Appendix 1.5

Appendix 1.5

Estimates of Future Uranium Demand:

comments in submissions to this inquiry

 

People for Nuclear Disarmament (WA):

`Economically, there are increasing challenges to the notions of profitability within the industry, as markets force the price of yellowcake down at the same time as decommissioning costs are being recognised.' (submission 2, 1)

 

Friends of the Earth:

`...future markets for uranium will be limited at best, prices, especially the spot price but increasingly also contract prices will rise marginally at most or remain depressed ... and the future development of nuclear power will be limited or negative ... market fundamentals are determined by a static reactor demand... there just isn't going to be a massive `gap' in supply ' waiting to be filled... according to a November 1988 report by FOE, even if the OECD's 1988 estimates are right (based on a probably overoptimistic 341,000Mwe operating in 2000) - even on this assumption, supply and demand will be roughly in balance by the year 2000.' (submission 40 part 2, 22ff)

 

Chamber of Minerals and Energy of WA Inc:

`Expansion of the industry would see Australia's export revenue from uranium increase from $120 million in 1994 to $1 billion per year in 2004.' (submission 51, 346)

 

The Uranium Institute:

`Uranium Institute analysis indicates that total world reactor requirements will grow by 1.7 per cent per annum from 60,800 tonnes natural uranium equivalent (tU) in 1995 to 66,500 tU in 2000. During the following years... the growth rate will drop to below 1 per cent annually, but still reactor fuel requirements will reach 74,300 tU in 2015. In contrast, world production of newly mined uranium has declined in recent years, falling from 47,3000 tU in 1990 to 33,054 tU in 1995, covering only 76 per cent and 54 per cent respectively of total reactor requirements... without a significant increase in uranium production there will be insufficient quantities available to meet reactor requirements over the next twenty years.' (submission 53, 7)

 

Minerals Council of Australia:

Similar comment to that of the Uranium Institute. `An early increase in mine production of about one third is required... None of the alternative sources of nuclear fuel obviate the clear need for greatly increased mine capacity.' (submission 61, 11)

 

Uranium Information Centre Ltd:

`Mine production will need to expand by at least one third by 1999. Mine production will increasingly be supplemented by ex-military material and recycled uranium and plutonium .... present world mine output is little more than half the level of consumption by utilities ... the spot price for uncontracted sales is rising strongly ... If new mines are allowed, by 2004 the value of Australian uranium exports could be ... some $1 billion in current dollars, more than five times the 1994 or 1995 level.' (submission 62, 609ff)

 

Energy Resources of Australia Ltd:

`In the past year...[various factors] have led to a sustained strengthening of the uranium market.' (submission 63, 696)

 

Prof. J. Camilleri:

`The combined capacity of all reactors operating and under construction is ... more than 10 per cent lower than it was a decade ago... opening a large new uranium mine at this time is likely to result in downward pressure on the price of uranium, and a fiercer competition by uranium producers for market share.' (submission 72, 7-8)

 

Department of Primary Industries and Energy:

`There has been a long standing shortfall in world uranium production compared with reactor requirements... the dominant market factor over the last decade has been the gradual diminution of the very large Western civilian inventories accumulated in the late 1970s/ early 1980s ... While little growth in nuclear power capacity is expected in the US or Europe over the next decade, Western capacity is still expected to increase at around 1 per cent per annum as a result of expansion in North Asian countries such as Japan and the Republic of Korea ... there is a market `window of opportunity' for new non-Canadian mine capacity to be brought on stream over the next few years.' (submission 91, 3-5)

 

Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation:

`Uranium production remains, as it has been since the late 1980s, well below world requirements ... drawdown from inventories is beginning to come to an end ... The IAEA projects that ... more uranium will have to be produced in future years.' (submission 96, 3-4)