Next, representing advanced uranium developer Deep Yellow Limited, we have Head of Business Development Andrew Mirco and Head of Project Development Darryl Butcher. Andrew is an experienced Corporate Finance and Business Development Executive with a successful background in capital markets, M&A, and risk management. Andrew has been Head of Business Development at Deep Yellow Limited since May 2021. Darryl has more than 40 years' mining experience and has been responsible for the development and operation of several operating mines in the gold, base metals, uranium, and iron ore industries. Darryl has led both the design, concept, and the development of the Tumas process. Thank you.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining me. Today, I'll be talking to the corporate and market aspects of the company. I'll then hand it over to Darryl Butcher to talk about some of the innovative work currently underway at our Mulga Rock project, pictured here in this slide. We believe at Deep Yellow we have a deep understanding of the uranium industry, and this is what sets us apart from many of our peers. We have deep value in the form of a globally diversified asset portfolio with two long-life advanced uranium assets: the Tumas project in Namibia and the Mulga Rock project in Western Australia. We have a high-value exploration pipeline with the Alligator River project in the Northern Territory and the Omahola project in Namibia, and we have a development strategy to get us producing + 10 million lbs per annum within the next decade.
We plan on doing this by sequentially developing the Tumas project, then the Mulga Rock project, and then the next project, be it organic or inorganic. We have deep expertise in the form of a highly experienced uranium team with experience across all facets of the uranium industry, and we have a team of proven builders. This is the same team that built, largely the same team that built, the Langer Heinrich and the Kayelekera uranium mine, the same team that got both plants up to nameplate, and the same team responsible for their operations. We have deep technical capabilities.
This is the same team that, again, designed the flow sheets for both Langer Heinrich and Kayelekera, designed the innovative use of membrane and resin technologies for the recycling of reagents at both of those plants, and it's the development of this membrane technology and the associated innovative flow sheets that's enabled us to become a low-grade uranium specialist. Quick recap on our capital structure: as of late last week, we had a market cap of $1.6 billion, $217 million in cash as of the 30th of June, and we're in the ASX 200. However, key to our success to date has been the Deep Yellow team led by John Borshoff with 50 years' experience in the uranium industry. Chris Salisbury, our Chairman, has held senior operational roles at both Rossing and Ranger uranium mines.
Darryl Butcher, with 40 years of operational development and project management experience, and as you can see, a long list of others with a collective uranium experience of over 500 years. Our flagship uranium project, Tumas, is located in Namibia. This is a calcrete-hosted deposit, very similar to the Langer Heinrich deposit. Adjacent to this is the Omahola project, a Rossing basement-type deposit. In Western Australia, we have the Mulga Rock project located 290 km northeast of Kalgoorlie, just off the Tropicana haul road. This is a carbonaceous sediment-hosted deposit. It is one of the largest undeveloped uranium mines in Australia with a 105 million lbs resource. It is also the only uranium mine in Western Australia with a granted mining lease ready for Deep Yellow to develop as and when we choose. In the Northern Territory, we have the Alligator River project located 380 km east-northeast of Darwin.
This is an unconformity-related deposit. This is a very large land holding over some highly prospective ground, some 3,895 sq. km . Our Tumas project, earlier in April this year, we completed the revised Definitive Feasibility Study. The target is to be producing 3.6 million lbs per annum over a 30-year life of mine. The Definitive Feasibility Study showed that the economics were quite robust with an IRR of 19%, NPV of $577 million US, and an initial CapEx of $474 million US. The aim was to announce Final Investment Decision on the back of the Definitive Feasibility Study.
However, notwithstanding that the project was economic at the prevailing uranium prices at the time, the decision was made to defer Final Investment Decision until such time that the uranium price reflects the market structural supply deficit and we start to get some activity in the long-term uranium market and the long-term uranium price starting to increase. Whilst that is waiting, we will continue on with our detailed engineering to ensure a speedy transition to the construction execution phase. We'll continue with early works on the non-processing infrastructure, including water pipeline, power lines, pre-construction camp, and roads, and we've got procurement of key packages at 92% of direct cost. On the project financing, now that the Definitive Feasibility Study is complete, we've been able to provide the final set of information packages to the independent technical expert.
They will supply the due diligence report in the very near future, and this will enable us to go to market in the near-perennial future as well. Quick recap of the uranium prices. More recently, the first bump in the uranium price that we saw was in September 2021. This has been, for the first time in over a few decades, the market finally realized that the inventory overhang that had haunted it for the last couple of decades had finally been consumed. The next bump in uranium prices that we saw was in September 2023. This is when, at the WNA conference in London of that month, the nuclear fuel report categorized the uranium shortfall or the forecast uranium shortfall as unspecified supply. This is the first time that the WNA could not pinpoint where this supply was coming from.
