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Dear community, I am the author of the following book which I have posted in its entirety.
I like to research my investments thoroughly, so the following is my thesis that this is a 'when, not if scenario'.
As not many seem to want to buy it on Amazon, I am making it available to read in posts below. Enjoy!
If you click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search ranks so non redditors can see it. Thanks. https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
Due to reddit post size limits, it is in different posts. Link to all chapter links:
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le3ubj/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
Below are Chapters 9-11
Chapter 9 The Japanese - How it can really go sideways (continued...)
To say it must have been a strange hour (closer to 40 minutes) between earthquake and tsunami would be an understatement. Imagine being a worker there, and all the worries racing through your mind, first I’m sure family and friends would be your main concern, and then the dangers from the earthquake, not knowing initially about the tsunami. Anyone there at the time who knew about the design of the plant and especially depth above sea level must have also had some interesting and disturbing thoughts run through their minds. Originally, the plant was to be built on a bluff around 35m above sea level, then during the construction stage, some genius decided it would be better for earthquake proofing and save on pumping if the plant was lowered. It sounds logical and the type of idea that someone got a decent end of year bonus for.
There was also a seawall installed on site. Again a slight issue with height, when the wall is 10m and the wave that struck was over 14m. In fact, determining seawall height centered more on typhoon considerations and the waves that they can whip up - and I was pretty sure tsunami is a Japanese word. Now if those factors weren’t enough in that hour to get your heart pumping here is the little matter of backup generators, which leads us to the question, is there any such thing as waterproof diesel generators? If not, there should be along with all the other electrical parts which make up part of your emergency pumping systems. The keyword here is backup, backup for what? Worst case scenario which brings us nicely back to, a black swan event. Nobody saw it coming quite like this. Incidentally, this power plant is not the only one that got hit. There were two others on the same coast, but they were okay and managed to get to cold shutdown.
So let’s think about post-tsunami and an hour after the earthquake. It’s all rather wet. Also, the water is starting to recede in the reactor which needs water to keep it cool. Once the water reduces around the core, the core starts to melt. The core contains both uranium and the fuel assemblies which are made of zirconium. When zirconium melts in the presence of water you get hydrogen building up in a contained area and eventually...bang, and that is what typically explodes, not uranium (as might be popularly assumed), and that is what happened at the site in Japan.
The disaster management was a fiasco, apparently this type of disaster wasn’t in the manuals so someone needed to use their initiative. Now maybe, when you have been in an industry for many years where using your initiative is not encouraged, after all, do you really want mavericks operating a nuclear plant by trying new things out?, maybe a bit of ‘MacGyver’ could be just what’s required. Either way, with twelve of the thirteen backup generators down and only one working, It took two weeks for the workers to get the 3 units that had been out of control to ‘stable’. Some ten months later they were declared to be in cold shutdown status which is a lot longer than the usual four days.
In actual fact, there were two waves that hit at 8-minute intervals. The reactors which would normally produce heat and that heat be conveyed away through steam and water is trapped and building up rapidly, a bit like a pressure cooker. Some of the pressure was released by means of safety valves but the steam is radioactive so ideally, it needs to be contained or released to a location that won’t damage the environment. Some of this radioactive material did leak into the environment.
On a slight tangent (but it’s worth it), the sister nuclear plant down the road was battling with issues too. You might think if you’re ‘running’ a disaster with such a far-reaching impact - after all, they were thinking of evacuating Tokyo a city with a population of nine million, that you would have a red phone where you could call for support for stuff that might be useful, beyond champagne and olives. And the guy running the show down the road did request some water from the government. Seeing as things were hot to the point of almost melting that sounds like a reasonable request. He asked for 4,000 tonnes of water. Someone got their wires crossed, and this might just be the greatest example of a communication breakdown in recent times, as one solitary truck rolled in with just 4 tonnes or 4,000 liters of water. Apparently, someone thought the workers must have been thirsty. How disappointing to be short 3,996 tonnes of what you ordered while trying to avert a nuclear disaster.
At that point, apparently, Masuda (the guy running the show) said “Don’t rely on others. Let’s do things by ourselves.” An interesting response in itself - maybe it was in the manual.
