20-Year Ban on New Uranium-Mining Claims in Canyon Holds Up in courtyard

The Havasupai people, and the Grand Canyon division, won in U.S. District Court this week when a moderator denied the uranium industry’s motion to turn over a 20-year central ban on uranium mining on 1 million acres in the economically sensitive landmark and haven of sacred places to many tribes. Still under disputation, though, are formerly existing claims that are held still valid.

The March 20 move upheld a ban signed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in January 2012, when he prohibited new uranium-mining claims, as well as growth on certain old claims whose rights may have expired, for 20 years on 1 million acres neighboring the canyon. 

The uranium industry was hopeful to cripple the Interior Department’s ability to provisionally protect lands from critical mining. Today’s opinion upholds the center Department’s authority to take such defensive measures.

Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon threatens revered sites of the Havasupai, Hualapai, and Kaibab Paiute, Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo peoples. Not enclosed in the ban confined by the March 20, 2013, court decision is the question of previously accepted mining and new projects on claim sites with accessible rights.

No uranium protesters rally in Sydney

Demonstrators have rallied outside NSW Parliament House to voice their opposition to state government plans to let a uranium industry.Images of destruction from Japan's tsunami and 'No-nuclear' signs were held outside the gates as about 50 people took to Macquarie Street through the lunch hour, chanting: 'Shame Barry Shame'.

NSW Deputy Opposition Leader Linda Burney told the crowd Premier Barry O'Farrell couldn't be trusted, after he exposed plans to reverse a 25-year ban on uranium exploration in the state. 'Do not trust Barry O'Farrell,' she said. 'Just before the election he said that he was not involved in nuclear exploration and mining in NSW. 'He has now known the go-ahead for exploration.'

Earlier, Ms Burney told AAP that NSW Labor remained opposed to uranium mining and exploration, in spite of the federal Labor conference in December voting to undo its longstanding three-mine policy preventive the number of uranium mines in the country. Standing beside her, Greens upper house MP Jeremy Buckingham told demonstrators his party stood with NSW Labor in differing uranium mining.

Wyo Uranium Industry Bullish Amid increasing Prices

The uranium industry is arresting a bullish tone amid resurgent prices and a welcome atmosphere in the top state for uranium treasury. Companies tout plans to mine more uranium in Wyoming through a Wyoming Mining Association news meeting Thursday."I feel uranium will be here to stay," said the association's assistant director, Lynn Welker. Titan Uranium USA Inc. said it intended to open a mixture surface underground uranium mine in Wyoming. Meanwhile, the top U.S. miner of uranium, Cameco Resources, said it planned to double uranium manufacture in Wyoming by 2018.

Wyoming, followed by New Mexico, jointly have anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of the nation's predictable uranium reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The industry got its found in Wyoming during the early days of the Cold War and fell on hard times in the 1980s. Uranium prices soared in current years, reaching $130 per pound in 2007. Prices plummet during the depression but are up 50 percent since previous summer, reaching $62.50 per pound as of Thursday.

Not far from Jeffrey City, a central Wyoming community that has been a spirit town since the local uranium industry go bust in the 1980s, Titan Uranium USA Inc. plans to reopen an region uranium mine once own by U.S. Energy. "People ask us if we are going to bring Jeffrey City back from the dead," said Gregory Adams, vice president of Titan Uranium USA Inc. The mine will bring 200 jobs, which will help the region even though the company has no plans to restore the town itself, Adams said. "I think the uranium industry is on a roll here once more in Wyoming and they are leaving to bring a lot to the state," he said.

When Uranium Outshine Gold

EARLIER this month, Global X Funds of New York publicize plans for two exchange traded funds one for gold stocks, the other, uranium. Primarily, Bruno del Ama, its chief executive, figured he knew which would capture the market’s notice. After all, gold prices have rush in recent months. As it transpire, he deduction wrong. Global X’s Uranium E.T.F. with holdings in companies like the Cameco Corporation, Paladin Energy and Uranium One was a hit as soon as it goes on sale Nov. 9, with early deal volume outpacing Global X’s gold E.T.F. by five to one. “I am in shock, to be truthful,” he said.

