That old chestnut, hmm being a previous holder i'll be watching it as the U price soars
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Short to medium term there may be some support but the Olympic Dam expansion is edging closer. I'm a little less bullish on U than I once was.
All systems go in plan to dig world's biggest hole
...A final investment decision would depend on prevailing economic conditions then, most notably the copper price outlook and the ability of the world's nuclear industry to soak up the huge increase in the global supply of uranium that would come with the expansion.
...Capacity at Olympic Dam is now rated at 235,000 tonnes of copper, 4500 tonnes of uranium and 100,000 ounces of gold. When fully expanded, the operation's annual capacity will have grown to 750,000 tonnes of copper, 19,000 tonnes of uranium...
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More hurdles for the U industry
Nuclear? It's just too expensive, for us (Aus) and the rest of the world
I posted an article on another thread that says a US Company has developed a reactor smaller than a railcar. Can be built quickly and generate 125/140MW.
Skol The reactor need not be big but the shields around it do
I guess small and quick construction suggests more flexible planning is encouraged -
Perhaps it is an easier decision to build if they feel that they are taking on a smaller commitment (both time and $) and enables more locations to be possible (where previously smaller power demand ruled out nuclear. And it means a scalable centre can be incrementally built.
Against that, I imagine smaller may higher cost per watt,
and the idea of proliferation of many little reactors makes control over hazards weaker.
Look at the size of cell phones and computers now. But I don't think we'll see a reactor in every car (like in the movie 'Back to the Future').
But it is interesting that this size reduction is being researched.
A bit like with finding the optimum size for selling lots of wind turbines (which got bigger)
If only the spot U308 would pick up PEN ACB could get some legs
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Spot Uranium Falls To US$40.50
BY RUDI FILAPEK-VANDYCK - 04/03/2010
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I received a few remarks from readers this week about my uranium story earlier this week (see “A Death Cross For Global Uranium Stocks”). The main complaint was that if two leading consultants to the uranium industry lower their spot price benchmarks to the same price level, this is not something that is “remarkable” - as I labelled it in my story.
Maybe not, but this week again shows that having Ux Consulting and TradeTech on one and the same price level has become more of an oddity than anything else. I suspect commercial motivations are behind this, but that's all I can do from my chair: assuming and speculating.
Fact is that after TradeTech lowered its weekly spot price to US$40.75/lb last week, UxC has responded by lowering its own weekly spot price indicator a tad lower: to US$40.50/lb from US$41.75/lb the previous week.
As I noted in my earlier story this week (see above) the long term price indicators as set by both consultants have now converged to US$60/lb. I haven't exactly gone through our archive, but it has been a long time since both consultants were on similar price levels for both long term and spot price benchmarks – I'd say more than a year, at least.
As a matter of fact, it now appears it lasted for a very short time only