European utilities building up uranium inventories

In its newly released annual report, the ESA notes that over the year, 21,932 tonnes of natural uranium (tU) delivered to the EU was well above the 19,774 tU loaded into reactors, meaning that inventories are being rebuilt. ESA says that the rebuilding of inventory is in response to security of supply concerns and rising prices, and is being done almost entirely under long-term contracts at an average price of €41/kgU ($21.60/lb U3O8) in 2007. Supplying 25% of the EU’s uranium, Russia total overtook Canada to become the largest supplier to the region, although the ESA notes that some of the Russian supply of fabricated fuel may have come from Kazakhstan or elsewhere. Canada’s share was 18%; Niger’s, 17%; and Australia’s, 15%.
As well as the supply of natural uranium, nuclear fuel supplies also depend on the availability of conversion and enrichment services for processing and increasing the level of fissile uranium-235 for use in a power reactor.

For the time being, ESA said, European conversion capacity is sufficient to meet EU requirements. EU enrichers can currently meet demand and will need to increase their capacities only by 2013 in order to satisfy the needs of EU utilities. A shortfall in capacity would not at the moment appear to be likely: France’s Georges Besse II enrichment plant is on scehdule to start up before the end of 2009 and its first two modules could reach full capacity of 7.5 million SWU capacity in 2016. By 2012, Urenco intends to increase its total production capacity to about 15 million SWU – an increase of about 50% over current capacity, the agency noted. Some 31% of enrichment services used by the EU in 2007 came from Russia.

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