This article was released by SNL yesterday. Wednesday, 15 July...

This article was released by SNL yesterday.

Column 1

0

Wednesday, 15 July 2015 5:54 PM AETUranium demand to pick up on India's push to grow nuclear power generation By Angela Kean The outlook for uranium demand is bullish as India works toward reaching its nuclear power generation target of 10.1 GW by 2019, with expectations that the country will actually exceed its target. "We actually expect India to exceed their nuclear power target, and we're forecasting installed nuclear power generation capacity of 10.7 GW by 2019," Matthew Boyle, principal consultant for CRU, told attendees July 15 at the Australian Uranium Conference in Perth, Australia. "That number would require about 6,000 tonnes of actual uranium to fuel." India's target has increased from 5.8 GW in 2015, with the country's share of global nuclear power generation to grow 2% to 5% by 2020. "The amount of power that is required by India by 2020 is massive," Boyle said. "They have severe deficits in terms of their power generation and their capacity." There are about six nuclear power plants under construction as well as plans for many more, according to Boyle. The Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, India, was commissioned in December 2014 and is powering the southern grid in India. The 1-GW unit two plant is also now in operation. "That will boost nuclear power generation in India alone to a forecast of 38.7 terawatt hours in 2015," Boyle said. India is also expected to complete construction of a new 500-MW breeder reactor in Kalpakkam in 2017 and will build two additional 6,000-MW breeder reactors in the future. Boyle noted that while global nuclear power generation has pulled back following the incident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, nuclear is expected to regain its spot in the primary energy mix in the future. "Looking at global power generation, it is evident nuclear still has a key role," he said. "While there has been a push in renewable energy to meet increasing demand, the large costs associated with some forms of renewable energy are too economically prohibitive. So there still will be a requirement for cheaper forms of electricity production." Global nuclear power generation is expected to return to historical trends this year and definitely by 2016, and then go beyond that, Boyle said. This is largely due to Japan bringing more of its nuclear reactors back online as well as an increase in nuclear power generation in the CIS region of Russia.