the bigger picture, page-19

you insult

I fact

China is buying uranium - but is now sitting on stockpiles sufficient to meet current annual consumption eight times over.




Kidd argues that we are entering a new era, where the uranium market is split into three:

– The Chinese will favour investing directly in mines to satisfy their requirements; not the established uranium market.

– The Russians will continue to be significant nuclear fuel exporters but their own market will remain essentially closed to outsiders.

– The established uranium producers will have the remainder of the market to satisfy and that will likely be declining in magnitude. In the US, the number of operating reactors will fall by 2030 and the overall European situation will be one of "gentle decline".

Kidd says the Chinese and Russian approach (and probably India, too) to bypass the conventional market means it could increasingly become "merely a sideshow".

Kidd predicts "a reversion to the long period of low (but relatively stable) uranium prices of the late 1980s and 1990s ... but at a higher level to reflect the greater level of production now, the escalation of mining costs and the movements in currency exchange rates".

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/5/29/energy-markets/uranium-%E2%88%92-how-low-can-it-go