Heute 13.01.05 haben die Märchenonkel weniger Getreue.
(Für 50 Pfennige konnte man sich damals in der Pause
beim Hausmeister 2 flaschen Bluna mit Strohhalm kaufen)
Trotzdem unten zum Nachlesen
Quelle : MONEYWEB vom 12.01.04
============================
Neal Froneman (Aflease), Jaco Kriek (Pebble Bed Modular Reactor) and Andries Leuscher (Gold Fields).
MONEYWEB: One resource share you can own quite comfortably, given what’s happened to it in the past couple of days, is one that is focused on uranium. We’re going to be talking about uranium generally, and specifically about Afrikander Lease in tonight’s top story. Neal Froneman is at an airport, I think, in Switzerland. Neal?
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, good evening. Yes. Let me apologise up front. I’m at Geneva, I’m on my way to Brussels, and we may be interrupted by the public address system. So I do apologise.
MONEYWEB: No problem at all, Neal. We’ve had some fascinating discussions on this programme when you were going through a few bumpy rides at Afrikander Lease, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment. Today you announced that you’ve had substantial changes in your shareholding, and the share price has been rocketing – no doubt on that and the uranium price or the prospects for uranium.
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, that’s quite right. I think the first thing is that there have been some very influential press reports through Europe and North America in the last few days that have highlighted the potential for a uranium shortfall in the next four to five years. That’s the one thing. I think the other thing in terms of … [public address announcements in background]
MONEYWEB: Neal, you know what, I don’t think we’re going to fight that lady in the background. so when she stops we’ll come back to you, OK?
NEAL FRONEMAN: All right.
MONEYWEB: Let’s bring in Jaco Kriek. You’re also very exposed to the uranium price because of the business that you run, which is the pebble bed modular reactors, and these are the new nuclear power plants. Now already the little bit that we could hear from Neal, over the public address system there, suggests that things are looking up as far as that’s concerned.
JACO KRIEK: Yes, good evening Alec. Although, if you look at the use, the consumption of natural uranium in a reactor like pebble beds, it’s only about 3% of our levellised cost, so you can increase that by quite a margin and the impact on your overall electricity price that you produce is small.
MONEYWEB: But you’ll be watching it carefully?
JACO KRIEK: Sure, definitely so.
MONEYWEB: Neal, tell us a little about uranium for the uninitiated. When I was researching through it, it’s a very heavy, dense metal, used as an abundant source of concentrated energy. That’s what one of the uranium sites calls it.
NEAL FRONEMAN: That is correct, Alec. I think the portion that generates the energy through nuclear energy is the U235 isotope, which occurs in very small concentrations in natural uranium, about 0.7% is U235. So it has to be enriched up to about 3% for use in reactors to generate electric power. Obviously, weapons-grade uranium requires an enrichment process up to about 7%. Our portion of the business is really the natural uranium. We’ll produce uranium oxide. From a mining point of view, it is very similar to mining gold reef, and the only difference between Aflease and other gold producers that produce it as a by-product is it will be our primary product. So from a mining point of view it’s very similar. The processing is a little bit more complicated, but it’s not a huge hurdle.
MONEYWEB: Just having a look at the reserves again, the figure that I was able to pick up is that Aflease is sitting on about 150,000 tons of uranium reserves, and the biggest reserves in the world are in Australia – and they’ve only got about 650,000 tons. So your reserve that you have there is a substantial portion of what’s in the whole world.
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, that’s also correct. I think I’d prefer that we call it a resource, because a reserve has got very specific connotations. But in terms of resources, we hold 6% of the world’s uranium resource. Now, for a single company that is very, very significant. In fact, it’s more than some countries hold as a whole. So yes, we’re very proud of that.
MONEYWEB: And of South Africa’s resources overall, what percentage would be in your stable?
NEAL FRONEMAN: Well South Africa accounts for about 10% of the world’s uranium resource, and we hold somewhere between 50 and 60%.
MONEYWEB: Well, there’s our cue to bring Jaco back in. And as Neal now just explained to us, there’s really two uses for uranium. The one is uranium weapons and the other is uranium electricity plants, or nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors, I was surprised to see, generate 16% of the world’s electricity and in some countries it’s comfortably over 30% and in some even as high as 60%. I think France is sitting at 80% of their electricity being generated by nuclear reactors. But there has been negative publicity over many years towards nuclear energy, which seems to be fading away.
JACO KRIEK: Yes, Alec, if you specifically look at a country like China, they forecast that by 2050 they will build 200 full-scale nuclear plants. So if you look at France already at 80%, the US has just announced a process to license more reactors. Certainly South Korea, India, Pakistan and South Africa itself. So the demand for uranium will certainly increase drastically in the next few years.
