Word: uranium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eight hundred miles north of Montana, in upper Saskatchewan, sprawls a land of vast evergreen forests laced with lakes and streams, windblown sand ridges--and the world's richest deposits of uranium. From this Canadian wilderness, centered on the Athabasca Basin, fully a quarter of the world's annual supply of uranium is unearthed, most of it from a single mine called McArthur River. In a world increasingly concerned about the flow and price of oil from the Middle East, demand for the mine's controversial product is quietly rising...
McArthur River isn't much to look at from above ground--just a cluster of green, corrugated-metal buildings, a company lodge and an airstrip--but the mine is an industrial marvel. The rocks underground average 21% pure uranium, with pockets as concentrated as 80%, far richer than the typical 1% deposits at other mines. The ore at McArthur River is the richest in the world and is far too radioactive to handle conventionally; the miners extract it by remote control, using giant boring machines and scoop trams instead of pickaxes and shovels...
...Since uranium was discovered at McArthur River in 1988, its corporate owner, Cameco, based in Saskatoon, Sask., has spent $277 million to develop it. Considering that the price of uranium has languished below the cost of production for most of the intervening years, Cameco's investment might seem like a fool's wager--until you look at what is happening in the battered market for U3O8, the raw uranium that's refined and enriched for use in nuclear reactors...
That market has enjoyed a little-noticed recovery over the past two years, as the price of uranium has crept back to more than $10 a lb. from its all-time, inflation-adjusted low of $7.10 at the end of 2000. Demand for uranium has risen steadily over the past decade, as stockpiles have dwindled and nuclear-power plants have increased their output. The U.S. nuclear-power industry generated a record 778 billion kW-h in 2002. That year marked the third consecutive all-time annual high, and experts estimate that 2003 will continue the streak...
...quick to endorse Iraq's claims that imported aluminum tubes were designed for rockets, not for use in nuclear-processing plants. Powell personally grilled CIA experts on the tubes and was told that U.S. intelligence had spun some of the intercepted tubes at the extreme speeds required to enrich uranium. Rocket tubes would have shattered--these withstood the strain. The discussion of the tubes was a high point in a performance that took almost 1 1/2 hours. When it was over, Powell had done about as much as any member of the Administration could to convince the world that Saddam...