China is buying unprecedented amounts of uranium, signaling that prices are poised to rebound after three years of declines.

The nation may purchase about 5,000 metric tons this year, more than twice as much as it consumes, building stockpiles for new reactors, according to Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium-industry analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Prices will jump by about 32 percent next year, the most since 2006, RBC Capital Markets said.

India and China are leading the biggest atomic expansion since the decade after the 1970s oil crisis to cut pollution and power economies growing more than twice as fast as Europe and North America.

The boom, combined with slowing supply growth, may benefit Cameco Corp, a co-owner of the world's largest uranium mine, and Areva SA, the largest builder of reactors.

"China's demand is insatiable," said Dave Dai, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong. "They will have to take almost whatever is available."

Uranium will climb to an average $55 a pound next year as demand erodes supplies, according to Adam Schatzker, a metals analyst at RBC in Toronto. Max Layton, at Macquarie Bank Ltd in London, forecasts it will climb to $56.25 next year and $60 in five years.

Uranium for immediate delivery was at $41.75 a pound on July 5, according to the Ux Consulting Co weekly price assessment. Spot trades of uranium oxide totaled 20.9 million pounds this year, about $873 million in Monday's prices, Roswell, Georgia-based Ux Consulting said.

Price slump

Uranium has tumbled 69 percent since peaking at $136 a pound in July 2007 as companies boosted production, according to the firm's data. At least 27 mines in nine countries began operating in the past 10 years, adding as much as 65 million pounds a year to global output, according to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Cameco, part owner of McArthur River mine in Canada, the world's largest deposit of high-grade uranium. Six mines are scheduled to start in 2010.

"The uranium bull market of 2006 and 2007 stimulated the development of new supply, but we do not think it is enough," Schatzker wrote in a report. "The prevailing uranium price is too low to stimulate sufficient supply to cover future reactor requirements."

The cost of mining one pound of uranium is about $31, up from $26 in 2007, according to Edward Sterck, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets in London.

'Stockpiling like crazy'

China's demand for uranium may rise to 20,000 tons a year by 2020, more than a third of the 50,572 tons mined globally last year, as it boosts output to 85 gigawatts, nine times its current capacity, according to the World Nuclear Association. The nation agreed on June 24 to buy more than 10,000 tons over 10 years from Cameco.

India's needs will grow 10-fold to 8,000 tons as it quadruples capacity to 20 gW, according to Jagdeep Ghai, finance director at state-owned Nuclear Power Corp.

"They are essentially stockpiling in anticipation of new reactor build," Neff, who is an independent director of GoviEx Uranium Inc, a privately held exploration company with interests in Niger, said in a July 6 telephone interview. "They are stockpiling like crazy."

China plans at least 60 new reactors by 2020, Xu Yuming, executive director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, said in Beijing on July 6.

The average 1,000-megawatt reactor costs about $3 billion, according to the World Nuclear Association. Loading a new reactor requires about 400 tons of uranium to start, Neff said.

China's economy may grow 10.1 percent this year, while India's expands 8.6 percent, according to analysts' forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. US gross domestic product will increase 3.1 percent and Europe's will grow 1.1 percent.

Companies that build reactors may be among the biggest beneficiaries. Areva's shares have tumbled 53 percent in the past three years. Miners including such as Cameco, whose stock has fallen 60 percent since then, Paladin Energy Ltd., which has lost 63 percent, and Darwin-based Energy Resources of Australia Ltd, which is down 25 percent, may also benefit.