Seaking Alpha editors report that the price of uranium recovered significantly the last couple of months, but despite the improvement in price, stock prices of almost every uranium-related company have been declining or lagging behind. So what is going on? First of all, they discuss Japan. Japan was hit by a tsunami in 2011, and this brought along terrible consequences for the nuclear industry as a whole. In order to prevent a meltdown, like the one we saw at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant four years ago, government officials responded by closing all of Japan 48 usable reactors. And due to Judge Higuchi, who believed there was not enough proof for most nuclear plants to be operated safely, it seemed for a moment that not even one Japanese nuclear plant would become active again by the end of this year. This made uranium-related companies quiver, as those 48 reactors normally require 132 tonnes of uranium per year, which adds up to 6,336 tonnes in total.
That is almost 10% of what was needed to power all plants globally for 2015. And since these reactors were no longer active and have been lowering their inventories by shipping their uranium to reactors abroad, they have been contributing to the supply glut. However, after reviewing all the possible risks related to uranium, the editors have to conclude that the most significant and perhaps the only risk continues to be technological improvements. New disruptive technological breakthroughs are a threat to almost every modern industry, and thus, they concluded that we should not let ourselves become paralyzed because of the possible arrival of a super-efficient nuclear reactor. In fact, unlike other industries, they have the advantage to know with certainty that uranium will experience at least 15 more years of impressive rising demand before any technological advancement is able to make it a truly abundant resource by exploration throughout the world.
See original URL: https://seekingalpha.com/article/3349135-uranium-what-happened-and-what-to-expect
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