Hi Snopig, try this one: http://www.uxc.com/
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Hi Snopig, try this one: http://www.uxc.com/
Great thanks for that Sunshine007.
Russians could send 'yellow cake' prices soaring ....
http://www.stockhouse.ca/shfn/editorial.asp?edtID=18475
Pure Energy: Uranium's Explosive Profits
Thursday, July 13, 2006
By Michael Schaefer
Click here for StockHouse Conflicts and Disclosure Policy
Russians could send 'yellow cake' prices soaring
Believe it or not -- tomorrow, July 14th, Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to drop a hellacious bomb on the uranium market. And the damage the Russians are about to do could be far worse than anything the Iranians or North Koreans could slap together.
Here's what I mean…
Tomorrow, the Russians will make their most aggressive nuclear play in decades, when world leaders assemble in St. Petersburg, Russia for the G8 Summit. At this meeting, President Putin will put an end to a deal they made over a decade ago with the U.S. This agreement has allows American companies to buy uranium at basement level prices.
How's that?
Well I'll tell ya…it started at the end of the Cold War, in 1991, with the break-up of Russia into its constituent republics. Four decades of stock-piling nukes came to an end. Two years later, the United States and Russia signed what is known as the U.S.-Russian HEU (highly enriched uranium) Agreement.
Under the terms of this agreement, Russia promised to supply U.S. companies with highly-enriched uranium, recycled from old Soviet nuclear warheads -- sort of a 'megatons to megawatts' program.
The agreement called for the delivery of 500 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium over the 20-year life of the agreement. (By the way…500 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium is the equivalent to 20,000 nuclear warheads)
So far, U.S. companies have taken delivery and used 275 metric tons of the Russian weapons grade uranium. But now that President Putin plans to cut the agreement short, U.S. companies will lose out on the remaining 225 metric tons.
This uranium -- having the energy equivalency of 4.7 Billion barrels of oil -- is extremely important to the sustainability of nuclear power in the United States. Why? Because roughly half of the supply of uranium at U.S. reactors comes from this agreement.
So why the heck are the Russians pulling the plug anyway?
Why else. -- Money!
The Russians are furious because the HEU Agreement allows U.S. companies to buy the uranium at a fixed price. During the year the agreement was sign --1993 -- uranium was selling for less than $10 a pound. Today, the energy metal sells for more than 350% higher.
And here's the thing: uranium is still selling for rock-bottom prices. At last look Uranium was selling for $45.50/pound. Think about how cheap that is for a second… 45 bucks is about what you'd pay for two cases of decent beer. But today's uranium levels aren't going got last long, no way. Everything I've studied points to higher uranium levels and I think prices could increase drastically - and so do the Russians. We'll talk about how high I think uranium prices could go in just a sec. Back to the Russians.
Now, Putin's decision to play hardball with the United States is not only about getting a fair price for his country's uranium. The Russian President is much smarter than that. Putin and his energy experts clearly recognize that uranium is on the verge of a historic bull market. So he's taking measured steps in order to position his country perfectly. In fact, according to the Moscow Times…on June 9th, Putin took a dramatic first step toward nationalizing his country's uranium market when he approved "a plan to gather all civilian nuclear sector enterprises into a single, market-driven corporation along the lines of France's Areva or Germany's Urenco."
Then on June 28th, Russian nuclear energy chief Sergei Kiriyenko announced that all uranium exploration and mining assets -- both in Russia and in the Commonwealth of Independent States -- will be combined into a single, state-owned enterprise. No private investment will be allowed.
Next up...the July 14-17, G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. So, aft
USEC to lose sole Russian uranium rights - Rosatom
Sat Jul 15, 2006 11:39am ET
Email This Article | Print This Article | Reprints [-] Text [+] By Christian Lowe
ST PETERSBURG, Russia, July 15 (Reuters) - U.S. uranium trader USEC Inc. (USU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will lose its exclusive right to import Russian nuclear fuel to the United States by 2009 at the latest, Russia's atomic energy chief said on Saturday.
Sergei Kiriyenko said an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation announced by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russia's President Vladimir Putin contained a clear mandate for the U.S. government to end the monopoly.
If that does not happen, Russia will seek to overturn the monopoly in the courts anyway, said Kiriyenko.
