Where is the demand for more uranium?

Comment:  Today Ace will focus on the price of uranium in the falling prices!  Great letter, Ms. Shelton!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 9:32 AM EDT

I do not know about other people around here, but I am becoming a little tired of representatives of Virginia Uranium Inc., telling me in such tactful, polite phrases that I am an idiot because I do not embrace uranium mining in Pittsylvania County.

I realize those who have invested in this venture want to bump Carlos Slim Helu off the Forbes List. Visions of $100 bills as far as the eye can see (unfortunately for them, the U. S. Treasury no longer issues larger bills) blots out everything else, I suppose.

One Virginia Uranium employee, Patrick Wales, was carrying out the duties of his position following the symposium on uranium mining in Richmond sponsored by a group of environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

You will be glad to know you can ignore the public health threat findings presented at the symposium by a professor of public health of Tufts University School of Medicine because Patrick Wales says the symposium was "little more than an anti-uranium rally."

Mr. Wales did acknowledge uranium mining has caused problems in the past, but he says modern regulations and mining methods would protect the public.

Really?

What about the currently operating Ranger mine in Australia where seepage from a tailings dam into the local water supply was an issue posted by Australian Broadcasting Company in October of last year?

It seems to me that the Ranger mine has been offered by Virginia Uranium personnel as being in an environment most similar to that of Pittsylvania County.

Mr. Wales also stated most of the uranium used for nuclear electric plants in the United States today comes from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Mr. Wales said he is not willing to "mortgage our children's energy future by relying on a supply from politically unstable regions."

I would think Mr. Wales is informed on why the U.S. is purchasing nuclear fuel from those countries; however, it is to reduce the risk that this material might otherwise be sold illegally to terrorists and used in bombs in the United States.

I do not know about Mr. Wales, but, with that motivation, I would prefer to purchase nuclear fuel from those countries until the end of time.

Also, if purchasing nuclear fuel in the United States is going to become a matter of stable supply, then I think there are uranium mills in the United States for which that would be good news.

The United States Energy Information Administration showed in its most current report, dated May 21, 2009, that there are three U. S. uranium mills on standby status, one mill changing to operational, one mill developing and one mill operating, which is Dennison White Mesa.

Dennison White Mesa Mill has just begun in December 2009 to receive uranium ore from White Canyon mine, being the first new uranium mine in Utah in 30 years.

The company opening White Canyon is also involved in five other potentially new mine sites in Utah.

I would think Mr. Wales would have been aware of this since Ron Hochstein, president and CEO of Dennison, was also chairman of the board of Santoy, now known, I understand, as Virginia Energy Resources Inc.

On the same day the uranium symposium was held in Richmond, there was, by coincidence I am sure, a Virginia Energy Summit held in Richmond.

The initial information I received about this summit billed it as the Governor's Energy Summit.

Somewhere along the way, something happened because the newspapers gave this as being sponsored by the Virginia Manufacturers Association and the American Petroleum Institute.

The governor did speak at this affair. So far, I have seen no comment on this summit by Mr. Wales.

By the way, in checking the milling statistics for this comment, I picked up the fact that in May 2009 Hochstein announced White Mesa was ceasing processing ore for 2009 because all orders had been filled and "costs are higher than spot price," which was stated to be hovering in the $40 range.

The price had topped out in 2007 at $150, driven, according to the statement, by hedge funds, not demand.

I checked Cameco's spot price today, and 10 months later it is still hovering at $40.

Could one conclude we have no demand and an unprofitable market that is about to be flooded with new uranium mines in the western United States?

Hildred C. Shelton
Danville, VA

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http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2010/04/14/chatham/opinion/opinion01.txt