With consensus on the climate issue, most countries have successfully put forward their carbon emission targets. Due to low carbon and mature technology, nuclear energy has become the focus of scholars. The development of nuclear energy is inseparable from the support of uranium resources. Due to the geographically uneven distribution of uranium resources, the flow of resources across the globe satisfies both supply and demand. Therefore, research on the characteristics of the global uranium resource trade and its evolution trends can provide a reference for decision-makers to formulate relevant uranium resource trade policies to ensure the security of the national uranium resource trade. Based on the perspective of the industry chain, this paper constructed an upstream natural uranium trade complex network (upstream) and an enriched uranium trade complex network (downstream) to analyze the characteristics and evolution trends of GURTNs at the global, community, and national levels. The results show that: (1) The trade of enriched uranium is mainly concentrated between developed countries such as European and North American countries. Natural uranium is a raw material, and its trade characteristics are greatly affected by uranium price fluctuations. (2) The evolution of the global natural uranium trade community is dominated by the significant uranium-resource-demanding countries. The global natural uranium trade pattern will be difficult to change in the short term. (3) With the expiration of the USA–Russia enriched uranium trade agreement, this will become an uncertain factor affecting the evolution of the global enriched uranium trade pattern. (4) Since the United States and France are deeply involved in the global uranium resources trade, both have a higher ability of anti-control and control in GURTNs, which is inseparable from the uranium resource trade strategies of the two countries. The paper concludes by suggesting corresponding policy recommendations that can inform policymakers in formulating relevant trade policies.
Climate change has attracted increasing attention due to the continuous rise in energy demand. As one of the most potent and practical sources of low carbon energy, nuclear power has an irreplaceable advantage in terms of low carbon dioxide emissions and operating stability compared to traditional fossil and renewable energy. Nuclear power is the largest source of energy with low carbon dioxide emissions after hydropower. The Fukushima nuclear accident had a significant negative impact on the development of the global nuclear power industry. Although many countries with nuclear power have adopted a cautious attitude to supporting the development of their nuclear power industries, the growth of the global nuclear power industry is still sluggish. The global nuclear power generation has not yet recovered to the level of 2010. As countries begin to pay attention to climate change and put forward their own carbon neutrality goals one after another, nuclear energy has once again become the focus of policymakers due to its low carbon and stable technical economy. In the case of France, nuclear energy is a massive driver of economic growth while also bringing about a lower carbon footprint. The importance of addressing climate change increases the future global role of nuclear power. Besides, global uranium resource demand will increase due to the shift towards more sustainable and reliable low-carbon energy sources. There is no denying that the development of nuclear power will be affected by policy-making in the futures.
Due to the geographically uneven distribution of uranium resources, the flow of resources across the globe satisfies both supply and demand. From 2000 to 2019, the number of natural uranium trading countries remained at around 70, and the number of enriched uranium trading countries remained at around 45. The global financial crisis in 2008 and the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 seriously negatively impacted the international uranium resources trade. In particular, the Fukushima nuclear accident brought the development of the global nuclear power industry into a trough, resulting in a downward trend in the worldwide trade of uranium resources. With the gradual transfer of nuclear power industry centers from European–American regions to the Asia–Pacific region, the major natural uranium importers have also changed from being dominated by developed countries to a situation where China and developed countries are “neck and neck.” Due to breakthroughs in mining technology, the production of natural uranium in Kazakhstan has risen rapidly, gradually replacing Canada as the world’s largest exporter of natural uranium.
The enriched uranium trade is mainly concentrated between developed countries. Due to its lack of ability to convert and concentrate uranium, Spain solely relies on imports for enriched uranium. Affected by the global financial crisis, the price of uranium resources fell. From 2008 to 2013, Spain mainly imported a large number of enriched uranium resources from the United Kingdom for storage, which caused great fluctuations in global trade volume. Uranium is a highly sensitive strategic mineral resource, and there are uncertain political risks in international trade cooperation, such as embargoes caused by political factors. With the rise of resource nationalism, trade protectionism, and the increasingly complex global geopolitical environment, the outlook of global uranium resource trade security is not optimistic.
The world’s largest importers of natural uranium in 2019 were China—36% of the world imports (USD 1297 million) and Canada—21% (USD 745 million). At the same time, the country with the highest export value of natural uranium was Kazakhstan, accounting for 43% of global exports (USD 1531 million). Canada was the world’s second-largest exporter of natural uranium, at 19% (USD 681 million). In 2019, the United States imported the most enriched uranium, a total of 34% (USD 1716 million), which is followed by Korea with 14% (USD 707 million). The top two exporters of enriched uranium were Russia an Netherlands, at USD 1723 and 823 million. These accounted for 34 and 16 percent shares of enriched uranium exports worldwide.
