China Buys Unprecedented Amounts of Uranium for Nuclear Power

China is currently buying "unprecedented" amounts of uranium to ensure supplies for its fast-expanding nuclear power sector, the China Daily reported from Beijing. China now has 13 nuclear plants under construction and, as Xu Yuming, executive director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, announced in Beijing July 6, is planning to build at least 60 new reactors by 2020.

China could buy some 5,000 metric tons of uranium in 2010, over twice its usual consumption, in order to build stockpiles for new reactors, Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium-industry analyst at MIT, said in a telephone interview. "They are essentially stockpiling in anticipation of new reactor build," Neff said. "They are stockpiling like crazy."

The World Nuclear Association reports that Chinese demand for uranium may rise to 20,000 tons a year by 2020, more than a third of the 50,572 tons mined globally last year.

Cameco Corp. of Canada, the world's second-largest uranium producer, also confirms China's big uranium purchases, PTI reported from Beijing July 13. Senior Vice President George Assie told a conference call that Chinese utilities have bought some 3,600 metric tons of uranium this year on the spot market. "The stockpile there is for a very specific reason and that is to feed the reactors under construction," Assie said. On June 24, Cameco signed an agreement with China Nuclear Energy Corporation to supply some 10,000 tons of uranium over the next decade.