Bush and Putin, meeting on the eve of a Group of Eight summit in Russia's second city of St Petersburg, issued a statement on Friday on civil nuclear cooperation.
It included a line that the two sides recognised the benefit of a commercial trade in civil nuclear material and technology.
"As far as getting rid of monopoly intermediaries is concerned, (that is) the magic phrase," Kiriyenko, head of the Rosatom agency, told a news briefing. "That is all we need."
He said Russian officials were in "active negotiations today" with the office of the U.S. Trade Representative on ending the USEC monopoly.
"By my estimates the process will take two or three years. If we take the negotiated route it can be resolved more quickly, in the course of this year. If in the courts it will be resolved in the course of two or three years."
Under a programme known as "megatons to megawatts", the United States imports uranium recovered from Russian nuclear weapons that have been dismantled in line with arms reduction treaties signed at the end of the Cold War.
The recovered material is used to fuel U.S. nuclear power stations. Washington has given USEC exclusive rights to import that uranium.
Anti-dumping tariffs that the U.S. government imposed on Russian nuclear fuel in the 1990s make importing any other uranium from Russia prohibitively expensive. The recovered uranium is exempt from those tariffs.
"A monopolist go-between ... is not liberal, it is not (consistent with) a market economy," Kiriyenko said.
"We want to sell direct to American companies at a fair price and American companies want to buy from us openly and under market conditions."
Russian state nuclear firm Techsnabexport, also known as Tenex, said last week it had filed a petition in a U.S. trade court challenging a decision to prolong anti-dumping measures against Russian nuclear materials
http://today.reuters.com/stocks/Quot...USA.XML&rpc=66
Spot price: $47.25:
http://www.uranium.info/
Uranium stockpiler to list on AIM
By: Julius Cobbett
Posted: '18-JUL-06 12:52' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2006
Millions of pounds of uranium are being accumulated on behalf of investors who eventually hope to sell the radioactive metal at a profit. In a trend similar to exchange-traded funds for commodities like gold and silver, Nufcor Uranium Plc will list on London’s Aim market on Friday with about 2 million pounds of uranium held on behalf of its shareholders.
Nufcor, a Guernsey-registered company has sold 33 million shares at #8356;2.05, giving it a market value of #8356;67.7 million.
Nufcor’s offering is similar to Toronto-listed Uranium Participation Corporation (UPC), which holds about 4 million pounds of uranium on behalf of its investors. In May Mineweb reported that uranium spot prices had hopped 20% in two weeks after UPC raised CDN$90 million to buy about 1.85 million pounds of the metal.
But Nufcor CEO Charles Scorer says he doesn’t expect a uranium price jump with his offering. “When they (UPC) came out they raised the money first and then purchased the uranium.”
The 2 million pounds of uranium has already been accumulated by Nufcor International, a nuclear fuels trading company that will retain about 10% of Nufcor Uranium, says Scorer. Nufcor International will sell the uranium to Nufcor Uranium at market prices, he says.
Scorer declined to divulge details on Nufcor’s administrative and other costs or its major shareholders before the company floats on Friday.
Undeveloped market
Investment products like Nufcor’s could be the first step towards developing the financial market for uranium. Scorer says that about 90% of uranium sales take place between miners and end users with no forward market in existence. “There is no financial sophistication,” says Scorer “It’s very much a physical market.”
Scorer says the industry is fairly contained with fewer than 450 nuclear reactors and just a handful of uranium producers. However, he believes there is potential for the market to develop along the lines of other commodities.
For example, investment demand for gold has been so strong that gold exchange-traded funds have become an important variable in the price of the precious metal. This is unlikely to happen with uranium just yet, says Scorer, as annual demand is many times greater than investment stockpiles.
Storage concerns?
Uranium held by investors must be stored in a secure location to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. Scorer says that Nufcor’s uranium is held at processors. The three main western processors are in France, Canada and USA, he says. The International Atomic Energy Agency regulates processing facilities and security is tight.
One of the qualities of uranium, says Scorer, is its energy density. “The amount of storage you need is infinitesimal,” he notes. “Storage volume will never be an issue.”
