“2016: We have to have supply in the market or the lights will gradually go out in the nuclear system,” said Thomas Drolet, the president of Drolet & Associates Energy Services, during a presentation at Cambridge House’s Vancouver Resource Investment conference on Monday.
A uranium supply crunch is widely anticipated to hit the nuclear industry starting next year as Cold War era sources of uranium dry up. To illustrate the severity of the shortage that the nuclear industry faces, Drolet highlighted 2010 uranium production from mining – 118 million pounds – versus consumption: 190 million pounds.
“You can do the delta difference yourself,” Drolet said, referring to how much of a supply gap miners will have to make up for in coming years.
That uranium is “going to have to come from somewhere,” he said.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Drolet argued, only delayed the onset of the coming pinch on uranium supply. But even in his “downside” analysis the uranium deficit still comes by 2015. http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page72103?oid=143915&sn=Detail&pid=102055
