The future of the nuclear fuel business presents many opportunities. But those opportunities are clouded by uncertainties larger than the strict market fundamentals that have propelled the price of uranium from about $10 a pound for U3O8 three years ago to over $30 a pound today. In this issue of Insight, speakers at the upcoming Platts Nuclear Fuel Strategies conference address some of those opportunities and challenges.

The nuclear fuel business should clearly benefit from the many bullish signs indicating that nuclear power is poised to expand around the world from the 440 reactors in operation today to perhaps 470 by 2015, and more beyond that date.

But there are questions about where the uranium will come from to fuel those reactors, given that, as RWE NUKEM’s James Cornell notes, today’s uranium production only meets about 60% of demand, the rest coming from so-called secondary supplies, such as the uranium liberated from the downblending of Russian high-enriched uranium (HEU) in warheads. But that downblending, done under a 1993 agreement between the U.S. and Russia, will end in 2013. Whether there will be a new agreement remains uncertain.

Some utilities, understanding this uncertainty in the market, are being proactive in developing innovative strategies to minimize supply risks. Two such utilities are the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Florida Power & Light Co. (FP&L). TVA’s Mark Burzynski outlines a cooperative project with the U.S. Department of Energy to make use of excess, but nontraditional, feedstock from DOE’s uranium inventories. FP&L’s Rajiv Kundalkar notes that U.S. utilities are interested in broadening supply sources for fabricated fuel and are considering purchasing fabrication services from European, Japanese, Korean, and Russian fabricators.

Meanwhile, transporting nuclear materials is becoming more challenging for transportation companies, especially in a post-9/11 world, according to Edlow International Co.’s Jack Edlow. Dealing with spent, or used, nuclear fuel also remains a continuing challenge, with the date for the opening of DOE’s Yucca Mountain repository still uncertain. But Areva Inc.’s Alan Hanson argues that, while efforts to open Yucca Mountain should remain intense, the U.S. must now consider adopting a “complementary” path to sustain a nuclear renaissance—a path that would include reprocessing and recycling spent fuel.