Uranium market

As a result, uranium companies worldwide have reduced capacity, closed operations and deferred new production.

The facilities for enrichment, on the other hand, are found in those countries that produce significant amounts of electricity from nuclear power.

[9] Global demand for uranium rose steadily from the end of World War II, largely driven by nuclear weapons procurement programs.

[7]: 194 In June 1972, the major non-United States uranium producers formed a secret cartel to manipulate the market.

[7]: 194  The cartel (Societe d'Etudes de Recherches d'Uranium) was composed of Australia, France, South Africa, and Anglo-Australian transnational Rio Tinto Zinc Ltd.[7]: 194  The cartel sought to mitigate the impacts of US policy on the market by engaging in bid rigging, price fixing, and market sharing.

[7]: 195  Factors for the decreased demand included the end of the Cold War (which in turn resulted in the increased availability of secondary sources of uranium), the disasters at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

[7]: 195  Another factor was the construction of a series of large hydro-electric power stations has also helped to depress the global market since the early 1970s.

Until 1985 the Western uranium industry was producing material much faster than nuclear power plants and military programs were consuming it.

[7]: 195  Factors resulting in this price increase included decreased availability of secondary sources of uranium, a flood at the Cigar Lake Mine in Canada, new reactors beginning operations, and the announcements of China's plans to expand its nuclear power generation.

[13] In 2012 Kazatomprom and Areva were the top two producing companies (with 15% of the production each), followed by Cameco (14%), ARMZ Uranium Holding (13%) and Rio Tinto (9%).

On the other hand, it is still difficult to tap economically into the world's vast solar, wind, and tidal energy reserves.

A separate marketplace comprises countries within the former Soviet Union, or the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Eastern Europe and China.

In base-escalated contracts, the buyer and seller agree on a base price that escalates over time on the basis of an agreed-upon formula, which may take economic indices, such as GDP or inflation factors, into consideration.

[7]: 188 In 1983, physicist Bernard Cohen proposed that the world supply of uranium is effectively inexhaustible, and could therefore be considered a form of renewable energy.

[22][23] He noted that fast breeder reactors, fueled by naturally-replenished uranium extracted from seawater, could supply energy at least as long as the Sun's expected remaining lifespan of five billion years.