Here is why these mining and metals companies left the TSX

With the price of uranium down about 25% from levels reached before the Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan last year, the least the industry wanted to hear was what the latest edition of the Scotiabank Commodity Price Index had to say: the yellow material prices may well bottom in 2012.

Trading barbs over the allocation of resource revenues is a blood sport in Canada, and the latest contenders are newly minted NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.

Denison Mines Corp shed 1.2% on Wednesday bringing its losses over the last week to 19% ahead of quarterly results that showed the company widened losses to $51.9 million.

Uranium One said the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan last March are now priced into the market for uranium oxide.

Japan will find itself without nuclear power for the first time since 1970 as the last of its currently operating nuclear reactors prepares to go offline.

BHP Billiton addressed shareholder concerns about its ambitious investment plans in four mega-projects on Wednesday saying it will match capital expenditures closely with cash flows and stagger the project pipeline.

There is no such thing as an average miner.  There is no such thing as an average salary.  Yet we can get some idea of how well mining people are paid by looking at the average salaries for 2011 on US metal mines recently published CostMine.

There are conventionally 2,080 work hours in a year. Thus somebody earning a wage of $20 an hour gets the equivalent of a salary of about $42,000. Considering the mine manager makes about $100,000 to $150,000 a year, it is interesting to take a look at actual wages paid to miners in the United States in 2011.

Sales volumes were up 33% at Cameco, the world's largest uranium miner in Q1. Revenue increased 22% to $563 million and gross profit showed a gain of 31% to $178 million.