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Cape Town - - Although the end of the nuclear cold war and the Three Mile Island nuclear melt down caused uranium mines to close down in the later 1970s and early 80s, the current frenzy for building nuclear electricity generating plants is boosting demand and old exploration maps and drilling tests are being revived.
Two uranium mining companies told delegates at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town on Tuesday that around the world 349 nuclear power stations are to be built, planned or proposed.
There are 430 already in existence, 32 under construction, permits have been applied for another 74, and 213 are proposed.
According to Neal Froneman, chief executive of Uranium One, 70% of them are being proposed for only seven countries, with China and Russia heading the list.
For the past twenty years nuclear power stations have been able to use the ore that was stockpiled, when the bottom fell out of the mining market, he said. "They have lived off inventory," he said.
For that reason there has been a lack of investment in new production, mining infrastructure has been neglected, and much needs to be done.
"We expect the uranium price to continue increasing," he said, though he admitted that the spot price has been volatile recently.
'Very exciting'
He said Uranium One intends to start production at a another Kazakh mine soon, and he said it will open Honeymoon, Australia's fourth uranium mine, later in the year as well as another mine at Hobson in Texas.
Froneman explained that over half (57%) of the new mines will use the "in situ recovery" (ISR) method in 2008. By 2011 nearly three quarters of the industry will use ISR.
John Simpson, chairperson of Peninsula Minerals, agreed that ISR is the way to go. It involves no rock breaking, no tailings, capital costs are much lower, and it enables extraction from much lower grade ores.
Simpson described how in the Karoo, using old resource exploration material from Union Carbide, who first mined uranium there between 1962 and 1982, including a government radio-metric survey, they are finding a great deal of uranium and molybdenum at very shallow depths.
Currently they are doing similar work in Wyoming, and he explained that by the end of this year they have proved two Joint Ore Reserves Committee compliant mines.
He said another more intensive radio-metric survey is being carried out in the Karoo, this time from a helicopter.
"We expect to see very exciting anomalies in the next few months," he said.