The UAE (United Arab Emirates) recently announced a series of nuclear fuel supply contracts totaling $3Billion. You can read the original story by Reuters here. The contracts, which range from the purchase of uranium to conversion/enrichment services are for UAE’s first nuclear power plant due to open in 2017 and will cover its fuel supply for its first 15 years. The UAE plans to build another three reactors and its fellow oil producing Arab state, Saudi Arabia, has proposals for sixteen reactors. The home of big oil is going nuclear.
As the current wave of new construction (65 worldwide) gets closer to completion we will an increasing number of countries moving to secure their long term supply. With the end of the HEU agreement just over the horizon the only question remains is how will the mining industry plug what many industry observers believe to be the inevitable supply gap.
Dev Randhawa
