Long-term strategy is important for the Renaissance of uranium exploration

Kobayashi, Takao

With recent steep rise of uranium price, the worldwide uranium exploration boom has arrived again since last boom of late 1970's. Last exploration boom had shrunk shortly because the growth rate of nuclear power generation was much lower then estimated, however this time, the situation of the uranium supply and demand is quite different from last time, and uranium demand seems to keep growing long time. The noted feature of this exploration boom is that the junior companies of Canada and Australia are leading the boom. Their strategy is to re-evaluate the projects in which once deposits were discovered and evaluated in 1970's and 1980's. However, if we consider long future more than 20 years, it is more necessary to discover new uranium resources continuously, which is not so easy now without enough exploration specialists. It is very important to have long-time exploration strategy to grow human resources and to make timely discoveries and developments.