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Saskatchewan is blessed with the world’s largest high-grade deposits of natural uranium in the Athabasca Basin. Less than one per cent of natural uranium is a fissionable isotope, uranium-235, while the rest is mostly uranium-238, which is not immediately able to produce energy.

In addition to using this natural mix of uranium isotopes to fuel CANDU reactors, Canada exports uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride. This compound is processed by other countries to enrich the fraction of uranium-235 beyond its natural value because their reactors need it in order to operate. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) lists 13 member countries that enrich the fraction of uranium-235 up to the 20 per cent level, called low-enriched uranium (LEU). Canada is not among them. The question is, why not?

Back in 1973, Canada articulated its position on uranium enrichment in a policy statement issued by then federal minister of energy, mines and resources (EMR), Donald S. Macdonald. Since the CANDU reactor technology does not require enriched fuel, the policy stated that “(a)n enrichment project could not be considered an essential national project in Canada,” but it would be “a secondary industry in which a raw material of either domestic or foreign origin would be further processed.”

This position statement did not reject the possibility of enriching uranium in Canada.

In 1976, the EMR updated a 1971 study on prospects for uranium enrichment in Canada. It reiterated the 1971 position that the federal government “took a neutral position and requested promoters to show that such a project was in the national interest before the government would initiate inter-governmental negotiations.” The study also stated that “construction of an enrichment plant in Canada to supply the export market is less attractive in 1976 than in 1971.”