The big news is Cameco Corp., the world's largest uranium supplier, said production at its Cigar Lake mine won't start until 2011 ``at the earliest'' and that fourth-quarter sales will fall.
Repairs to the mine, the world's biggest untapped source of uranium that was flooded a year ago, is taking longer than forecast, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Cameco said today in release distributed by Market Wire. The miner expects fourth- quarter revenue to drop about 10 percent from the third quarter.
Delays to production at Cigar Lake, which was originally scheduled to start mining this year, helped push uranium prices to as much as $138 a pound in June, increasing costs for utilities that run nuclear reactors. The company had expected to produce about 18 million pounds of the radioactive metal this year -- about 10 percent of global consumption.
Huge delays there and also URANIUM One, the Toronto-listed uranium producer, confirmed it would cut its 2008 production forecast by up to 37% owing to commissioning problems at its operations in South Africa and Kazakhstan.
This is why Uranium price is rising and so are the uranium stocks.
