Haunted by the threat of global warming, the world may very well be on the verge of a renaissance in the use of nuclear power and the time has come to gear up uranium mining, the head of the world's largest uranium producer said Monday. "All of the things that we now see coming out of media reports around the world on a daily basis (show that there) is a very, very strong renewed interest in nuclear energy," said Gerald Grandey, president of the Canada-based Cameco Corporation. "That gives us a lot of confidence that the market for our primary product, which is uranium, will be growing in the future," Grandey told reporters. He was speaking as the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened a five-day symposium on uranium resources.
IAEA deputy director for nuclear energy Yuri Sokolov said that nuclear power could "help to resolve the problem of climate change (as it is a) sustainable and secure supply of energy." Echoing the conclusions of an IAEA conference on nuclear energy that was held in Paris in March, Sokolov said: "Nuclear power has a good and lengthening track record in terms of safety and economics" and produces 100 times fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuel. "New environmental constraints on greenhouse gas emissions favor low-emission energy sources like nuclear power," Sokolov said. He said this made it important to "know how many uranium resources we have" as even current Russian-US programs to recycle highly enriched uraniums from nuclear weapons into nuclear fuel could not supply growing demand.
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