Our Queen Laura
17-11-2006, 19:55
Good evening, everybody. I'm a brand new democratic country with a couple of little enquiries regarding uranium. How easy is it to come across? What would one expect to pay? Any insight will be greatly appreciated.
-Laura, of The Free Land of Our Queen Laura.
Okielahoma
18-11-2006, 03:24
Lets just set the price at 2 trillion (1 time payment) and you can have all the uranium you want ok? I have vast mines and it is my largest industry.
Uranium(in the real world, to US reactor operators) sold for around 27$/kilo. Also,(again in the real world) most(around 70%) of the uranium is found in Australia and a total of ten(real world nations) are responsible for extracting 94% of the world's uranium, so it shouldn't be that common, but do to the way the NS world works, it is moderately common.
I hope this helps a bit.
Actually,
Uranium is quite common. For example, radon gas that leaks into your basement is a byproduct of the radioactive decay of uranium. There's also an unknown quantity dissolved in the world's oceans which, with a little research, can be economically recovered. The reason why only a handfull of nations are actively producing uranium is two-fold:
First, international trade in uranium is highly regulated. It isn't like most other metals where you can simply ship it from one nation to another without attracting the attention of the first world. This drives up the costs of producing and shipping the metal, making it less attractive to the global market.
Second, there are only a few dozen, large known deposits of uranium rich ores. And not all of those are currently being extracted. Ores of lesser concentrations exist just about everywhere, and the world hasn't really been prospecting for new deposits because there hasn't been an increase in demand in some time. The renewed interest in nuclear energy, however, does promise a greater demand, but some of the reactor technology thats being explored will just as easily consume the more common isotope of uranium (thus eliminating the costly and highly polluting process of enrichment) as well as plutonium, thorium, and byproducts of nuclear fission in first and second generation reactors. Since we currenly only really use about 5% of the uranium we mine, the rest is considered unsuitable for use as nuclear fuel in current reactors, such technology means we can produce enough energy from current reserves to keep the power flowing indefinitely.
Yes, I do stay up late at night reading about this kind of crap.