Lawrence Williams blogs that while the uranium price may well have been one of the best performing over the past nine months or so, it should be remembered that this is a period of recovery from an all-time low price in real terms but then such times may well prove to have provided the best opportunity to get back into the commodity. Thus, the uranium round-table panel event at the London 121 Mining Investment conference was well attended as investment professionals sought to get a handle on the latest prospects for the nuclear metal.\n\nIt is worth recalling that the price reached an all-time high at a time when lack of investment in new projects, together with run down of user inventories, created a huge supply - demand imbalance price spike in 2007 to reach around $135 per lb albeit briefly as is the nature of price bubbles of this type. So the spike was shortlived and then the price was brought down much further as a direct result of the Fukushima tsunami disaster and related Daiichi nuclear power plant damage in March 2011, and subsequent shut down of the Japanese nuclear power industry, which is only now beginning to be resurrected. The media fear-driven knee jerk reaction prompted curtailment of nuclear investment programs and some reactor shutdowns in other parts of the world.\n\nSince then, despite the long-term fundamentals of uranium looking positive, the price continued to decline, a decline which was exacerbated by the weak resource sector in general, reaching what the sector hopes was its nadir in the middle of last year when it fell down to US$28.24/lb. From this low point it has since recovered to $39/lb, hence the star short-term performance, but from an extremely low interim level.\n\nSo overall, as has probably been the case for some time, the supply - demand fundamentals for uranium producers look highly positive, and the price should at last be beginning to react positively.
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