Currently, the research on uranium resource utilization mainly focuses on the following aspects: (1) Research fields on uranium resource demand. Once a power plant is being built, the demand for nuclear power is highly inelastic. An insufficient supply of uranium resources will restrict the development of the nuclear power industry to a certain extent. The global uranium resources can meet the medium- and long-term demand for global nuclear power. According to the empirical model combined with China’s nuclear power development plan, under the medium scenario, by 2030, China’s uranium resource demand will increase to 20,113 tU. According to the empirical model, and combined with China’s nuclear power development plan, under the medium scenario, China’s nuclear power industry’s demand for uranium resources will increase to 20,113 tU in 2030. By then, uranium resources will replace crude oil as an energy resource with the highest external dependence in China. (2) Research fields of uranium resource supply. The global supply of uranium resources is mainly affected by prices, natural factors such as climate, supplier country policies, and other factors. predicted China’s uranium resource supply by improving the Hubbert peak model and concluded that in the medium scenario, the peak of China’s uranium production will come in 2065. By then, China’s uranium mine supply will increase to 4605 tU. The supplies of unconventional uranium resources, such as phosphate rock co-associated uranium resources, are in low supply, as are uranium resources extracted from seawater and tailings. Due to its high supply cost, it is difficult to achieve large-scale production in the short term, so traditional uranium resources will still be an essential source to meet nuclear power demand. (3) Cost and price analysis of uranium resource. There is a relationship between uranium resource consumption and its supply cost. The Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 seriously impacted the nuclear power industry, resulting in weak global demand for uranium resources. In recent years, increased supplies from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan have further led to a drop in uranium prices. Ref. concluded that the increase in the price of uranium resources has little impact on the cost of nuclear power but will affect the demand for uranium resources to a certain extent.
However, scholars have rarely conducted systematic research on the uranium resource trade, and there is a lack of analysis of the uranium resource trade from the perspective of the industrial chain. Trade links are one of the essential crisis transmission channels. To a certain extent, changes of the trade network structure affect policymakers’ choices; for more information about networks to better understand some key features of the uranium industry, see. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of global uranium resource trade and its influencing factors is crucial for policymakers to develop better national uranium resource security policies. To remedy the deficiencies above, we constructed global uranium resources trade networks (GURTNs) during 2000–2019. Based on complex network theory and an industrial chain perspective, we used bilateral trade data collected from the UN Comtrade database to analyze the characteristics of the uranium resources trade and its evolution trends. Complex network theory is a suitable method to describe international trade relations and study the characteristics of trade patterns. The rise of “complex network science” and its application in international economic issues provide a more scientific research method for understanding the global trading system. Guided by the complex network theory, there are growing numbers of studies analyzing international resource trade from the perspective of a complex network with examples of natural gas, crude oil, rare earth, and antimony ores. At the same time, resource trade research based on the industrial chain has gradually become the focus of scholars, such as the cobalt industrial chain and nickel industrial chain.
The contributions of the present study are threefold: first, to systematically study the global uranium resource trade by building a complex network model of uranium resource trade; second, based on the perspective of the industry chain, to analyze the evolution trend of the global uranium resource trade pattern from the global level (macro), the community level (medium), and the national level (micro). The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 is devoted to the data sources, the process of constructing the global uranium trade networks, and the network topology indicator description. Section 3 presents the main findings of this research work, while the conclusions and policy implications of the study are drawn in Section 4.
The core theory of complex networks is to abstract the relationships between individuals in the real world into a network and use this to describe the connections between individuals in the real world. In this paper, the global uranium resource trade network can be abstracted as a connected network G = (V, E), where V = {v i: i = 1, 2, …, n}, n = |V| is the number of nodes and E = {e i: i = 1, 2, …, m}, m = |E| is the number of edges. The nodes represent countries, and the edges represent the fact that there are relationships between each country. The direction of the edge represents the trade flow, and the weight of the edge represents the trade volume.
In the global uranium resource trade network, any two nodes (i, j) and (j, i) do not correspond to the same edge, and each edge in the network has a corresponding weight. Hence, the network is a directed weighted network. From the perspective of the industry chain, the global uranium resources trade network (GURTN) includes two sub-networks: the global natural uranium trade network (representing the upstream industry) and the global uranium-enriched product trade network (representing the downstream industry).
This paper constructs global indicators, community indicators, and national indicators to analyze the topology of the uranium resource trade network. Global indicators include average degree, which measures the connectivity of trade networks; average path length, which measures trade network efficiency; network density, which measures trade network prosperity; and average clustering coefficient, which measures trade network tightness. The community indicators are based on the network’s community division. The modularity value measures the extent of regionalization or globalization of uranium resource trade. The normalized mutual information measures the stability and deviation of the network. National indicat