MONEYWEB: Neal, from your perspective, it’s a story that clearly shareholders are liking?
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, that’s quite right, but I think you will see from the announcement that 75% of our shareholders are effectively new in the market, probably six months. So those are shareholders that understood the uranium market and we’re very pleased we positioned the company well, as you said, right at the beginning. We went through a very bumpy road. On your programme earlier I heard a little bit of the discussion on the strong rand, but we were the first gold company to really position for a strong rand as well. Yes, I think our shareholders are very pleased, certainly in the last few days.
MONEYWEB: Yes, the last few days what’s happened is the share price is going from R1.90 to R2.60.
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, there’s two things that happened. The one is there’s been a lot of influential press in Europe and North America regarding uranium supplies and the potential shortfall. Secondly, we’ve had a big seller, one of our shareholders. Randgold has been selling over the last few months and that’s capped our price. They stopped selling a few days back, and of course you take the cap off and it’s like a pressure cooker.
MONEYWEB: Mm. We bring in Dr Andries Leuscher now, who is the senior consultant environment at Gold Fields Limited. Andries, one of the reasons why people are pushing nuclear reactors as an electricity source is because it’s clean energy, and that is become a huge issue in the global environment today.
DR ANDRIES LEUSCHER: Hi, Alec, yes, that’s quite right. There’s been a shift away from focusing only on the human aspect, but also more on the environmental aspect. And to protect the environment nuclear energy is obviously the way to go, and I think it’s not a question whether the big move is going to be, but when it will be. So I certainly believe, yes, from an environmental and a safety perspective nuclear energy is just so much cleaner and so much better for the environment.
MONEYWEB: Why did it get so much bad press in the past?
DR ANDRIES LEUSCHER: I think it was the first – you refer to the two uses of nuclear energy and the first was in bombs and warfare. That started off very negatively, people didn’t really understand the safety aspects. And then there were one or two accidents where people did get radiation exposure, and the regulatory requirement was very onerous at that stage, because of the uncertainty. It was over-regulated and it was very costly to get into the nuclear field. I think that now people understand that much better, they’ve got a better feeling,. You know, when you go to your doctor you get an x-ray, and it’s much more accepted. The big scare is off, there’s a much better understanding. It was a new field, but people are getting used to it now and it’s much more accepted.
MONEYWEB: Jaco, that’s your business, and if people are becoming more responsive to nuclear energy it must be pretty good for the operation you’re in?
JACO KRIEK: Yes, we’re very excited and we think the timing for PBMR is perfect in that sense. If you also look at carbon tax trading, those are all sorts of issues that will increase the …
MONEYWEB: What is that exactly?
JACO KRIEK: That’s the credit that you can trade for a ton of CO2. So if you look at a nuclear reactor that does not produce CO, they can actually sell the credits to someone to reduce their CO2. So in other words they pay for the reduction of CO2.
MONEYWEB: So they make profits out of being clean?
JACO KRIEK: That’s right.
MONEYWEB: Andries, on Gold Fields Limited do you do much in the uranium field?
DR ANDRIES LEUSCHER: Alec, currently no. Obviously we have some uranium, as Neal has referred to uranium as by-product from gold. So there is uranium in the tailings, in all our tailings. That’s very pervasive and very common, but currently we don’t have any active programmes mining or extracting the uranium from our tailings.
MONEYWEB: Neal, having a look at the price of uranium, it stayed around $10 a pound since the late 1980s, and then in 2002 broke above $10 a pound. It hit a 20-year high just a little while ago of $20 a pound, so it’s doubled, if you like, in two years. The price action – what is causing it?
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, the market for a period of time – up until about the early eighties there was an oversupply of uranium, which caused an inventory to build up. And in fact the pricing model has moved from an inventory costing or pricing model to one where end-users are going to have to accept that they’re only going to be able to keep the lights on if they price in a new supply or new production-type costing model. So we’ve had a fundamental shift from uranium that’s been supplied from inventory sources to uranium that’s going to have to be supplied from new sources. And of course that’s more expensive but, as Jaco pointed out earlier, it’s a very, very small component of the cost of producing electricity. So, if you put all that together, plus the effects on the environment, the greenhouse effect, you’re looking at a commodity that’s got a very substantial, sound and fundamental underpin in terms of becoming a uranium producer.
MONEYWEB: And the consumption is forecast to rise over the next few years from around 175m pounds at the moment to 200m pounds – that will be in the 15 years. It doesn’t seem too much in 15 years. But how much of an impact will that have on price?
