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French nuclear power group Areva will press ahead with its plan to build a 1 billion euro ($1.40 billion) uranium mine in Niger despite falling world prices for the fuel, the firm said on Friday. The Imouraren mine, due to begin commercial production of 5,000 tonnes per year in 2010, would make the West African desert state the world's second biggest source of uranium. French state-controlled Areva renewed its uranium mining deal with Niger in January 2008, when prices UX-U308-SPT were around $90 per lb, almost double their most recent recorded level of $53 on Dec. 16.

Niger, one of the world's top uranium producers, said on Friday it would study the possibility of building a nuclear power plant to meet its electricity needs. Landlocked and on the southern side of the Sahara, Niger is one of the world's poorest countries. It imports around 80 percent of its electricity from neighbouring Nigeria, Africa's top producer of crude oil.

Insecurity in northern Niger, where Tuareg rebels are fighting government forces, is stifling investment in the vast desert nation's mining industry, the mines minister said. Niger is already one of the world's top uranium producers and has handed out 127 mining exploration permits over the last three years to attract more investment into the impoverished Saharan nation.

Niger's President Mamadou Tandja dissolved parliament on Tuesday after the constitutional court ruled his plan to hold a referendum on a law allowing him to stand for a third term in office was illegal. Niger, a desert country of 15 million people in northwest Africa, is attracting increasing investor interest in its uranium deposits. It produces around 7.5 percent of the world's uranium, according to the World Nuclear Association. Below are details of companies with uranium mining and exploration projects in Niger.

Areva is the French nuclear company that is currently building plants across Europe and is due to lead Britain's nuclear expansion. For the last 40 years, it has been mining uranium in northern Niger, operating out of Arlit. Entering the town is a little like becoming an extra in a 1950s B-movie about the end of the world. Arlit is surrounded by desert - not the beautiful, undulating sand dunes of travel magazines, but a vast stretch of barren plain where orange dust storms blow in from the Sahara. The 2,000 miners live in company-maintained family houses, with orderly streets, clean running water, and mains electricity. French dishes such as magret de canard appear on the menu at the management clubhouse. There are schools, a hospital, and sports grounds where everyone is supposed to be able to play football: an unlikely suburban feature in the middle of the desert. But these facilities are only open to the mining families and civil servants posted in the town.

"My own favorite is the mystery of the Niger uranium forgeries [.pdf]. Remember that? President Bush's infamous "sixteen words," which loomed so large in the headlines at one point, have faded with the years, and yet the mystery lingers on. Who fed the White House "intelligence" based on crude forgeries, which imputed that the Iraqis had tried to buy uranium from the African country of Niger in an effort to construct a nuclear weapon? The forgeries, which somehow made it onto the President's desk embedded in a State of the Union speech, were so crude and obvious that it took IAEA scientists but a few hours to debunk them. So how did something soobviously fraudulent get injected into the US intelligence stream in the first place - and by whom? "

Cameco Corp (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's top uranium producer, said on Friday it will take an 11 percent stake in closely held Govi High Power Exploration Inc for $28 million and team up with the company to explore for uranium in Niger. The deal will also give the Canadian company the right to acquire a further 10 percent stake in GoviEx for $31 million and the miner could eventually boost its holding to 48 percent, for a further cost of between $145 million and $212 million, depending on timing.

Niger President Mamadou Tandja arrived Sunday in the symbolic Tuareg town of Agadez for his first-ever peace talks with rebel leaders who were flown in by mediators Libya, a government source said. Niger's north is rich in uranium and Tandja -- making his first trip there since the start of the latest Tuareg rebellion in 2007 -- is also due Monday to officiate at the start of construction work on a giant uranium mine in development with French nuclear giants Areva.

Niger's government and main Tuareg rebel groups have agreed at Libyan-sponsored talks to make peace in the country's uranium-mining north, Libyan state media and a rebel website said on Tuesday. The joint peace declaration late on Monday was the most inclusive yet between Tuareg rebels who launched an uprising two years ago, and the government, which had dismissed them as smugglers and bandits for most of that time. Nomadic Tuaregs launched uprisings in the Sahara in the 1960s and 1990s, and renewed rebellions since early 2007 against the governments of Niger and neighbouring Mali have increased instability in a region where al Qaeda cells also operate.

"Niger exports enough uranium to France to generate 80 per cent of the latter's electricity supply, writes Khadija Sharife. But ordinary Nigeriens reap little benefit from France's control of their country's uranium resources, with over three-fifths of the population living below the poverty line and reports of radioactive contamination of water, air and soil by multinational mining operations."

"Niger, the world's sixth-largest uranium producer, will review mining agreements with companies including Areva SA to ensure they're fair to the West African country, a mines ministry official said. Minister of Mines and Energy Souleymane Mamadou Abba, appointed by Niger's military rulers on March 1, hasn't yet set a schedule or format for the audit, Mahaman Laoun Gaya, an official at the ministry and a former government minister, said by phone today from the capital, Niamey. "The military authorities have decided to audit all the uranium and gold contracts," Gaya said."

"As the new nuclear renaissance grows, so too does uranium extraction. In Niger, which boasts some of the world's richest deposits, NGOs say that the poor are being exploited for the West's 'clean energy' In the heart of the Sahara lie some of the world's largest uranium deposits. Until recently, the region had held little interest to the world's trading partners, save France. Desert tribes, predominantly Tuareg nomads, had been mostly free to roam its vast, barren expanse; living off what little bounty it had to offer. Then a few years ago, rising fuel prices and climate change revived interest in the atom."

Armed with a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), India is now scouting for uranium from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Niger to fuel its atomic power plants which are running at half their installed capacity. For reliable and long term supplies of uranium, India is also exploring the possibility of joint mining and exploration initiatives in Mongolia, Prime Minister's Special Envoy Shyam Saran said.

Most Americans have heard of Niger only because that's where the CIA dispatched former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to find out whether Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium. But Niger's precious resource, just a footnote to the Iraq war, is the cause of monumental suffering here.

A French physicist and a US actor have joined representatives of indigenous peoples from Africa, Australia and the United States to send US lawmakers a stark warning about the dangers of uranium mining. "We want US lawmakers to understand that uranium mining is highly pollutant and that there is currently no scientific answer to the question of radioactive waste containment," Bruno Chareyron of France's CRIIRAD laboratory, which measures radioactivity in the environment, told AFP Friday. "We want them to know that the information they are given by the mining companies is not wholly reliable," he said. Representatives of the Tuareg nomads of Niger, Native Americans and Australian aborigines told of the ravages of uranium mining on their communities.

In what would come as a major relief for India, the Kazakhstan government has announced that it is willing to carry out nuclear commerce with this country, including supplying 'yellow cake' to India. In an exclusive interview to this paper, Kazakhstan's ambassador to India Kairat Umarov has said that his country, slated to become the largest producer of uranium by 2010, is ready to supply uranium to India and that Kazakhstan also has the potential to take part in construction of atomic power plants. Kazakhstan is among the four countries (the others being Canada, Mongolia and Niger) India, which faces a shortage of 100,000 tonnes of high-grade uranium, has desperately seeks uranium from.

Russia has overtaken Niger to become the world's fourth largest uranium producer, after Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan. Russia received its new rating in 2007, when it produced 3,527 tons of uranium. It has ambitious plans to mover even further up the league, based on promising deposits in Eastern Siberia and other regions, and opportunities for mutually advantageous cooperation with countries rich in uranium ore.