Mr. del Ama is scarcely alone. Uranium industry insiders were caught off guard by a deep run up in spot sells prices, which are now about $58 a pound, up stridently from the low $40s in the summer. “We all knew it was going to occur,” says Ron F. Hochstein, the president and chief executive of the Denison Mines Corporation. “We just didn’t expect it would happen this year.” As Adam Schatzker, a psychiatrist with the Canadian investment bank RBC Capital Markets, said in an equities research report available last week: “It show that the character of the spot market has changed markedly over the past little months from one that was heavily oversupplied with weak command to one that has high levels of demand with very little supply.”

The price surge hints at a confluence of important changes a “perfect storm,” in Mr. Hochstein’s words now sweeping through the global nuclear power industry, particularly in Asia. With China newly moving to accelerate sharply its nuclear building program by 2020 the showpiece is the 3,300 megawatt Taishan plant in Guangdong region, due to come online in 2013 the country’s nuclear utilities are currently trying to secure fuel supplies for years to come. On Nov. 1, China’s lengthy term planning agency announced that by 2020 it intended to raise nuclear power’s share of the country’s whole energy production to 112 gigawatts, or 7 percent, up from the previous target of 70 gigawatts. That translates into an extra 82 million pounds of uranium, according to RBC.

Australia uranium industry concerned over new goverment

Australia's budding uranium industry is concerned the nation's latest Greens-backed minority government could be less supportive of its growth and may look to tax uranium mines, an industry lobby group said on Thursday. Australia has the world's largest uranium assets and is forecast to grow fast to meet demand for nuclear power, which is returning to vogue as countries look to cut carbon emissions. But listed uranium miners such as Paladin and Energy Resources of Australia have lagged the wider local market since Aug. 21 elections, which returned Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Labor Party to power but only with the sustain of a Green MP whose party opposes uranium mining.

"The industry is watching closely what might happen with a new collection with the Greens," Australian Uranium Association spokesman Simon Clarke said. "We would expect the preceding rank quo will hold, but we would certainly think that it's possible that a passionately held policy of the Greens, like opposition to uranium mining, is one that they might desire to push into their agreement with Labor." The association represents producers such as ERA, which is forbidden by global miner Rio Tinto, and also BHP Billiton which plans a $20 billion growth of its Olympic Dam uranium-copper mine in Australia. Olympic Dam is the world's largest-known uranium put and its production of uranium oxide is planned to quadruple to around 19,000 tonnes a year under the expansion project.

The Greens have some influence with Gillard because she has a razor-thin majority of just one seat in the lower house, including the support of the sole Green MP there. But the Greens have so far not pressed the uranium issue and, in any case, both Labor and opposition conservatives can combine to defeat any attack on the industry in the new parliament. Miners and some investor, though, remain concerned, given Labor itself had been opposed to latest uranium mines until 2007. The association says one of the first tests of Labor's continuing sustain for the industry will be whether it goes ahead with uranium sales to Russia, as it hinted it would do in March when it still commanded an outright mass. It has also sought reassurances from the new Gillard government that her future 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal mines will not be extended to the uranium industry.

Uranium Bottoming as China Buys resources From Cameco

China is buying extraordinary amounts of uranium, signaling that prices are poised to rebound after three years of declines. The nation may purchase about 5,000 metric tons this year, more than double as much as it consumes, building stockpiles for fresh reactors, according to Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium industry analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Prices will jump by about 32 percent next year, the mainly since 2006, RBC Capital Markets said.

India and China are top the biggest atomic expansion since the decade after the 1970s oil crisis to cut pollution and power economies growing more than double as fast as Europe and North America. The boom, joint with slowing supply growth, may benefit Cameco Corp., a co-owner of the world’s biggest uranium mine, and Areva SA, the largest builder of reactors. “China’s require is insatiable,” said Dave Dai, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong. “They will have to take nearly whatever is available.”

Uranium will climb to an average $55 a pound next year as demand erodes provisions, according to Adam Schatzker, a metals analyst at RBC in Toronto. Max Layton, at Macquarie Bank Ltd. in London, forecasts it will be clamber to $56.25 next year and $60 in five years. Uranium for urgent release was at $41.75 a pound on July 5, according to the Ux Consulting Co. weekly price estimation. Spot trades of uranium oxide totaled 20.9 million pounds this year, about $873 million in today’s prices, Roswell, Georgia-based Ux consult said.