Antinuclear

Collapse of uranium industry affecting Cameco, BHP Billiton

Cameco’s chief executive says “Germany’s ”weak political leadership” had prompted its decision to make an ”illogical and emotional decision to close a number of older nuclear facilities”.

BHP to feel uranium slide, Barry Fitzgerald, Sydney Morning Herald, May 9, 2011 THE partial meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March has prompted leading uranium producer Cameco to cut its demand forecasts for the nuclear fuel. The cut has implications for BHP Billiton, which must find a home for the additional uranium it will produce with its planned $30 billion expansion of the Olympic Dam copper/uranium/gold mine in South Australia’s outback.

Output at Olympic Dam will increase from 9.6 million pounds a year to 40.6 million pounds a year – 17 per cent of forecast global mine output in 2020.

BHP is also moving towards developing its Yeelirrie uranium deposit in Western Australia (7.5 million pounds a year) while Cameco itself is advancing development plans for the Kintyre deposit, also in WA…….

The company expects that the loss of the Fukushima plant and Germany’s decision to shut down seven of its oldest reactors will force about an 8 per cent fall in global uranium consumption in 2011.

The reaction of the Germans to the Fukushima disaster came in for particular criticism from Cameco.

The group’s soon-to-retire chief executive Jerry Grandey said that Germany’s ”weak political leadership” had prompted its decision to make an ”illogical and emotional decision to close a number of older nuclear facilities”.

May 9, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, business, uranium