Uranium is Too Cheap.

Geoff Russell’s analysis shows the rapid growth of LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports, globally.

The left vertical axis quantifies annual LNG exports in millions of tons. The blue line shows exports from pioneer Qatar (now zero). Australia (brown) has natural gas resources and became the next mega exporter after 7 years, later surpassed by US LNG exports (magenta).

Australia’s LNG revenues are about $43 billion per year, paid in US dollars needed to import $32 billion of needed gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

Might the world be better off not burning Australia’s 80 million tons of LNG that emit 300 million tons of CO2, annually? Australia has exportable uranium that could power electric generators globally. The right hand vertical axes shows the thermal equivalent of fissioning THOUSANDS of tons of uranium to burning MILLIONS of tons of LNG. 10,000 tons of uranium = 80,000,000 tons of LNG.

But uranium is too cheap. Exporting 10,000 tons of it would only bring in one billion dollars. It is not in Australia’s national interest to export $1 billion of uranium instead of $43 billion of LNG.

Read Geoff’s complete story in Australian vernacular at The real world is getting in the way of footy.