Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp. (WUC:CSE; WSTRF:OTCQX) provided in a news release comments about the U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group, which was recently afforded a 30-day deadline extension by President Trump.
The group’s task is to evaluate and recommend solutions for re-establishing the domestic uranium supply chain and nuclear fuel cycle. “Stakeholders across the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle have found common ground as public proposals show alignment from the mining, conversion, enrichment and nuclear reactor operators in their recommendations,” the release noted. Western Uranium proposed the lower-cost approach of conventionally mining coproducts versus in situ mining uranium only.
Once the president receives the working group’s report, he is not required to act on it or do so within a specific time period.
In anticipation of action by the White House, however, Western Uranium advanced its Colorado-based Sunday mine uranium and vanadium complex to where it is ready to begin and scale up production.
In the release, Western Uranium summarized the recent and current nuclear fuel cycle situation. It is that parts of the cycle have declined in the U.S. due to having to compete with foreign, state-sponsored companies and cheaper natural gas and renewables to the point where domestic companies in those segments are not turning a profit and producing at price-insensitive levels.
This has led to the shutdown of uranium conversion and enrichment entities, which could be providing domestic supply, to be used, in part, for national defense purposes. As it stands now, future U.S. uranium production will meet less than 1% of the country’s needs, the company stated.
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