Print this pageAbstract: Uranium: The Next Fifteen Years
Thomas C. Pool, Mari Angeles Major-Sosias
The near-term future of the uranium supply industry should be relatively stable at low levels as supply significantly exceeds demand.
Uranium requirements for nuclear fuel will increase slowly from 150 thousand million pounds U3O8 per year in 1993 to 160 million pound U3O8 per year by the year 2010.
Current production is less than 100 million pounds U3O8 per year. The difference between production and consumption is filled by large stockpiles. Civilian inventories, accumulated as a result of over-optimistic projections of the growth of nuclear power, are a major factor in the current market. Military inventories, much in the form of highly enriched uranium, will be an increasingly important factor in the marketplace.
While exploration is currently at low ebb, there is no urgency for an increased rate of discovery since existing identified low-to moderate-cost resources are adequate for several decades.
Politics play a disproportionate role in the uranium industry. Government constraints on exploration, mining and international trade have disrupted the market and will delay the return to a balanced market.
Low prices caused by the supply/demand imbalance have forced many uranium producers out of production. Those that remain have refocused their efforts away from conventional large, moderate-grade deposits onto either high-grade deposits or non-traditional production methods. Large, high-grade unconformity deposits in Saskatchewan will be "base-load" producers for the foreseeable future. Smaller, lower-grade sandstone deposits in the western U.S. and elsewhere will make an increasing contribution through the less-capital-intensive and more-flexible method of in-situ leaching.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90986©1994 AAPG Annual Convention, Denver, Colorado, June 12-15, 1994