Yes, there have been.
There are a couple of things that are happening. The one important element that I didn't get to touch on was the movement of the technology into new areas of consideration. For us, thorium is not now seen to be an opportunity because we have such good and high-grade deposits of uranium.
Thorium is being actively considered in India, however, because they have big deposits of thorium. So there are considerations of using it, but under the current circumstances, we did a very quick calculation....
I'll step back one step. The biggest reserves that we know of right now, in order of the first three, are Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada. Those are the ones we know. We've got about 3.3 million tonnes of known reserves. There are another projected 7 million tonnes of expected reserves.
We think, overall, there are probably 14 million to 15 million tonnes of uranium available before we really have to start looking for other types of generators.
But if you take a look at how Canada produces electricity, people go to what is regionally available. So Alberta has lots of coal and they've been using coal. Water is abundant in Quebec, B.C., and Manitoba, so water is a chief resource. While we end up having a lot of access to uranium and for a long period of time, it doesn't preclude others from going to thorium.
Likewise, it hasn't precluded us from moving our technology. The ACR-1000, which is being designed by our friends at AECL, will probably get more output with a third less fuel than we're getting from our current reactors, which means that the reserves we know about in respect of the amount we're now consuming will be extended even further.
In addition to that, we've got the Generation IV International Forum on which the Canadian government has signed a treaty with international partners. There are 11 partners involved.
The folks at Natural Resources Canada are involved in looking at high-temperature reactors, which again will have efficiency quotients that will permit us to extend our fuel opportunities.
But the short answer is, we have lots of available material and at reasonably good prices compared to others.
And as I said before, we do it in an environmentally sensitive way. We're the only technology that knows exactly what goes into our units, when it went in, how long it was there, when it came out, and where it's been since it came out of the reactors. That very important containment chain, the unbroken carriage of that material, is what I think sets us aside from all other types of generating capabilities.