Earlier we discussed how the futures market allows a utilities company to hedge against the risk of uranium prices going up in the future, in the context of this chapter we see the utilities too can become the risk. In the fallout of the Fukushima event we zoom forward to 2017 when TEPCO, the Japanese power company terminated a supply contract with Cameco valued at $1 billion. TEPCO says they can legally do this due to something called ‘force majeure’ which is a legal term which basically says if an unforeseeable event occurs, you can walk away from the contract. Cameco is now chasing them in the courts for damages in the region of $680 million.
Zooming out from the event, the implications for the price of uranium was not good. Nuclear reactors in Japan were shut down or had been destroyed, so less demand. This also meant the Japanese were oversupplied. A country typically always keeps some stockpiles in front of their immediate demands to ensure some future supply security. Prices were starting to go up because China was planning to build more nuclear plants and then with Fukushima, the price went from around $60 to around half that by 2014. Since then there is more power generated today globally (2019) by nuclear power than before Fukushima, the prices, however, have not bounced back.
Globally public confidence was damaged which made countries reconsider how they were using and had planned to use nuclear power to generate electricity. That was part of the reason why uranium prices dropped so much and something similar could happen again. If you have money or are planning to put money into uranium, watch out for the big bad black swan.
Chapter 10 Underfeeding - ‘why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five’
This chapter title should be familiar to fans of 'The Office', if you haven’t seen this hilarious scene, search it on YouTube, it’s well worth watching. Explaining something seemingly simple or complicated can be useful if we break it down and try to keep it simple. The following is complicated and here is my attempt to break it down to understandable parts and I hope this works for the reader.
So you may think uranium comes out of the ground and gets used once, but it’s not that simple. This is where we need to understand what a SWU or Separative Work Unit is. So earlier we discussed spinning centrifuges and the good stuff goes to the top and center and is then a bit richer and moves to the next centrifuge and the same again, over and over again. Typically, this moves the U235 from 0.7% to in the region of 3.5% to 5%, we're talking a lot of centrifuges and a lot of spinning.
Now for a bit of trivia, how much would a centrifuge cost if available on eBay? They’re not, I checked, estimates on the internet go from $13,000 to $20,000 and you need many - literally thousands of them.
Ok so back to SWU, that is the amount of work to produce a kg of uranium to a given percentage such as from 0.7% to 5%. That makes sense because to spin it will cost you a lot of electricity. So you spin it and you get two parts, enriched material at 3% to 5% and the waste at around 0.2% to 0.3%. In theory and practice, you could take the waste and spin it for more enriched material. This is called underfeeding. Of course, more spinning means more power usage, so at some point it becomes uneconomical and you are better off sticking to the standard feed material of 0.7%.
Here is a slightly imaginary (but not that imaginary) scenario which may help us understand the economics of underfeeding. The spinners are only allowed to produce so much a year. Let’s imagine that the spinning never ends, it always on for the whole year - 24/7. Lets then say they reach close to their quota in September of how much they are permitted to produce using standard 0.7% feed which cost money to buy and they also have a mountain load of ‘waste’ out the back at 0.2% to 0.3% concentrations. They want to run down the clock until the end of the year and if they keep using standard feed, the centrifuges will sit with nothing inside them for the last few months so at that point they decide to put in the waste and run down the clock cause ‘waste’ is ‘free’ versus using the 0.7% feed.
That is similar to what happens to make the actual production numbers difficult to estimate. Of course, if the price of the 0.7% feed increases then the waste out the back might be used more, as it has now become cheaper in relation to what they are paying for the standard stuff.
Gas centrifuge plants use around 50 - 60 kWh to make 1 SWU, that is to say, to get a kg of uranium to the enriched stage (3-5%) from the ‘natural’ stage (0.7%). I’m now going to choose UK prices here because US state prices are all over the show. In the UK a KWh will cost around USD 0.76 at wholesale prices from the supplier (ignoring negotiation for a better price) so 60 kWh will cost you around USD 0.76 x 60 = USD 46. We are saying 1 SWU will cost $46. If the power station needs nuclear fuel of say 25 tonnes for the year, then the spinner will get an electricity bill for enriching that amount in the region of 12 million dollars ($46 x 25,000 tonnes). Again, this shows uranium in the ground to the point of actually generating electricity is not as simple or as cheap as it may initially sound. It also sounds a bit circular, generating electricity for generating electricity, I’m thinking chicken and egg syndrome at this point.