We then saw the uranium price increase to a high of $106 per lbs in early 2024, and then it slid off over that period on the back of uncertainties around the Russian nuclear fuel imports and the Trump effect. I should also mention the next nuclear fuel report, which is released every two years, comes out next month. We'll wait and see what the impact of that is. More recently, we've seen a good bounce in the uranium price on the back of U.S. executive orders, Sprott doing a $200 million raising, and just a broader recognition that many of these uranium mine restarts will not reach their production targets. The heading of this slide shouldn't be a surprise to anyone in the room today. The global pivot towards nuclear power as a carbon-free baseload energy source is stronger today than it ever has been in nuclear history.
For the first time in a long time, we have very, very strong support from all stakeholders leading this at governments globally with their new nuclear build programs, both for energy security and a push to decarbonize. We have trillion-dollar tech companies aggressively pursuing nuclear power for their data centers and hyperscalers. We've seen a genuine change in public attitudes from the public towards nuclear power. This change in attitudes has translated to a real change in policy. As I said, the executive orders out of the U.S., they are targeting a four-fold increase in their current reactor fleet by 2050. They are also starting or aiming for the construction of 10 new reactors by 2030. We've even seen the World Bank lift its ban on nuclear energy funding.
If you want to talk about when there's been a change in attitudes, that's certainly one thing to put your finger on. Since then, we're now about to embark on the biggest new reactor construction build in the history of the sector. On the back of the recent COP28, we had 31 countries commit to tripling their nuclear fleet by 2050. We've got both China and the U.S. each in their own capacity trying to replicate or aiming to replicate the current size of the world nuclear fleet by 2050. I haven't even touched on SMRs or small modular reactors, but there are currently 70 companies in 20 countries with over 90 SMR designs. That will have a big impact as and when that starts to get some traction in the near future. What does all this mean?
An exponential growth in new reactors and an exponential growth in uranium demand. This then shines a light on one big massive problem, and that is future supply. Here is a snapshot from the latest TradeTech Quarterly, where they assume that global uranium requirements by 2030 will be 185 million lbs. They also assume that existing production will be 137 million lbs. They then assume there will be 42 million lbs of new production coming online from 25 projects in the next five years. We all know in mining terms, five years is tomorrow. I should also put this into context; there's only been three conventional uranium mines built in the last 35 years. I'll also add to that that even though TradeTech are at 185 million lbs per annum of uranium requirements by 2030, UxC has a range of 197 million lbs- 248 million lbs.
Most investment banks are at about 230 million lbs. Goldman Sachs is at 225 million lbs. Citibank is at 233 million lbs. In this case here, if we did use consensus data of 230 million lbs, let's say, versus the 185, the question then becomes, is it 25 new projects that we need, or is it 40, 50, or 60 new projects? That there highlights how extremely difficult it will be for supply to meet future demand. If we then take a quick look at where this supply will come from, we see existing supply dramatically starting to decline over the next decade. If we look at new supply, we see that the majority of these new mines are less than 2 million lbs per annum. Again, the majority of these mines are not economic at current uranium prices. We do need an increase.
If we then look at some of these larger Canadian projects that are being touted, I think we really need to understand that these are technically very difficult, require lengthy environmental approval processes, and are very expensive, all of which is telling us there will be a shortfall in uranium going forward, and who knows where uranium prices will go. With that, I'll hand you over to Darryl.
Okay, thanks, Andrew. I'll talk a little on the Mulga Rock project, the project we acquired with the acquisition of Vimy. There are two major resource areas, and here I'll talk more of the eastern zone, the Ambassador and Princess deposits, and I'll leave the western zone alone for a while. It is located in Western Australia, as Andrew says, with a granted mining lease and a development approval. We're the only operation, the only uranium play in Western Australia with development approval. As Andrew says, it's a globally significant resource at 105 million lbs, and there's material upside in this project that we identified during the due diligence phase of acquisition. When we purchased Vimy, we purchased purely on uranium value.
