Industry executives believe the development of more uranium mines is needed to meet demand in the next decade as global supply from known mining projects is insufficient and the supply of used uranium for recycling is dwindling.
Prices of the uranium oxides need to be around 25 per cent higher than current levels - depressed by the fallout from Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster - to encourage interest from miners and give financiers comfort to back new projects.
'We need higher prices to stimulate new supply,' said Rio Tinto Uranium managing director Clark Beyer on the sidelines of the China Nuclear Energy Congress. 'We are US$10 to US$20 [a pound] short of where we need to be.'
China is the world's 10th-largest uranium oxide producer. Last year it had an estimated volume of 850 tonnes, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said; Kazakhstan is the leading supplier with an output of 14,900 tonnes.
Zhou Zhenxing, chairman of CGNPC Uranium Resources, the fuel sourcing unit of state-backed nuclear power projects developer China Guangdong Nuclear Power, said the price of uranium oxide had fallen a fifth from almost US$70 a pound late in February to about US$56 now, in the wake of March's nuclear crisis.
He said the nuclear disaster would not greatly affect a shortage of fresh natural uranium supply, since demand from all six reactors in Fukushima, and reactors taken offline in Germany, together amounted to less than 5 per cent of global demand.
