Cameco Corp expects windfall from Canada-India uranium deal

Saskatchewan province Premier Brad Wall has said that Cameco Corp, which is located in the province and is Canada’s biggest uranium producer, will see be the biggest beneficiary of the uranium sales agreement between India and Canada.

Cameco Corp is in advanced talks with India to supply uranium for its nuclear plants. A deal to that end is expected be signed during PM Modi’s visit to Canada from April 14-16. The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail quoted a source close to the negotiations as saying that the negotiations were at a very advanced stage and were likely to conclude successfully. The source, however, did not say when the negotiations would conclude but said if the deal did not come through during PM Modi’s visit, then India and Canada would reiterate their commitment to Canada-India nuclear cooperation and say, “Cameco is in the middle of negotiations and we expect an announcement in due course.”

PM Modi, currently on a three-nation tour, had said in a Facebook post that he looked “forward to resuming our civil nuclear energy cooperation with Canada, especially for sourcing uranium fuel for our nuclear power plants”.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is looking forward to the deal being signed as it will not only mean a windfall revenue for Cameco Corp, but will also boost employment in the province.

“It’ll mean tax revenue, it’ll mean job retention, it’ll mean new jobs, if in fact there is an agreement here with India,” Wall said by telephone. “Depending on all the specifics, you’re going to be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales over some period of time,” he told Bloomberg News. While the deal would not mean “a big number” for direct provincial revenue, it’s “huge in terms of job creation, job retention,” he said.

India currently meets three percent of its electricity needs through nuclear power, but plans to raise it to 25 percent by 2050. For that, it will require three times as much uranium as it produces to fuel its reactors.

Canada had banned exports of uranium and nuclear hardware to India in the 1970s after New Delhi allegedly used Canadian technology to build a nuclear bomb.

However, the two countries signed the Canada-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 2013, signifying a change of Canada’s stance towards India, from a nuclear pariah to a responsible nuclear power.