U308 stocks up yesterday and according to the NZ Herald one analyst says "despite high levels of volatility, big portions of the market see uranium stocks as the potential source of high growth".
http://www.sundayherald.com/56617
Revealed: G8 plan for global nuclear expansion
By Rob Edwards Environment Editor
World leaders are planning a massive expansion of nuclear power in their own countries and across the developing world, according to documents drawn up for the G8 summit and leaked to the Sunday Herald.
An action plan for “global energy security” to be agreed in St Petersburg next weekend envisages a network of nuclear fuel plants in G8 countries combined with the widespread sale of reactors to developing countries – as long as they promise not to use them for making nuclear bombs.
G8 leaders also want to resurrect fast breeder reactors, which are highly controversial because they “breed” plutonium, a nuclear explosive. It was this type of reactor that was pioneered, and abandoned, at Dounreay on the north coast of Scotland.
Environmentalists accuse leaders of “double standards and dangerous hypocrisy”. But the G8’s nuclear plans are likely to be backed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose own much-heralded energy review favouring new nuclear stations in the UK is due to be launched this week.
The G8 summit is due to take place in St Petersburg between July 15 and 17, just over a year
after the leaders of the world’s eight most powerful countries met at Gleneagles in Scotland. This time it will be led by Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has put global energy security at the top of the agenda.
Confidential drafts of the energy “plan of action” drawn up by the “sherpas”, the senior G8 officials who guide prime ministers and presidents towards the summit, have been passed to the Sunday Herald.
One of the plan’s main aims is to spread nuclear power stations around the globe.
The latest version of the action plan says: “Those of us who have plans relating to the use and/or expansion of nuclear energy believe that its development will promote prosperity and global energy security, while simultaneously offering a positive contribution to the climate change challenge.”
Improving the economic com petitiveness of nuclear power will “benefit all nations”, the plan argues. But nuclear expansion has to be based, it says, “on a robust regime for assuring nuclear non-proliferation and a reliable safety and security system for nuclear materials and facilities”.
The idea is to keep the more sensitive nuclear facilities that can be easily diverted for making bombs within the G8. Other countries would not be allowed to enrich uranium fuel, or to reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium.
They will be permitted to run reactors to generate electricity but will have to buy fuel enrichment and reprocessing services from G8 countries. “Participation of developing countries in a ‘shared nuclear energy system’ through developing the network of international centres providing nuclear fuel services could be a viable option for reducing their energy poverty and bridging the energy gap,” the plan says.
At the same time, G8 leaders are proposing to bring back fast breeder reactors, which were scra pped in Germany, France and the UK in the 1990s because they were too expensive. They are designed to create and burn plutonium and are much less reliant on imports of uranium.
The leaked action plan says: “A significant step in promotion of self- sustainable nuclear power would be attained through the development of innovative nuclear power systems based on closed nuclear fuel cycles with fast neutron reactors.”
This is a dramatic change, since fast reactors have been off the political agenda in Western countries for at least a decade. And it will run into fierce opposition because of the risks it poses for international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.
“We’ve come to expect double standards and dangerous hypocrisy from the G8 but this year they are set to surpass themselves,” said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International.
“On the one hand we have the endorsement and promotion of the most dangerous nuclear technology ever conceived – plutonium fast breeder reactors and
List of Uranium Companies:
http://www.wise-uranium.org/ucomp.html
4 August 2006
Australian uranium production lags
Uranium production from Australia's three mines was down during the first six months of 2006 - 27% less than the overall 2005 rate. ERA announced production from Ranger of 1988 tonnes U3O8 (1686 tU), reduced due to acid plant problems and a cyclone. BHP Billiton reported Olympic Dam production of 1768.6 t U3O8 (1777.7 t UOC, 1500 tU), and Heathgate production from Beverley of 362.5 t U3O8 (307.4 tU). This gives total Australian production of 9951 t U3O8 (8438 tU) for the 2005-06 year.
ERA 26/7/06, BHPB 25/7/06, Heathgate 2/8/06.
Canadian uranium production drops
Production from Canada's three mines in the first six months of 2006 dropped 33% compared with 2005 rate. Cameco reported production of 3864 t U3O8 (3276.5 tU) from McArthur River and 1178 t (999 tU) from Rabbit Lake. Production from Areva's McClean Lake was 302 t U3O8 (256 tU) due to much lower grade ores. This gives six month Canadian total of 5344 t U3O8 (4531.5 tU).
Cameco 28/7/06, Areva RC.