Here is another factor to think about it. The power plant reduces their demand for enriched uranium which is called LEU (lower enriched uranium), so the spinners have no real reason to spin but they do anyway, but they use the waste out the back instead of buying from the miners / U3O8ers / UF6ers which depresses the prices of uranium while at the same time increasing the amount of LEU available for when there is a demand, that is a double whammy for the miners and we call that inventory, or at least another source of inventory. Somebody will go bankrupt and that is what has happened, miners and enrichers too, or if not bankrupt, at the very least they are offline.
So when SWU price is low that means the spinners/enrichers are not getting paid much and there is an opportunity to underfeed when the price goes up. Concerning enrichment, we have already mentioned that U3O8 is at 0.7% uranium and that we need it to go to 3-5% to get it ready for the nuclear reactor (LEU) and then sometimes it’s enriched to 20% for research purposes.
Then there is HEU which stands for highly enriched uranium at the 90% region and that is used for weapons. So an interesting question is how much SWU does it take to enrich it to HEU in comparison to LEU? For LEU we can say around 850 SWU/ tonne and HEU its around 1300 SWU/ tonne based on WNA numbers and at our British electricity wholesale rates mentioned earlier let's say a tonne of LEU will cost $39,000 and HEU $59,000 which illustrates it doesn’t take much to get from LEU to HEU.
All numbers shown here are very rough and for illustration purposes, prices change and other variables come into play, for example, storage and disposal are two factors that enrichers need to consider when dealing with uranium.
At times, LEU goes to HEU and back again to LEU and so lets understand how this happens. When two ‘advanced’ nations get uptight with one another, it’s quite possible they will want to create weapons and even overproduce them. Think US and Russia or even India and Pakistan.
With 15,000 nuclear weapons on the plant today, that is enough to wipe out mankind many times over which will never happen because you can only wipe out an ant colony once - once it’s gone, it’s gone. Anyway, later when relations cool between the protagonists there is a chance they may want to do something about the ‘overproduction’ of weapons.
This is pretty much what occurred with a proportion of the nuclear grade uranium/plutonium between 1993 to 2013. This is of interest to us because if we bring in another supply stream to an existing market, it may create an oversupply and that is what happened in this instance. HEU which is around 90% U235 was blended in with other less enriched uranium and used to make electricity. It seems to be much more sensible use of the material I’m sure we would all agree.
Could this happen again in the future? Possibly. No one really knows but the power companies must have been delighted to be getting, arguably, a cheaper priced product. The initiative between the two states occurred during a thawing of a rather cool relationship (that’s why they called it the cold war) and going forward for it to occur again, there would likely have to be good relations between the two nations. Experts feel that is presently not the situation. So although it‘s unlikely to occur in the near future, it’s a piece on the board that we do well to remember could move at some future time again.
You will also hear about something called MOX in the uranium space. MOX stands for mixed oxide fuel and is a mix of uranium and plutonium oxide. When we use the word plutonium we are in the realm of highly enriched fuel (HEU) and that means military grade. So before we come to MOX we need to understand where plutonium comes from. Earlier we said that the stuff that fissions is U235 but that the percentage is only 3-5% in the reactor which means the rest is U238 and when this in the reactor a small fraction changes to become plutonium, specifically Pu239, and most of the plutonium fissions along with the U235 to generate heat and make electricity which sounds fine so far.
Pu239 is what was dropped on Nagasaki in World War II and was very, very unpleasant for the people living there at the time - think mushroom clouds. Pu239 cannot penetrate human skin but again eating or snorting it is not recommended. A dozen milligrams will probably kill you. A single grain of quartz sand with a two-millimeter diameter weighs around the same, just to give some perspective of what we are talking about here.
The day eventually arrives when the reactors need to be refueled with new pellets and so the used fuel can be sent for waste disposal but there is also an opportunity to recycle. One way to do this is to separate the plutonium and recycle it with depleted uranium and, hey presto, we have MOX.
Earlier we mentioned the deal that the US and Russia had done to recycle their weapons and this is the way that this is done using MOX. Currently, 5% of new nuclear fuel is MOX and in France, the figure is double that. People these days love the idea of recycling so that’s what this sounds like to me, more recycling. MOX fuel is yet another ‘supply stream’ that makes the whole ‘we mined one lemon and spent two lemons in the reactor’ argument much more complicated than to just say the supply and demand is between miners and users. The plot thickens yet again.
