Posted by Engineer-Poet on December 1, 2009 - 10:25am

Forecast of future uranium production by Ux Consulting

Michael Dittmar recently wrote a series of posts about nuclear energy that was published on The Oil Drum. In the first post of the series , he said that uranium "civilian uranium stocks are expected to be exhausted during the next few years" and "the current uranium supply situation is unsustainable".It seems to me that this view is much too pessimistic, especially if prices rise from current levels. In this post, I will explain why. I will also talk about a bet with Dr. Dittmar regarding future production of nuclear electricity.In support of my view of growing uranium production, below is a graph shown on the Ux Consulting website regarding future production. Ux Consulting describes itself as "The industry's leading source of consulting, data services, and publications on the uranium, conversion, and enrichments markets."Based on this graph, Ux Consulting expects uranium production to grow rapidly between now and 2020, with especially large gains in Kazakhstan, Africa and Canada.