We did identify significant uplift, and that was particularly in base metals and what we perceived to be a logical rare earth, and there were some sniffs of rare earths. As I said earlier, the initial focus will be on the eastern deposit rather than the western deposits. A bit of history, Andrew touched on it somewhat, but the Deep Yellow team is the old Paladin team, almost the entire team. That team has both proven value-add and proven development experience. In the Langer Heinrich uranium mine, the Deep Yellow team generated a 530% resource upgrade from the purchase of that project in about 2002, as I recall. We also did similar work with the Kayelekera uranium mine, and as Andrew mentioned, the last 30-odd years, there's only been three conventional uranium mines successfully developed.
There's been a few other trials, but there's only been three successful developments in the last 30-odd years. Two of those were developed by this team. That's Kayelekera and Langer Heinrich, and the third was developed by the Chinese in Namibia at Husab. At Tumas, that same team has taken Tumas in a resource upgrade of 330%. We've quadrupled the size of the Tumas resource. At Mulga Rock, that same team, there's a major resource upgrade and an economic upgrade as well, a substantial economic upgrade. That's a bit of a worry. We've gone from a life of mine of 15 years, about a 30% increase in life of mine to 20+ years on the eastern areas only, ignoring the western areas. 25% increase in resource from 56.7 million lbs up to 71.2 lbs or 105.3 million lbs equivalent, and that's because of the critical minerals, both base and rare earths.
The critical minerals here, the first one there is the base metal component. We've gone from 34 kt up to 130 kt of base metals, and those base metals are principally copper, cobalt, nickel, and zinc. We'd rather be without the zinc, but sadly, it's there. In terms of rare earths, rare earths weren't considered by Vimy in the previous ownership. There's really an infinite increase there up to 47.6 kt of rare earths, both heavies and lights. How do we maximize value? This is a technical team that really has some real runs on the board, and again, Andrew indicated those. In Paladin Energy, we were the first to apply membrane and resin technologies as a principal process step, as a core process step in process recovery.
We're extending that now at Tumas, and indeed, we're not going to use it at Mulga Rock, but what we are doing is going back to the resin technology that we used in the initial Langer Heinrich operation. The mini pilot plant we've just concluded has confirmed a multi-commodity project. We have marketable streams of critical minerals in addition to uranium, but importantly, we understand the need to keep our eyes focused on the ball. We will only optimize for uranium. The critical minerals are byproduct. They're consequential to this action, to this project. The now quite innovative process that we're going for allows the use of in-pit saline processed water and eliminates the need for fresh water in the process. That reduces costs materially and also environmental footprint for the project.
In terms of process operating cost per pound, because of the benefits we'll get from the byproduct production, we'll see a very low-cost uranium producer. One can't say definitely just yet, but it will almost certainly be very much lower quartile in the production range. What those results did for us, they allowed the development of an updated process design. As a consequence, we need to undertake a revised Definitive Feasibility Study, and that will include all value metals. In the past, the proponents only looked at uranium. We're taking a whole-of-ore approach. The process flow sheet's not particularly unusual. Beneficiation, uranium RIP, critical mineral RIP, elution refining, and then in-pit tailings deposition. In the beneficiation program that we've just completed, we achieved 36% mass recovery or 64% mass rejection, I should say, to concentrate and over 92% uranium recovery.
I've got to say we're concerned about that 8% loss, and we will seriously consider avoiding beneficiation in the ultimate circuit. Acid leaching then demonstrated that we can effectively extract the value minerals from what is an unusual deposit. It's a lignitic deposit where the uranium and most of the base metals and rare earths are weakly loaded to the lignite. The overall uranium recovery we're able to report at the moment is 85%. There's a fair bit of room for upside on that one. This remote's not going that well. The overall recovery rates: uranium 85%, cobalt 50%, nickel 50%, zinc 90%. Unfortunately, the one we don't want performs the best. Copper at 70% and the rare earths at 50%. The project outlook, as I mentioned earlier, the byproduct costs are offset from the critical minerals, both base and rare earths, will mean a very low-cost uranium producer.
The western deposits remain as upside and substantial upside for the project into the future, and we expect we'll push the life well past the expected 20 years now to 30 years and beyond. We've also demonstrated a pathway to commercial uranium extraction from lignitic deposits. That's not been done in the past, and there are substantial lignitic deposits globally. As I said, the revised Definitive Feasibility Study is underway, and we'll look to conclude that in the third quarter of next calendar year. Importantly, our revised development strategy is able to stay within the existing regulatory approvals, and in uranium, that's very important. The whole-of-ore approach, combined with the innovative processing strategy that this team's been able to bring to Mulga Rock, has really transformed this project from what was a difficult development into what will be a low-cost, long-life uranium opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew and Darryl.