Phase two of great uranium debate begins – Dryblower

GAME on or game over? An interesting question which has kept Dryblower amused over the weekend when two games came to a head – one involving a cricket tournament in the West Indies, the other involving uranium in Australia.
The less said about the cricket farce the better, though from an Australian perspective a World Cup win is a win.Uranium, however, is a different matter because Dryblower's not too sure who has won what, or whether a political clearance from the national Labor Party conference will be seen as a win by everyone.Most State Labor leaders remain opposed to uranium mining, so it is quite possible that large parts of the country will remain off limits to miners until some form of legal or internal Labor Party test is mounted to force the states into line.Until that is done, the development of new uranium mines in Australia will remain a two-speed affair. Full speed in the centre, with South Australia and the Northern Territory embracing the business opportunity, while Queensland and WA hold out – for a while.In the field, and on the market, it's likely to be a similar situation because this is where Australia's uranium boom will really be put to the test – and unless Dryblower is sadly mistaken, it is here that we will also see two-speed change, and that does not simply mean a division between central Australia and the rest.The uranium split Dryblower can see emerging is between the serious players and the also-rans – not unlike what we saw in the cricket World Cup.On one side, we will have serious uranium explorers with genuine reserves and resources, and a bankable mining plan.On the other, we will have the promoters spouting their nonsense science of "near-ology" – something which emerges at this stage of every mining boom.And as with the cricket the ratios will be roughly the same with one serious participant to a dozen, or more, pretenders.For followers of the great uranium debate, the weekend decision to permit the development of more uranium mines, if only in the centre of the country, means that near-ology will no longer be good enough.For the first time since this round of the uranium game started, the geology of uranium will become more important than the politics.It will no longer simply be a case of a company pointing to a map of Australia and saying they have tenements within 100km of Olympic Dam or Ranger.Investors and other critics will be demanding to see drill results, resource calculations, economic models, and independent expert reports explaining what it all means.For most outside observers, this will mean learning an entirely new language, and understanding that 1% uranium in a grab sample means absolutely nothing without follow-up drilling to test whether the sample was simply a geologist picking up the only radioactive rock within a 10km radius.Or that an aerial survey using modern sensing techniques will probably show that all of Australia has some background radiation, even in the backyards of Sydney and Melbourne.Clearing Australia's biggest political hurdle really does mean "game on" for the uranium industry. There is more than enough opportunity in the centre of the country for the development of a dozen new mines – and there is every chance that the states will slowly fall into line.But for the pretenders promoting moose pasture as possible future uranium mines, clearing a political hurdle is a warning sign that it will soon be "game over" because uranium in Australia has just entered its serious mining phase.