Uranium is Heating Up

The DailyReckoning reports though uranium prices are slightly lower, China buys its major uranium supplies from the uranium giant, Cameco Corp.

On June 24, China agreed to buy more than 10,000 tons of uranium oxide – yellowcake – over 10 years from Cameco.According to Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium industry analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, China is buying unprecedented amounts of uranium. Based on public information, China may purchase about 5,000 metric tonnes of yellowcake this year. That’s more than twice as much as China consumes.

Clearly, China is building up stockpiles for its long list of new reactors. According to the China Nuclear Energy Association, China plans to build at least 60 new reactors by 2020. The average 1,000- megawatt reactor costs about $3 billion. Loading a new reactor requires about 400 tonnes of uranium to start. Take 60 reactors, times 400 tonnes each. That’s 24,000 tonnes of uranium (over 52 million pounds) – about all of the world’s current output for one year.

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