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Interesting article entitled: “Treaties Committee Report on Australia US uranium exports”

“The US is our largest uranium customer and one of the reasons for that is that peak uranium in the US occurred some time ago. The United States had extensive uranium mining, caused an extraordinary amount of harm, particularly in the south-west, and worked out many of their deposits, and now they are our largest uranium customer. The agreement that has just gone through the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties which we are discussing tonight locks us into a 30-year treaty arrangement with the United States on these exports.”

(Personally I would rather that this treaty had NOT been signed… The USA seems to be a financial cot case and Australia’s long term interests may not have been well served in this instance… I think that Rudd is an ever present danger… his recent guarantee of Rare Earth Elements supplies to Japan shows that he is more than capable of over-reaching )

The announcement of the EXT – RIO tie up to develop what will become one of the world’s largest uranium mines comes as a great relief to me. I admit to being worried that EXT would be forced to either sell the deposit/project or take on an overseas partner and that we would lose them from our Australian ASX.

As can be seen from the chart above this would have left a gaping hole in Australia’s uranium index and my portfolio. I am very fond of EXT and having been in it for a very long time (8 years) it has given me almost impossibly large profits….. The way forward now looks a lot clearer and I look forward to a massive revenue stream in the years to come.

I wonder which ASX listed Uranium play will be next to get “married”… My guess is Aura ASX: AEE represents such amazingly good value it will either do a JV or get swallowed…. If you have read through AEE’s announcements and the surrounding commentary you’d have to think that AEE’s current JORC and probable 1billion pounds of uranium would be mightily attractive…

Husab mine gets ‘green’ thumbs-up from Govt
EXTRACT Resources has received Government’s environmental stamp of approval for its Husab uranium project, paving the way for the development of the fifth-largest uranium-only deposit in the world.

The rate of production would rank the Husab mine as the second-largest uranium mine in the world, based on production.

Read more

BEIJING (Metal-Pages) 01-Dec-2010. China’s nuclear industry will be vulnerable unless the government starts purchasing and stockpiling nuclear grade zirconium and offers support to domestic producers, China’s zirconium industry players warn.

If China fails to build up strategic stockpiles and support domestic zirconium producers through measures such as reduced taxation, the country risks having to rely excessively on imports, which would have serious consequences for its nuclear sector.

Australia has several Zirconium deposits and has several plays worth looking at…

These include Australia’s second largest Zirconium holder ATR and Australia’s Alkane Resources with potential for a 200 year mine life.

ASX Companies with more than 500,000 t Zircon resource

AEE has risen nicely over the last few months but with their likely 1b pounds of contained uranium they have a long way to go before they equal EXT or PDN’s mkt cap: resources ratios…

Today’s chart

Behind  Dimona’s (Israel’s Nuclear facility) barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=1

Interesting to see that over the last few months the market has begun to value the previously very unloved AEE…. Up 78% so far.

Market cap is now (7/01/2011) $50m – Still very cheap for a possible billion pounds contained..

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See earlier commentary on AEE

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Analysts said on Wednesday there was no “breakthrough” in China’s uranium reprocessing capabilities, and there would be no impact on the market for the fuel.

“The bottom line is there was no breakthrough, there will be zero impact on Chinese demand for uranium,” UxC senior vice president Mike Smith stated in an interview.

This came after China Central Television reported on Tuesday that technology developed by China National Nuclear Corp could extend the country’s uranium resources to last 3 000 years.

China Daily – the State-owned paper targeted at Westerners – said the following day in a front page headline that the move would solve the country’s uranium shortage.

Dundee Securities analyst David Talbot was equally sceptical.

“We don’t put a lot of credence into this spin about a Chinese breakthrough,” he said in a January 5 note titled “China’s uranium reprocessing hype”.

Talbot pointed out that the uranium spot price actually rose after the announcement suggesting that “recent uranium buyers don’t believe the Chinese reprocessing hype either”. http://www.miningweekly.com/article/analysts-say-chinese-uranium-announcment-is-overblown-2011-01-05

China boasts breakthrough in nuclear technology
Reuters January 3, 2011, 3:21 pm

Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in spent fuel reprocessing technology that could potentially solve China’s uranium supply problem, state television reported on Monday.

The technology, developed and tested at the No.404 Factory of China National Nuclear Corp in the Gobi desert in remote Gansu province, enables the re-use of irradiated fuel and is able to boost the usage rate of uranium materials at nuclear plants by 60 folds.

“With the new technology, China’s existing detected uranium resources can be used for 3,000 years,” Chinese Central Television reported.

China, as well as France, the United Kingdom and Russia, actively supports reprocessing as a means for the management of highly radioactive spent fuel and as a source of fissile material for future nuclear fuel supply.

But independent scientists argued that commercial application of nuclear fuel reprocessing has always been hindered by cost, technology, proliferation risk and safety challenges.

China has 171,400 tons of proven uranium resources spread mainly in eight provinces — Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Liaoning and Yunnan.

China is planning a massive push into nuclear power in an effort to wean itself off coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. It now has 12 working reactors with 10.15 gigawatt of total generating capacity.

China has set an official target of 40 gigawatts (GW) of installed nuclear generating capacity by 2020, but the government indicated it could double the goal to about 80 GW as faster expansion was one of the more feasible solutions for achieving emissions reduction goals.

As such, China will need to source more than 60 percent of the uranium needed for its nuclear power plants from overseas by 2020, even if the country moves forward with a modest nuclear expansion plan, Chinese researchers say.
(Reporting by Zhou Xin and Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)