NEAL FRONEMAN: Alec, we’ve built models based on current uranium prices. We don’t believe that the uranium price is going to stay at the levels it’s at. The current shortfall in terms of new production and consumption – about 56% comes from new sources, so the inventory levels are decreasing. I think we can expect the uranium price certainly by the end of this year to reach $30 a pound. You’ve got to be careful when you quote uranium prices. You’ve got a spot market, where very little uranium is traded, about 10%, and then you’ve got long-term contract prices and right now the market is trading at about $25 a pound. So $30 a pound by the end of the year is not unrealistic, and of course the uranium price peaked at $40 a pound 25 years ago – and you can draw your own conclusions from that.
MONEYWEB: At that level Afrikander Lease, when you do come on stream, is going to be making a lot of money?
NEAL FRONEMAN: Well I’d like to say I think we’ll be printing money!
MONEYWEB: OK, your shareholders will like to hear that. But Jaco, you mentioned earlier – 200 new nuclear plants in China alone. My research shows there were only 430 of these plants in the world at the moment. So that’s an enormous increase – 50% growth in the nuclear industry.
JACO KRIEK: Yes, that’s right. That was a study done in the US that predicted this number, but if you talk to the Chinese themselves they say it could even be 300 gigawatts of nuclear by that time, and at the moment we produce in the world 350 gigawatts. So you can see that in China they expect a massive increase because of their CO2 emissions they just don’t have a choice but to go to some technology that doesn’t produce CO2.
MONEYWEB: CO2 emissions Andries – please just explain that to us, will you?
DR ANDRIES LEUSCHER: Well CO2 is generated whenever you burn any carbonaceous material – that would be fossil fuels, oil or coal or even if you burn gas, you convert your carbon and your hydrogen atoms and you create carbon dioxide, that’s CO2. So that’s the by-product of any burning process. All fossil-fuel reactors, that would be coal and oil, generate huge quantities of CO2 and the problem with CO2 is it attracts the heat from the sun and you get a greenhouse effect. In other words, you raise the temperature of the atmosphere.
MONEYWEB: So anybody who’s felt things getting hotter over the past few years – an associate said to me the other day, “talk to the old people, talk to the people who have been on the earth for a long time, and they’ll tell you it’s getting hotter”. And it is being taken seriously now by global leaders.
DR ANDRIES LEUSCHER: Yes, the getting hotter is very slow and it would be very difficult to say you can really feel it. It would half a degree over a decade or maybe a degree, and you do have these blips of temperatures going up and down, but the gradual slow rise is there. Whether it could be really perceived by people is very difficult to say as such, but it can be measured in scientific terms, yes.
MONEYWEB: Why is it that countries like the United States, Finland and China are growing their nuclear power base, whereas Germany is reducing it? What’s the argument?
DR ANDRIES LEUSCHER: I think it’s highly politicised at this stage. It’s still a political issue regarding nuclear energy, and I might not be the right person to comment on that. But I know that in Europe there’s a huge sensitivity about it. As you know the Green Party has got a seat in the government as well in Germany, so I think it’s basically driven by political issues.
MONEYWEB: Jaco, you’d agree with that?
JACO KRIEK: Yes, but you’ll also find that that will also change. At the moment Germany, for example, imports nuclear power from France, and the same for other European countries. So as soon as this reality of CO2 gets in carbon trading, then I think personally that nuclear will again become acceptable because it’s just not as dangerous as people make it out to be.
MONEYWEB: So a bright future for nuclear, which is one of the two areas of offtake for uranium, and Neal Froneman bright future for uranium?
NEAL FRONEMAN: It’s a great future for uranium and I think Jaco’s quite right. Certainly in my recent 18 months of getting into the uranium business, I’ve experienced fundamental changes here in Europe. It is very politicised, but when you get for instance the British government actually saying the only way they are going to comply with the Kyota Protocal and obtain carbon credits is by moving to nuclear power, you can rest assured that governments are already starting to prepare their voters for the change in mindset that has to take place.
MONEYWEB: Well I hope you enjoyed that insight into the uranium field. Afrikander Lease shareholders will be celebrating just that little bit more, because it does seem as if the area that has the biggest offtake of uranium, which is nuclear plants, are on a boom, and for pretty good reason. We don’t want global warming because we’ll all kind of melt down if it continues the way that it has been going, and global leaders are looking at it. In fact, later this month I’ll be at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, where about 3,000 global leaders get together and talk about major issues and hopefully try and change things. The direction that we are going is not in the right direction, and one of the major issues there is climate change that will be focused upon. I’ll be reporting back from Switzerland on that.
