CANBERRA - Australia and China have signed a landmark nuclear safeguards pact, opening the way for massive exports of uranium to fuel China's booming nuclear power industry.
We now have uranium export agreements with all of the 'declared' nuclear weapons states – the U.S., U.K., China, France, Russia – although not one of them takes seriously its obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue disarmament in good faith.
The BHP Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine in SA is the only outfit still selling Australian uranium into China since closure of Rio Tinto's Ranger mine in Kakadu in January 2021.
The United States is the largest market for Australian uranium – accounting for over half of final demand (including both direct exports, and exports that are processed in third countries).
Nuclear non-proliferation
Australian uranium can only be sold to countries with which Australia has a nuclear cooperation agreement, and has safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including an Additional Protocol.
On 3 September 2014, Prime Minister Abbott announced the suspension of Australian uranium sales to Russia until further notice.
observations support the conclusion that the large number of uranium deposits and prospects across Australia reflects the extensive emplacement of uranium-enriched felsic rocks in three main periods of igneous activity.
For several decades uranium mining has been a major part of the Australian political discussion, with opposition groups citing the wide-ranging environmental impacts, indigenous land access and nuclear proliferation as reasons for ceasing or restricting the industry.
International uranium sources. Increasingly, uranium is imported from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Canada, Namibia, Niger and Australia.
In 2021, Australia exported $138B to China. The main products exported from Australia to China were Iron Ore ($95.7B), Petroleum Gas ($15B), and Gold ($5.86B). During the last 26 years the exports of Australia to China have increased at an annualized rate of 17.2%, from $2.24B in 1995 to $138B in 2021.
In 2021, Australia imported $19.6B in Refined Petroleum, mainly from Singapore ($6.57B), South Korea ($3.32B), India ($2.62B), Malaysia ($2.56B), and China ($1.25B).
According to GlobalData, China is the world's eighth-largest producer of uranium in 2022, with output registering flat growth on 2021. Over the five years to 2021, production from China increased by a CAGR of 3% and is expected to drop by a CAGR of 0.01% between 2022 and 2026.
Kazakhstan is home to nearly half of aboveground global uranium supply, and as mentioned ranks first in world uranium production; the country's national uranium-mining company, Kazatomprom (LSE:KAP), is the world's largest uranium producer.
The biggest uranium company in Australia is currently BHP, with its Olympic Dam in South Australia producing over 3,500 tons of uranium ore per year.
Uranium supply
Japan has no indigenous uranium. Its annual requirements (of up to 8000 tU prior to the Fukushima accident) are normally met from Australia (about one-third), Canada, Kazakhstan and elsewhere.
KOLKATA: In what is being claimed as a highly suspicious transaction, the detective department has nabbed five persons on Thursday evening who had come to Kolkata to sell what they claim is one kg Uranium, priced at Rs 3 crore in the open market.
Uranium Energy has an average 1 year price target of $8.00, an upside of 140.96% from Uranium Energy's current stock price of $3.32. Uranium Energy stock has a consensus Buy recommendation according to Wall Street analysts.
During 1988 the Olympic Dam project, then a joint venture of Western Mining Corporation and BP Minerals, commenced operations about 560 km north of Adelaide, in an arid part of South Australia. The massive deposit is underground, some 350 metres below the surface, and is the largest known uranium orebody in the world.
Australia's uranium production will fall by approximately 20 per cent in the medium term due to the cessation of mining at the Ranger mine. All of Australia's domestic production is exported. As of January 2022, new mining is proposed at Boss Energy's Honeymoon project (South Australia).
The prospect of nuclear power in Australia has been a topic of public debate since the 1950s. Australia has one nuclear plant in Lucas Heights, Sydney, but is not used to produce nuclear power, but instead is used to produce medical radioisotopes.
Olympic Dam, owned by BHP (ASX:BHP,NYSE:BHP,LSE:BHP) Olympic Dam is one of the world's largest uranium mines, but it's also a significant deposit of copper, gold and silver.
The Russian Federation's main uranium deposits are in four districts: The Trans-Ural district in the Kurgan region between Chelyabinsk and Omsk, with the Dalur ISL mine.