Group Pledges $50M for Nuclear Fuel

[NVMojo]

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, CNN creator Ted Turner and former Sen. Sam Nunn pledged $50 million to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency Tuesday to create a uranium stockpile.

The aim is to discourage countries from developing their own nuclear programs. The reserve would ensure supplies of low-grade fuel for nuclear power plants around the world. One example of a program they hope to discourage is in Iran, which critics fear is ultimately aimed at developing weapons.

The Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative is hoping its financial pledge to the International Atomic Energy Agency will prod governments into action on creating the stockpile. Buffett would provide the money, which is contingent on a $100 million match from IAEA member states.

"Under international law and under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, countries have the right to enrich nuclear fuel," Nunn, a Georgia Democratic senator from 1972 to 1996, said in a telephone interview from Vienna, where he announced the proposal at a 140-country IAEA annual conference. "If we have a lot more countries that do that -- and we're on the threshold of that now -- then it's going to be an extremely dangerous world."

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-nuclear-proliferation,1,6311475.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[phantom power]

1. I see Buffet has found another precious metal to corner the market with.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Is that possible?

I thought that uranium was fairly common, most of its price coming from the cost of safety in processing and its value in the nuclear industry.

--p!

[phantom power]

4. Interesting point. Perhaps it would work like potable water...

there's no shortage of water on planet earth, but potable water? That's a different story. As with water, the supply of useable uranium is controlled by the expense of preprocessing and purification. So, it is indeed possible to corner the market on fissible uranium fuel, due to the bottleneck in processing it.

The uranium wars: not fighting with it, fighting for it! (Or, for it, with it?)

[hunter]

3. It's an interesting idea.

But it assumes the use of reactors that require enriched fuels. What do you do with nations that build CANDU sorts of reactors?

[Dead_Parrot]

5. It's like any other commodity...

Sometimes there's a glut, and the price drops, and sometimes there's a shortage and the price goes up: Buying low and selling high is what Buffett does in his sleep, he's just doing it uranium instead of gold of copper. That it encourages nonproliferation is a nice bonus.

On Hunter's point, there are lots of reactors already that use enriched fuel, and more being built, so it's not a market that's going to go away anytime in the next 40 or so years.