WASHINGTON, Dec 5, 2006 -- Comtex

 

The U.S. government's plan for a "renaissance" in nuclear power may be crimped by tightening world- wide supplies of uranium and a lack of enrichment facilities to turn the uranium into fuel for power plants, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

In a recent setback, an accident in October flooded the world's largest uranium mine, which was set to open in Canada next year. That nudged prices for processed uranium ore, already up more than 800 percent since 2001, even higher, according to the report.

Meanwhile, enrichment facilities, which turn uranium into fuel for nuclear power plants, have already pledged their services because of growing interest in nuclear fuel by other countries.

The result is that the United States is relying more than before on Russia, which provides about half the enriched nuclear fuel used in this country, said the report.

The Bush administration has made plans for at least 30 new U.S. nuclear power plants. It is a really "renaissance" defined by the government for the most recent time a utility ordered a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. was 1973.

However, the "Ad Hoc Utility Group," an industry collective that represents 85 percent of the utilities involved in producing nuclear power is nervous about securing adequate fuel supplies for nuclear power plants over the next 10 years.

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