ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Canada's uranium resources, domestic demand, industry structure, and related government policy. Energy is extracted from uranium by a nuclear, rather than a chemical, reaction, as in hydrocarbon combustion. The uranium industry is also under stricter government control than are most commodity industries, partly because of the relationship of uranium to nuclear weapons and the risk of their proliferation. In a US-Canadian context, uranium-related issues can be aggregated into the categories of bilateral trade, international trade, and nonproliferation. An understanding of the structure of the nuclear-power-reactor fuel cycle is important to an understanding of the world uranium market because, as already indicated, demand for uranium for other uses is very small. The economics of reprocessing and recycling the recovered uranium and plutonium in the current generation of reactors is quite uncertain today but probably unfavorable. By 1974 the situation had been totally transformed: prices were rising steeply, and Canadian uranium was in great demand.