Chapter 11 Moving parts - The art of thoughtful disagreement
The expression ‘the art of the thoughtful disagreement’ comes from Ray Dalio, a brilliant hedge fund manager who surrounds himself with people who disagree with him, not for the sake of causing division, but in order to improve the chances of avoiding mistakes when his firm invests. If you like the bullish case, spend as much time as possible looking for the bear case too. Your decisions will be more informed.
The time has finally arrived to start arguing with oneself (and others, if you like). That is to say, set out why you should and should not invest in uranium. So far we have seen that there are more moving parts to this uranium business than mining and throwing rocks into the furnace of a power plant (which won’t get you very far either way). Explorers, miners, producers, enrichers, and users. It's an intricate web where you pull one strand and it affects the system in some other place.
Saying we are positive about the prospects of the uranium market may not mean bullish for the stock prices of uranium miners and explorers. The same is true for negatives about nuclear and the uranium industry. While something may sound negative, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the stock will go up or down. It’s important to understand the moving parts and determine whether the underlying positive or negative narrative will be bullish or bearish for the uranium market.
The following outlines the type of positive and negative information that is out there concerning the market and can be ‘spun’ either way. In order for us to determine whether this type of information will have an impact long term or short term, we need to dig a little deeper than a statement that appears to have some validity. We need to remember this is a game of chess where some pieces may or may not have a material impact on future gains or losses.
So, after all that we have considered, let’s play both sides of the fence starting with the bull case. For beginners, bull case means we think it is a good idea to invest in uranium for the future. So let’s throw some generic numbers at it as a form of summary from earlier.
Uranium equals electricity, which is 10-11% of world demand. So unlikely they will switch the power off. It’s currently not fashionable to generate carbon dioxide. Nuclear doesn’t generate carbon dioxide (or at the very most, in negligible amounts). What is happening with nuclear power in the future? The answer is mostly all about China, they operate 36 reactors, are building 20 and have planned another 100. Japan may come back online which is neither here nor there as we just don’t know what they will do. India is also coming up the track too.
In 2019, U3O8 demand will be around 200 million pounds, mine supply is at 130 million, underfeeding supply (that’s the guys spinning the centrifuges) 25 million, MOX supply <5 million. Total supply equals 160 million, which means we’re short 40 million pounds a year.
The cost of production is probably around $60 per pound and spot prices and long term prices say it is currently nearer $30 per pound. More mine closures are coming in the next few years with no like for like replacements (or at least that’s the argument). The buyers/users are coming to a point where they need to renew contracts, so if they all rush at the same time to get a secure supply, there could be a bit of a jam at the door and some may have to pay big prices to secure a dwindling supply. That seems to be the historical pattern so far.
Remember we said at the lemon stand, someone wants to buy fifty drinks for the next three months to secure supply, well he’s in the queue with ten other guys who want the same thing. That is the expectation for a lot of investors in this space. That’s part of the reason why when uranium prices go up, they tend to overshoot. For example 2003 - 2007, $15 to $130, and 2010-2011, $40 to $70. Uranium stocks follow the uptrend, but not by double or triple like uranium, but in the hundreds or thousands of percentage increases.
So prices tend to overshoot, based on the historical patterns of when the buyers enter the market to buy uranium, they mostly always come in when the prices are at the highest and they don't buy as much when it is at its lowest, there is a little bit of chicken and egg going on here. So which comes first, the high prices because demand is going up, or prices are going up because the supply is low? Either way, if historical buying patterns are anything to go by, the next time the buyers come to market in a ‘herd’ type situation, we can expect to see overshoot. Later comes the longer periods of undershooting as the prices remain below the price of production.
If uranium prices go up, the stock starts to look attractive and then they will be in high demand, now we have another jam at the door, but this time it’s not the power plants, it’s the investors. Doug Casey a famous writer and speculator once said “When the market wants into gold stocks it’s like trying to force the contents of the Hoover Dam into a hose, in the case of uranium stocks, it’s more like a soda straw. it’s a very small market.” The combined market value of mining companies in this sector is $15 billion. Bill Gates is worth $95 billion - one guy, he could buy the whole lot (in theory). Another quote you will hear in this context is ‘it’s not a case of if but when’ (or words to that effect), the only trouble with that expression is it applies to death too. Patience is required for this. That about covers the bullish arguments, so we shall move on and continue arguing with ourselves on the other side of the fence.
A bear viewpoint means we would not want to invest in this market. So what are the popular arguments out there that the uranium market is a bad idea?
