In September , the IAEA announced that the facility would be operational in , and in November it awarded contracts to Orano and Kazatomprom to supply it. It comprises up to 60 full containers of the 30B type or later versions. Type 30B cylinders each hold 2.
The IAEA bears the costs of the purchase and delivery import-export of LEU, the purchase of equipment and its operation, technical resources and other goods and services required. Kazakhstan will meet the costs of LEU storage, including payment of electricity, heating, office space and staff costs. The agreement allows for the possible transfer of the LEU fuel bank to another site from the Ulba Metallurgical Plant, and it has a ten-year duration with automatic renewal at the end of this period.
In the US government announced plans for the establishment of a mechanism to ensure fuel supply for use in commercial reactors in foreign countries where there has been supply disruption. The fuel would come from downblending At that point most of the downblending of the HEU had been completed, and the scheme was ready to operate. The AFS comprises tonnes of low-enriched uranium with another 60t from downblending being sold on the market to pay for the work. Additionally, the USA has completed the process of downblending another The t amount is equivalent to about six reloads for a MWe reactor.
In addition to the 6. The main unconventional resource for uranium is rock phosphate , or phosphorite, and some 20, tU has been recovered as a by-product of agricultural phosphate production to the s, but it then became uneconomic.
Estimates of the amount available range from 9 to 22 million tonnes of uranium, though the edition of the Red Book tabulates only about 8 million tonnes. World phosphorous pentoxide P 2 O 5 production capacity from about Mt of rock phosphate is about 50 million tonnes per year.
Morocco has by far the largest known resources of uranium in phosphate rock. Rare earth element REE deposits are another such unconventional resource. REEs have unique catalytic, metallurgical, nuclear, electrical, magnetic and luminescent properties, and play a critical role in the application of many modern technologies, including magnetic resonance imaging MRI machines, satellites, batteries, LED screens and solar panels.
China is the leading supplier of REEs, giving rise to commercial pressure for development of deposits elsewhere. REEs are a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the 15 contiguous lanthanides plus the lighter scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are considered REEs since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar physical and chemical properties.
REEs are in fact relatively abundant in the Earth's crust, but are rarely found in concentrations that are economically exploitable. REE resources occur in four primary geological settings: carbonatites, ion-absorption clay deposits, igneous systems and monzanite-xenotime placer deposits. Kvanefjeld in Greenland is the main REE deposit with major potential for uranium production, with Sorensen, Zone 3 and Steenstrupfjeld orebodies in the same Ilimaussac intrusive complex.
Those four deposits have a total of , tU May , JORC-compliant , nearly half of it measured and indicated resources. Greenland Minerals has an agreement with Chinese company Shenghe Resources which would enable development to proceed.
Black Alum shales are another unconventional resource with some attempts being made to exploit them. The Red Book tabulates about , tU in Sweden and mentions 24, tU in Finland at the Sotkamo mine of Terrafame Oy, for which the government granted a permit in for uranium recovery by heap leaching. Today uranium is the only fuel supplied for nuclear reactors. However, thorium can also be utilised as a fuel for CANDU reactors or in reactors specially designed for this purpose.
Neutron efficient reactors, such as CANDU, are capable of operating on a thorium fuel cycle, once they are started using a fissile material such as U or Pu Then the thorium Th atom captures a neutron in the reactor to become fissile uranium U , which continues the reaction.
Some advanced reactor designs are likely to be able to make use of thorium on a substantial scale. The thorium fuel cycle has some attractive features, though it is not yet in commercial use. Thorium is reported to be about three times as abundant in the Earth's crust as uranium. For more information, see paper on Thorium. Mineral resources are sub-divided, in order of increasing geological confidence, into inferred, indicated and measured categories.
It allows for dilution and losses which may occur when the material is mined. Appropriate assessments and studies will have been carried out, and include consideration of realistically assumed mining, metallurgical, economic, marketing, legal, environmental, social and governmental factors. It is commonly asserted that because "the resources of the earth are finite", therefore we must face some day of reckoning, and will need to plan for "negative growth". All this, it is pointed out, is because these resources are being consumed at an increasing rate to support our western lifestyle and to cater for the increasing demands of developing nations.
The assertion that we are likely to run out of resources is a re-run of the "Limits to Growth" argument Club of Rome popularised by Meadows et al in Limits of Growth at that time. It also echoes similar concerns raised by economists in the s, and by Malthus at the end of the 18th Century.
In recent years there has been persistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the abundance of mineral resources, with the assertion that the world is in danger of actually running out of many mineral resources.
While congenial to common sense if the scale of the Earth's crust is ignored, it lacks empirical support in the trend of practically all mineral commodity prices and published resource figures over the long term. In recent years some have promoted the view that limited supplies of natural uranium are the Achilles heel of nuclear power as the sector contemplates a larger contribution to future clean energy, notwithstanding the small amount of it required to provide very large amounts of energy.
Uranium supply news is usually framed within a short-term perspective. It concerns who is producing with what resources, who might produce or sell, and how does this balance with demand? However, long-term supply analysis enters the realm of resource economics.
Such a focus on sustainability of supply is unique to the long view. Normally-functioning metals markets and technology change provide the drivers to ensure that supply at costs affordable to consumers is continuously replenished, both through the discovery of new resources and the re-definition in economic terms of known ones.
Of course the resources of the earth are indeed finite, but three observations need to be made: first, the limits of the supply of resources are so far away that the truism has no practical meaning. Second, many of the resources concerned are either renewable or recyclable energy minerals and zinc are the main exceptions, though the recycling potential of many materials is limited in practice by the energy and other costs involved.
