The Hunt for Uranium is On

Last year Kazakhstan became the world's largest supplier of uranium, overtaking Australia and Canada, at 14,000 tonnes, or one fifth of world production. As supplies of oil are being sought in increasingly inhospitable regions of the globe to meet rising demand against finite supply, the hunt is on for uranium in the face of an emphasis to turn-away from fossil-fuel based power stations and toward nuclear. The statistic is often given that there is about 40 years worth of uranium left, and this is the duration therefore of the provision of nuclear power.
In fact, there is much more uranium around than that, and the use of thorium and "waste" transuranics would see the industry continue well beyond the foreseeable future, including potential technology that actually destroys nuclear waste and turns it into useful energy. The EROEI of all the other energy sources that must be employed in the fabrication of nuclear fuel rods/pellets and the power plants themselves must be considered too in the necessary book-keeping exercise of viability. Ultimately, it is hoped, much of the energy for these tasks might be supplied in the form of nuclear electricity.