First, some of the existing fleet of nuclear reactors in the US are coming to an end. 98 current reactors will drop to somewhere nearer 89 by 2025. This will obviously mean less uranium is required. The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that nuclear electricity generation will fall from an all-time peak in 2018 and decrease 17% by 2025. From 2019 to 2025 12 nuclear plants are scheduled to close.
The average life of these reactors is around 40 years old. It’s not unheard of, to get a license extended by another 40 years, so it is possible that the licenses to operate some of these reactors is extended,but playing the bear case means we should discount that.
Also in the US, any new nuclear plants are considered by the bears to be very costly to build. Costly includes budget overruns and time overruns. Here are a few examples. Vogtle nuclear power plant situated in Eastern Georgia (the state not the country) not far from Southern Carolina. The plant is currently constructing reactors 3&4 which is, by the way, the only units in the country built in the last three decades which doesn’t sound too bullish. Construction costs were initially planned to be $14 billion with a ‘ready for operation’ date set for 2017. Currently, costs are estimated to be north of $27 billion and the current date they are working too is 2021-22, with monthly cost overruns at around $100 million.
You would think they would have learned some lessons, and maybe the did, from when they installed Units 1 and 2 with an original construction budget of $1 billion, but finally coming in at $9 billion - Ouch. So a doubling of the budget on Units 3 & 4 sounds like a bargain compared to Units 1 & 2.
Another project is Flamanville is France where they are adding Reactor Unit 3 to an existing site. Construction commenced in late 2007 with a budget of 3.3 billion euros and the intent was to start operations in 2012. It’s currently considered that it’ll be up and running by mid-2020 at almost 11 billion euros in costs.
If those two projects are a representative sampling of how project budgets and schedules run in the nuclear power plant building game, it doesn’t sound great. I feel sorry for the project managers and recommend they take up the game of ‘blind folded darts’ as they may find that more satisfying.
Now seeing as China is building so many, it would be good to consider what they are facing with regard to overruns in terms of budgets and schedules. Haiyang is a power plant that was supposed to be constructed in 63 months, Unit 1 took 100 months and Unit 2 110 months. Unit 1 should have cost $5.8 billion and reportedly came in at $7.3 billion.
Sanmen Units 1 & 2 started construction in 2009 and were connected to the grid by 2018. Initial estimates of a 68 month construction time turned into around the 100-month to 110-month time frame. It was supposed to come in at just less than $5 billion and cost $6.1 billion. Note too, costings for Chinese power plants were difficult to find so they may not be as accurate as they should be. Either way, based on these two examples we see time overruns as we do in the West, but the costs don’t seem to explode as they do in the West. In terms of quality of construction, that is more difficult to measure and there may be a difference there too.
This may seem negative for nuclear, particularly in the West and that may be true, but remember the relationship between some of these arguments may not be heavily connected (or at all) with whether uranium stocks go up.
By the way, when we put out a number of ‘x’ reactors, the more important number is how much uranium they are actually using not how many reactors there are.
Supply destruction is a term that doesn’t really apply to companies that have been set up to buy and hold physical uranium only to dump it on the market later. So they lurk and could really be a dampener on the party. This point, in my view, is valid. However they are in the game to maximize their profits too, so it is not in their interests to flood the market. Another factor here is the skill level involved in knowing when to sell the uranium they hold. This leads us to consider that if an investor holds a company, when do you get off the elevator? Too early you make less than you could, too late and you ride the price up, and then back down (we’ll go through a real world example of how even the pros in the industry have done this later). To answer that question perhaps goes beyond the beginner so we leave it at that for now but thought-provoking nonetheless.
Another part of the risk here is that the nuclear industry has had some infamous accidents in the past which can sour things. Some say it is very safe or not as dangerous as other energy sources, and while that may be true, in this world, perception is everything. We need to remember the ripples of Fukushima on other governments and how that could occur again. \
That brings us to another part of our argument. Since Fukushima, some governments have reviewed and changed their policies to nuclear energy generation and reduced demand with the attraction of nuclear power waning. What we are really talking about here is loss of trust for how these plants operate and and some preconceived ideas with regards to how safe they are.
The OECD wrote an interesting study on this in 2017. The report highlights that Western Europe was probably affected the most, with shutdowns in some countries, although they were partly on the table anyway, it seemed to just make the decision easier. Italy voted not to pursue nuclear and it is quite possible that decision was in part due to what had occurred in Japan. According to the report, most countries conducted safety reviews of their existing plants.
