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Here's a snippet of what went on in the energy markets last week: Electricity peak prices rose slightly last week at ERCOT and Palo Verde, averaging $32-34/MWh at those hubs. Meanwhile at the Northeast, PJM, and Southwest hubs, prices fell $2, $6, and $11, respectively, to average $38-39/MWh. Gas...

This is interesting, but it doesn’t seem quite enough: Japan developed an adsorbent that attaches the uranium-loving chemical group amidoxime to a plastic polymer. ORNL examined the binding process between the plastic and chemical groups and used that knowledge to enhance the uranium-grabbing characteristic...

Nuclear energy, you may have heard, is not universally beloved and some countries would like to banish it from their shores. (Switzerland is an outlier, of course, having no shore.) It has always been disfavored in a few countries (Australia, for example, though not as strongly these days), some of which...

Australia has decided to put a price on carbon in the hope that it can kick-start its renewable energy i ndustry and reduce emissions .  The Australian government has unveiled plans to impose a tax on carbon emissions for the worst polluters.  Prime Minister Julia Gillard said carbon dioxide...

Nuclear power, based on existing technologies, still has all its original problems: proliferation of nuclear weapons, terrorism, lack of long-term waste management, rare but catastrophic accidents and huge economic costs. All except the risk of accidents are worse now than in the 1970s. In several decades...

The latest is up , below are two tidbits you may find useful: Uranium prices continued their trend downward as prices fell to $42-$42.50/lb U3O8 last week. The EURATOM Supply Agency (pdf) “reported that, compared to 2007, total worldwide uranium production in 2008 rose more than 7% to 44,248 tU [metric...

We thought to call this post “Diseased Waste,” but decided it wasn’t only inaccurate but sounded like a death metal band. When we hear E. coli, we think disease, though of course, the critters live in our intestines from about three days after our births onwards and only a few strains of it prove dangerous...

Activism should be fun, pro- or anti-whatever, since the rewards of activism are often frustration, lost friends, and learning what it is to be called fanatic. So a bow to the unbending squirrel : A French anti-nuclear activist nicknamed the "unbending squirrel" managed to stop a train carrying...

For those of us who are interested in the developments pertaining to the domestic mining of uranium, you may find it noteworthy that perhaps the largest deposit of uranium ore in the United States is located in southwestern Virginia. There won't be any uranium mining in Virginia any time soon though...

If we use breeder reactors, uranium can last for 5 billion years at double current world electricity usage . ...read more

A team of Australian researchers has published a paper showing that mining uranium produces greenhouse gases. Yes, I know, it's a stop-the-presses moment : The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics...

Check out the detailed piece from CNNMoney on how Kazakhstan's uranium industry has taken off . ...read more

Stephen Dubner at the New York Times' Freakonomics blog explained some of the reasons for the high uranium spot prices seen over the past several years . Between 2004 and 2007, the spot price of uranium more than quadrupled, reaching more than $140 before falling off sharply in the past several months...

According to NewsAdvance, science lost to politics : Virginia Uranium and its allies in the Assembly proposed a study, as a first step, to examine the question of whether mining could be done safely using today’s modern techniques. ... That was the sole intent of SB 525, legislation introduced by Sen...

From the AP : The [State] Senate has passed legislation establishing a 2-year study on the safety of uranium mining. Before voting 36-4 on Tuesday to pass the study, several senators stressed that they didn't support the concept but thought it wouldn't hurt to study the issue. The study eventually...

Ireland's minister of energy and natural resources is working to shut down potential uranium mining there , saying it would be hypocritical for a country that doesn't use nuclear power to do so. Dave's Rants responds with some inconvenient truths. ...read more

Details from High Five . ...read more

Details from Atomic Insights . ...read more

Next month in New Orleans, NEI is sponsoring its International Uranium Fuel Seminar : Royal Sonesta Hotel New Orleans, Louisiana October 14-17, 2007 Demand for primary uranium and conversion and enrichment services is rising substantially as reactor new-build programs advance. Decades of chronic underinvestment...

Now that India is committed to beefing up its own domestic nuclear energy program, it's beginning to worry about China's efforts to secure its own future supplies of uranium . Very interesting. ...read more

From Nuc Net: Australia has decided to change its foreign policy to allow the export of uranium to India, but only subject to a number of “strict conditions”, prime minister John Howard has announced. In a statement today Mr Howard said conditions for uranium exports to India, which has not signed the...

A spike in uranium prices means more jobs mining uranium. Colorado Biz has the scoop. ...read more

Last Fall, I spent a couple of days at a conference in Las Vegas where I sat in on a discussion of how to use free content to drive purchase of paid content. That session was run by an editor from Fleet Street Publications (FSP), a publisher of investing ...read more