Growing Nuclear Demand in America Could Fuel Uranium Price Increases

With America being one of the richest nations in uranium deposits, it's been irresponsible and negligent that the country has stopped building nuclear reactors to provide a much higher percentage of energy needs than we've had until now.

Under 20 percent of electricity in the United States is powered by nuclear power plants, even though the country enjoys the fourth-largest amount of uranium in the world.

Applications to the US Nuclear Regulatory commission has surged recently, as permission to build 26 new reactors have been received, with six new plants already being ordered. At this time America has 104 commercial nuclear reactors in operation.

The CEO of Uranium Energy Corporation, Amir Adnani recently stated about the potential the company and industry face commercially is tremendous, He said, "The US has the fourth largest deposits of uranium, yet it imports approximately 95% of the uranium we use. We import a much smaller percentage of oil, and we are concerned about being dependent on oil sheikdoms. We have the ability to reduce uranium imports from places like Russia and Kazakhstan by exploiting our own deposits to meet the increased demand we will experience as these new plants come on line."

Coal is by far the most used material to fire up power plants, as it generates 1,787,669,000 megawatthours when taking into account all the forms it's used in the twelve-month period ending in October 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. On the other hand, the 104 nuclear plants generated 906,217,000 megawatthours during that same period of time. Other major materials used to generate energy from power plants is natural gas and petroleum liquids, with the latter playing a much smaller part, only generating 28,216,000 megawatthours over the the last 12 months ending in October as well.

It's far past time America has returned it attention to nuclear generated electricity. If we would have continue building the plants and using them throughout the years, we would have been in a far stronger position in our energy needs and not be experience the fiasco associated with misguided rules and laws like experienced in California which result in blackouts from lack of electricity and power.