Third, available reserves of 'non-renewable' resources are constantly being renewed, mostly faster than they are used. What then does sustainability in relation to mineral resources mean? The answer lies in the interaction of these three things which enable usable resources Some licence is taken in the use of this word in the following, strictly it is reserves of minerals which are created effectively to be created.
They are brought together in the diagram below. Numerous economists have studied resource trends to determine which measures should best reflect resource scarcity Tilton, J. On Borrowed Time?
Their consensus view is that costs and prices, properly adjusted for inflation, provide a better early warning system for long-run resource scarcity than do physical measures such as resource quantities.
Historic data show that the most commonly used metals have declined in both their costs and real commodity prices over the past century. Such price trends are the most telling evidence of lack of scarcity. An anecdote underlines this basic truth: In two eminent professors, fierce critics of one another, made a bet regarding the real market price of five metal commodities over the next decade. Paul Ehrlich, a world-famous ecologist, bet that because the world was exceeding its carrying capacity, food and commodities would start to run out in the s and prices in real terms would therefore rise.
Julian Simon, an economist, said that resources were effectively so abundant, and becoming effectively more so, that prices would fall in real terms. He invited Ehrlich to nominate which commodities would be used to test the matter, and they settled on these chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten.
In Ehrlich paid up - all the prices had fallen. However, quantities of known resources tell a similar and consistent story. To cite one example, world copper reserves in the s represented only 30 years of then-current production 6.
Many analysts questioned whether this resource base could satisfy the large expected requirements of the telecommunications industry by The reserve multiple of current production remained the same. Another way to understand resource sustainability is in terms of economics and capital conservation. Under this perspective, mineral resources are not so much rare or scarce as they are simply too expensive to discover if you cannot realise the profits from your discovery fairly soon.
Simple economic considerations therefore discourage companies from discovering much more than society needs through messages of reduced commodity prices during times of oversupply. Economically rational players will only invest in finding these new reserves when they are most confident of gaining a return from them, which usually requires positive price messages caused by undersupply trends. If the economic system is working correctly and maximizing capital efficiency, there should never be more than a few decades of any resource commodity in reserves at any point in time.
The fact that many commodities have more resources available than efficient economic theory might suggest may be partly explained by two characteristics of mineral exploration cycles. First, the exploration sector tends to over-respond to the positive price signals through rapid increases in worldwide expenditures which increases the rate of discoveries , in particular through the important role of more speculatively-funded junior exploration companies.
Exploration also tends to make discoveries in clusters that have more to do with new geological knowledge than with efficient capital allocation theory. As an example, once diamonds were known to exist in northern Canada, the small exploration boom that accompanied this resulted in several large discoveries — more than the market may have demanded at this time. These patterns are part of the dynamics that lead to commodity price cycles.
New resource discoveries are very difficult to precisely match with far-off future demand, and the historic evidence suggests that the exploration process over-compensates for every small hint of scarcity that the markets provide.
Another important element in resource economics is the possibility of substitution of commodities. Many commodity uses are not exclusive — should they become too expensive they can be substituted with other materials. Even if they become cheaper they may be replaced, as technology gains have the potential to change the style and cost of material usage.
For example, copper, despite being less expensive in real terms than 30 years ago, is still being replaced by fibre optics in many communication applications.
These changes to materials usage and commodity demand provide yet another dimension to the simple notion of depleting resources and higher prices. In summary, historic metals price trends, when examined in the light of social and economic change through time, demonstrate that resource scarcity is a double-edged sword. The same societal trends that have increased metals consumption, tending to increase prices, have also increased the available wealth to invest in price-reducing knowledge and technology.
These insights provide the basis for the economic sustainability of metals, including uranium. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Read more from this special report: The Future of Nuclear Power.
Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. A small portion of the overall changes in identified resources relate to new discoveries. Additions to the uranium resource base could come from yet undiscovered or unconventional resources, such as uranium from phosphate rocks. Continuing a downward trend over several years, worldwide domestic exploration and mine development expenditures decreased to approximately USD 0.
This trend is not expected to result in shortfalls but could signal market issues in the longer-term. Global uranium mine production decreased by Furthermore, planned uranium production cuts in early were deepened by the onset of the COVID pandemic, and its effects could be felt through and beyond.
While some uranium producers reduced activities at some facilities, others opted to close operations until market conditions improve sufficiently to justify re-opening. The resources and annual production capacity of these temporarily closed operations, referred to as idled mines, are examined for the first time in the edition of the Red Book.
The report suggests that annual production capacity could increase relatively quickly by bringing these idled mines back into service if market conditions improve. The Red Book also provides projections for nuclear power generation uranium requirements through , as well as a comprehensive assessment of the uranium supply and demand relationship. While nuclear capacity projections vary considerably from region to region, growth in the nuclear sector and in uranium requirements are projected to be the largest in the East Asia region.
Given these projections, the uranium resource base described in the Red Book is more than adequate to meet low and high case uranium demand through and beyond. Future supplies would benefit from timely research and innovation efforts to further improve uranium exploration and develop new, more cost-effective extraction techniques.
Strong market conditions will be instrumental in achieving the required industry investment to develop and deploy new technologies. It facilitates co-operation among countries with advanced nuclear technology infrastructures to seek excellence in nuclear safety, technology, science, related environmental and economic matters and law.
The International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA is the world's central intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical co-operation in the nuclear field. It works for the safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology, contributing to international peace and security and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The Group also co-ordinates the preparation of periodic assessments of the world's supply of natural uranium, examines the relationship of these supplies to demand projections and recommends actions that might be taken to ensure adequate long-term supply of uranium for nuclear power development.
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