"All of the things that we now see coming out of media reports around the world on a daily basis (show that there) is a very, very strong renewed interest in nuclear energy," said Gerald Grandey, president of the Canada-based Cameco Corporation.

"That gives us a lot of confidence that the market for our primary product, which is uranium, will be growing in the future," Grandey told reporters.

He was speaking as the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened a five-day symposium on uranium resources.

IAEA deputy director for nuclear energy Yuri Sokolov said that nuclear power could "help to resolve the problem of climate change (as it is a) sustainable and secure supply of energy."

Echoing the conclusions of an IAEA conference on nuclear energy that was held in Paris in March, Sokolov said: "Nuclear power has a good and lengthening track record in terms of safety and economics" and produces 100 times fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuel.

"New environmental constraints on greenhouse gas emissions favor low-emission energy sources like nuclear power," Sokolov said.

He said this made it important to "know how many uranium resources we have" as even current Russian-US programs to recycle highly enriched uraniums from nuclear weapons into nuclear fuel could not supply growing demand.

The IAEA said in a press release that "declining secondary supplies have pushed the spot price of uranium to over 75 dollars (63 euros) a kilogram from 28 dollars a kilogram in 2003."

Grandey said his company was confident demand would stay high for decades.

He said that "today the world's 440 nuclear plants use 180 million pounds of uranium annually" and that "conservative estimates . . . show that annual consumption is expected to increase to about 206 million pounds within 10 years and rise to 215 million pounds by 2024."

He said the attitude to nuclear power has "changed dramatically so now you find all the US utilities are engaged in or planning life extensions to make the total life span of their (nuclear) units 60 years," instead of what had been 40 years.

That "gives us confidence that we should be investing a great deal of money in exploration and new mine development," Grandey said.

He said this was important since "when we are investigating exploration or mine development, given the lead times for exploration, given the lead times to present a license and bring out a mine, we are really looking at 20, 30, 40 years to see, is the industry going to be growing, is it healthy, is it going to be stable or is it shrinking?"

And nuclear power is not only becoming more desireable in developed countries with advanced programs as "many countries that have not historically had nuclear power are now talking about building units," such as Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, Grandey said.

"We now know that there will be customers well into the 2030, 2040 time," he said.

Grandey said: "All that talk of course has the anti-nuclear establishment a little bit worried because it seems a huge reversal as a lot of the icons of the environmental movment have now come across and begun to support nuclear technology."

But the Greenpeace environmental group said in a report in April that "all operational reactors have very serious inherent safety flaws which cannot be eliminated by safety upgrading."

Still, Grandey said the main question from the environmentalists is now: "How can you possibly supply the amount of uranium it is going to take for nuclear rejuvenation of nuclear renaissance."

"It is true that we have been living on inventories for about 20 years and the industry is producing out of its primary mine consumption 60 percent of what is consumed on an annucal basis," Grandey said.

"But uranium is a very, very common element," Grandey said, "and there is a lot to be mined.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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