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Uranium Price to Peak Around $103 / Pound in 2008

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That's according to The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics:

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics's March quarter Australian Commodities report, released yesterday, said despite a substantial increase in global uranium mine production this year, the spot uranium price was expected to keep appreciating, averaging more than $US94.20 ($A121.69) per pound in 2007, compared with $US85 now. "In 2008, the spot uranium price is forecast to increase by a further 10 per cent to average $US103 per pound," ABARE said.

...

However prices will start to decline after next year ABARE says, as the large amounts of money being spent on uranium exploration, both in Australia and around the world, begin to translate into new mine production.

Here's another take on uranium prices according to NEI's Marvin Fertel:
In the long run, "I think we're going to end up with a much better situation than we even had before," he said.
For more information on how uranium prices affect nuclear fuel costs check out pages 9 and 10 of NEI's Status and Outlook Report (pdf):
The price of uranium does not pose the kind of challenge for nuclear energy as fuel costs do for other sources of baseload generation. For example, 78 percent of the cost of generating electricity at a coal plant is the cost of the coal. At combined cycle gas plants, fuel is 94 percent of the production cost. At nuclear plants, fuel costs are only 26 percent of production costs. And only half of that nuclear fuel cost is the cost of uranium. Conversion, fabrication and enrichment are also part of the cost of fuel at a nuclear plant, as well as the contribution to the federal Nuclear Waste Fund.
All I can say is that I wish I were an investor in uranium about 4 years ago.

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Anonymous said…
The bright side of this matter is that it will renew interest in fuel recycling.

The price is over $200/kg. This is sort of a "magic number" in many ways, because it represents an impetus to develop the Japanese amidoxime resin technology for recovering uranium from seawater.

While commercialization of this technology would require sustained prices this high -I don't really think they will be so sustained - it is likely to increase research into the subject. This will make the technology available when it is really needed.

But the immediate short-term outcome of high prices will be a strengthening of the recycling positon, something I unabashedly support.

-NNadir
March 6, 2007 at 2:05 PM
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