The U.S.A. has energy security – it just needs more mining

For your immediate information, here is my take on the first day of technical sessions at the SME Annual Meeting & Exhibit in Denver. The first obvious conclusion is that the world is not about to run out of energy any time soon. The key note speaker from Peabody Coal assured us that the U.S., with 37 percent of the world’s coal reserves, has enough coal to supply all our energy needs for at least 250 years. At the end of the day in the final session devoted to uranium, the speaker assured us that the U.S. has enough uranium to supply all our energy need for thousands and potentially millions of years. All we need to do is mine the coal and mine the uranium—or at least one of them.

Canadian versus American mining cities

Is it possible that Toronto is truly the greatest mining centre in the world as John Chadwick, writing in the February issue of International Mining, says it is? In support of his thesis, he quotes Kirk Rodgers of Golder Associates: ”[A good mining center] must be boring. By boring I mean it should not produce headlines about military coups, civil unrest, racial disharmony and financial flight. But Toronto actually is exciting in many other ways. It has a vibrant economy, a diverse ethnic makeup with virtually every nation in the world represented and a good cultural life.”