toe management, page-4

doon - your timing on the query to TOE was unfortunate. If you check the public releases TOE would have been in the middle of merger negotiations with NEL when you sent your email. Having being personally involved in negotiations like this they block out a lot of time - in fact pretty much all of it!

My bet is, if you forward your post here to Greg Hall he will reply to you pretty promptly now that the dust is settling on the merger. Just a suggestion.

67b - with regard to your comment on u3o8 reserves, just a couple of things

1. note the total costs required to extract this "new uranium". Much of it is high cost, and also much of it is in areas with poor infrastructure.

2. production continues to undershoot projects/ promises. Just take ODE as an example, talk of $20b expansion has raised concerns about the timetable and delays to their target offtake exmpansion date of 2013 are looking immenent.

3. the demand side is way underestimated at the moment. ERA's MD the other day did make a comment about the WNA High Case may turn out to be conservative - and this from a market player that is known for its own conservatism.

Kyoto II will focus the mind - hard targets and binding committments will mean realities will hit home on the electricity front. Just go and ask someone who builds electricity networks how it will be done....dont go and ask Greenpeace or the ACF, you will get nonesense head-in-the-sand stuff!

BTW, the US 'subsidies' as you call them are actually in the form of loan guarantees. The idea of this is that should costs blow out on a reactor build becuase of delays as the Greens take the proposal through the court system, the costs of the delays will be bourne by the government. This was one of the reasons of the high reactor costs in the previous reactor build phase back in the 70's and early 80's - many were litigated to death and the industry will not commit to future build without some sort of protection. At least that is my understanding of the situation!