International Symposium on Uranium Raw Material for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Exploration, Mining, Production, Supply and Demand, Economics and Environmental Issues (URAM-2018)

The emerging uranium industry landscape: Push or Pull resource recovery?

25 Jun 2018, 16:00

20m

Vienna

ORAL Track 2. Uranium markets Nuclear Power and Associated Modern Energy Markets

Speaker

Mr Harikrishnan Tulsidas (UNECE)

Description

The simultaneous idling of the world’s richest and one of the largest uranium deposits and cutbacks in production against a background of low prices, has brought to a head the strategic question of what future path the troubled global uranium industry should tread? If there is a positive way forward, the practical consequence is to define in detail how uranium recovery and production pathways should be redesigned for a more predictable and sustainable future. This paper will discuss the inevitable impact of these change drivers as causing the uranium sector to pivot from a “push” to a “pull” business model, one based on uranium as a critical material for climate action not as a traded commodity. This paper will detail the necessary interactions of policy and technology innovation from which this new "push" model can be developed, taking into account the demand for mineral resource recovery of any kind as a low- or zero-waste generating activity. This means rethinking uranium as a new economic resource, placing innovative uranium extraction technologies and flow sheets at the centre of process design and operation, with particular emphasis on uranium as a co- or by-product.