go about it. Uranium spot pricescontinue to besubdued: they remained unchanged this week at $52/lb. For all the hand-wringing in Japan and Western Europe over nuclear

The legacy of the Soviet Union with regard to uranium mining seems to overhang policy in some, at least, of that empire’s former Eastern Europe satellites. This issue has been reignited by the Reuters report from Prague (posted here, of course, on Uraniumblog.com) that the Czech Republic’s industry ministry is calling for an expansion of uranium mining.

Global uranium majors have significantly underperformed the broader share market over the past 12 months. That will be only too obvious to shareholders in those companies, but now we have a compilation of the actual numbers. According to the latest quarterly uranium sector report from Sydney-based Resource Capital Research (RCR), the Canadian majors are down around 50

The nuclear situation in Japan becomes more opaque by the day. It seems many commentators have already written off atomic power as part of the country’s future but it may not be as clear-cut as all that. The news flow from Tokyo is certainly confusing. In the past 48 hours we have had a report that 45

Japan’s nuclear woes continue. In the latest development, Kansai Electric Power Co. estimates it will cost about 200 billion yen ($US2.56 billion) to make safe its reactors in Fukui prefecture. According to the Nikkei news service, the company plans to build levees around its two nuclear plant towns, Mihama and Takahama, up to a height of 11.5

Australia and the Czech Republic are going to co-operate on building a prototype thorium-fuelled molten salt reactor. This despite the fact that thorium mining is banned in Australia (in some states even exploration for it is outlawed) and, when it is extracted as part of rare earth mining, then the thorium has to be put back in

Fukushima and a faltering uranium price have not dampened the spirits of Australia’s uranium explorers. According to the Australian Uranium Association (AUA), exploration budgets in the sector in the fiscal year 2011 (that is, to June 30) were collectively the second highest on record. Nationally, the uranium industry spent A$213.9 million (US$210.4 million) searching for and proving

A prominent business think tank is trying to re-ignite the nuclear power issue in Australia. CEDA (which stands for Committee for Economic Development of Australia) says in the first of a series of energy reports, Australia’s Nuclear Options, that new nuclear technology should be explored if the country is serious about both tackling climate change and maintaining

Regulatory approvals in the U.S. regarding new and expanding uranium mines have come under the microscope at London financial analysts Libertas Partners. This follows the recent comment from Cameco (TSX:CCJ) that its subsidiary, Power Resources, has faced frustrations from the regulatory processes in Wyoming. They have been trying to bring into production new wellfields into production at

Common sense and rational thought are sometimes the first casualties when the subject of uranium and nuclear power is raised. A stark example is recent discussion of uranium and India. The former conservative Liberal-National coalition government of Australia had agreed to sell uranium to India for nuclear energy even though the lattercountry had not signed the non-proliferation

Time to catch up on the nuclear scene. This comes as Uraniumblog.com has its staff beefed up and, from here on in, the website will be expanded to provide comprehensive daily coverage.We could also say we are padding up but youd have to be a cricket fan to recognise that term - it refers to the pads

IT seems the anti-nuclear fever experienced in Japan post-Fukushima may be waning. The latest indicator: voters in the town of Iwanai on Hokkaido, close to a nuclear power plant, have voted in as mayor an advocate of re-starting those idled reactors. Yugi Kamioka, who campaigned on getting all the reactors back into service at the Tomari nuclear

You know the old saying that it always seeming darkest just before the dawn. Well, that pretty well sums up the uranium industry at the moment. Now we have Cameco spreading a tale of woe, and predicting that the junior uranium companies are in for a shocker of a time. A plausible argument, especially in a week

Buy when others are fearful. It’s a time-honoured dictum in the markets, and the uranium market is certainly one where investors are fearful. Ux Consulting, the Roswell, Georgia-based company that monitors the uranium sector was quoted this week as saying the spot market for uranium looks “like a ghost town”, so sparse is the activity. The spot

The Australian uranium sector has taken two hits in the past few days. One, the so-called uranium friendly state of South Australia has locked up a project after A$20 million has been spent on it. Two, the new conservative government in New South Wales has confounded observers by deciding to keep the ban imposed by the former

Japan’s nuclear power situation continues to be a mess. In the latest developments, the government is trying to avert closing down all its nuclear reactors for the very good reason that the country would face crippling power shortages. The anti-nuclear wave of opinion is also threatening the export business for Japan’s nuclear technology. Meanwhile, the developing world

Heres some potentially good news for any company planning to bring a new uranium mine on line in the next few years. According to reports in Australia’s financial press, BHP Billiton is going to delay expansion of its uranium output at the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia, the Fukushima incident being given as the reason. BHP

Australia’s uranium industry is taking it on the chin - the fallout from Fukushima and Germany abandoning nuclear power generation, that is. At one stage of the 2007 uranium frenzy, when U3O8 went close to US$150/lb (the spot price is now at US$53.50/lb) there were more than 240 listed companies in Australia that claimed to have at

Will Japan stick with nuclear? The signs have been conflicting, not to mention confusing: one day, it’s no, the next, maybe. The problem seems to be that decision making is somewhat paralysed. In fact, London’s The Financial Times has accused the government of Naoto Kan of botching the issue. Its editorial said: “In the longer term, it

It looks like the world is splitting into two camps on the subject of nuclear power. There are those, like Germany and New York Governor Cuomo, who want to close nuclear plants; and then there are the countries that are embracing it. Reuters reports that Russia, which plans to build at least 28 new nuclear plants by

The world is facing a shortage of new uranium projects. The Fukushima nuclear plant accident may have depressed share prices of uranium companies, and freaked out the Italians and the Germans, but the outlook for uranium demand has not altered significantly. After all, Asia is the nuclear story, not Europe. Complicating the whole story is news that

Fukushima may have dealt a heavy blow to the concept of safe nuclear energy - although the death toll at the reactor is still a little short of the 500,000 predicted by one Britishnuclear scientist and, actually, no one has died from radiation there - but one positive of the terrible accident in Japan is that the

June 14, 2011 (Source: The Australian) -- The forces driving the global growth of nuclear energy are the same now as they were before the Japanese disaster. That was the word sent out recently to shareholders by Toro Energy (TOE). The letter continued: “Energy demand and the desire for internal energy security from a low-carbon, base-load supply