© World Nuclear Association 2001 1

For the past several years, the uranium supply sector has, through a series of political, financial, and technical events, been dominated by secondary sources of uranium. The very low uranium prices this dominance has produced, along with a flat outlook for uranium requirements and the slower development path of new uranium mines during the market low, has displaced contemplation of the exploration and discovery of new uranium resources to the almost-geologically long term future. Yet for several reasons, this front-end segment of the uranium fuel cycle needs to be understood and considered in any long-term analysis of the uranium market. A brief analysis of the discovery and production history of the Athabasca basin in northern Saskatchewan provides a useful illustration of how market dynamics influence uranium exploration investment, and how exploration discoveries in turn influence uranium markets. As in any such analysis, past behaviour may provide some insight into future patterns, which have considerable relevance today as nuclear power is once more coming under positive consideration as a source of reliable and clean energy. Athabasca Basin Discovery History The chronology of exploration discoveries in the Athabasca basin covers a period from about 1968, with the first major uranium discovery at Rabbit Lake just outside the basin, to the present. In detail, an early period of exploration discoveries (Figure 1), culminating in the discovery of the Key Lake deposit in 1975, was based largely on followup of uranium mineralization found by traditional prospecting on the land surface. These deposits, by 1977 called unconformity uranium deposits to denote their location at the contact between basement rocks and sandstone, were located close to the land surface. This allowed either direct observation of mineralized boulders, or detection of radiometric anomalies caused by uranium mineralization. This initial stage of “easy discoveries ” can be grouped as Phase I of the exploration history. A longer second phase of exploration discoveries, including the largest known deposits,

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