Forty Years of Uranium Resources, Production and Demand in Perspective
The Red Book Retrospective
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Epilogue – lessons learnt
Nuclear Energy Agency
Since its inception after World War II, the modern uranium industry has evolved from one exclusively satisfying military requirements to the current emphasis on satisfying fuel requirements for civilian nuclear reactors generating electricity. As the industry changed, so too did the Red Book. Resource terminology was expanded to include more definitive resource confidence levels in order to provide industry and government planners with better tools to assess the adequacy of uranium resources to meet future requirements. Resource production cost categories were periodically adjusted in response to changing market price and sections were added or deleted from successive Red Books as the industry matured and responded to changing market and regulatory requirements, as well as societal expectations. As the civilian nuclear industry grew, concerns about the adequacy of resources to meet future requirements emerged. That concern led to Red Book projections of nuclear power and related uranium requirements well into the future. A look back on these projections gives sobering lessons as to the impact of world and industry-specific events on the accuracy of these projections. The oil crisis of 1973 propelled nuclear power into the spotlight as an alternative to fossil fuels, which in turn led to overly optimistic projections of growth in generating capacity and uranium requirements. Subsequently, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents in 1979 and 1986, respectively, had a chilling affect on nuclear power that lasted for decades.
Also available in: French
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Click to download PDF - 426.32KBPDF
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