Taiwan, oddly enough, did shut down its reactors which ran 15% of the electricity on the island, then it had a vote to decide what to do with nuclear power going forward with the question: “Do you agree with abolishing the first paragraph of Article 95 of the Electricity Act, which means abolishing the provision that ‘all nuclear-energy based power-generating facilities shall cease to operate by 2025?’”. Although the majority wanted to keep nuclear power going, the authorities are still planning on chopping it. The authorities are also expecting power shortages by 2021. An interesting way of running things there, I can’t say I am a fan of power cuts as I find electricity really handy.
Another argument we would need to consider here, is the question of how fast can miners get the product to market if the price goes up. So if we are negative on uranium investing, the argument goes that as soon as there is a demand, think of switching on a light bulb and a few pumps and, hey presto, we have uranium ready to go to the mill.
We covered earlier that mines that are currently offline can take significant lengths of time to come back online. For example, McArthur River mine in Canada which just went offline could take two years to get back online and producing and that is a mine that was operating already and is under a care and maintenance regime currently, which implies the company knows what is involved to get it back to production. Imagine a new mine where the unknowns are much greater.
Another substantial mine that may come online one day is Arrow which is considered to be huge, analysts think it will produce 21% of world supply, and the cost per pound is less than $20. Again time to production is an issue and the expectation currently is 2023-24 at a cost of $1.3 billion to get it started. Based on other examples we have considered, staying and on budget can be kind of tricky. So again this sounds like a great mine but if we are expecting an upturn in the market in the next five years, is this going to even produce a pound before the price has already risen? We don’t know, however, if we link this to long term contracts it is certainly a piece in play but maybe more of a takeover target to the right company. Remember Rio Tinto and the Roughrider mine that never was.
Another reason that makes it difficult to start or restart mines is the need for skilled workers as this is a specialized field, and there are only so many workers to go around to get mines restarted, so miners may find themselves short on skilled miners when the time comes.
Earlier we mentioned the downblending of weapons which we would be further supply and that Damocles sword will continue to hover over the market.
Nuclear waste is also an argument against this sector. So it’s currently very fashionable to recycle, eliminate waste and the like, so nuclear waste is ever present and is perceived as a major issue with using uranium as an energy fuel. Years ago one approach to get rid of waste was to put it in barrels and sail out on the high seas and dump it, most barrels would sink but a few didn’t so the sailors shot at them to make them sink, sometimes a machine gun would be more effective. Now that doesn’t sound too good, especially if you are either a scuba diver or a fish. Times have moved on and this is no longer the way to dispose of nuclear waste.
According to the WNA, waste is divided into three categories from the spent fuel which is in the high category to the tools and clothes used by workers in the plant which is in the low category. When the used fuel comes out of the rods, it is hot and remains so for many years, so for that time period, the spent fuel rods are kept underwater in a storage pool. The WNA website has a great photo of some workers looking into the storage pool which looks very like a swimming pool. They are not wearing masks or any other personal protection equipment aside from safety helmets. The most ironic item in the photo is the life ring buoy in the background. Now in the first instance, you probably don’t want to fall in, but if you really have to be saved by a lifebuoy from a pool with nuclear rods, you might be delaying the inevitable. Safety helmets for that matter seem kind of ironic there too. Apologies for getting sidetracked.
So the disposal of low and medium level waste is buried underground but not too deeply. The high-level waste is not disposed of, as there are no disposal sites currently, so disposal means storing it out the backyard, typically, of the nuclear power plant. Now that doesn’t sound like a good solution but according to Mr Shellenberger (a guy who thinks nuclear is the bees knees) ‘If all the nuclear waste from U.S. power plants were put on a (US) football field, (around 5000m2 ) of it would stack up just 50 feet (15m) high. In comparison to the waste produced by every other kind of electricity production, that quantity is close to zero’.
All forms of energy generation have some form of waste product and nuclear waste problems, although long in duration are compact in relation to these. While keeping them in canisters valued at a half million to a million dollars a piece seems as though that is not a solution, it kind of is, it has worked for now. In terms of deaths, in comparison to other energy sources, waste nuclear is not really causing any problems, as long as you don’t dump it at sea or anywhere else for that matter and take pot-shots at it with a rifle.
Another example of a perceived problem becoming a solution is as research and technology develop, scientists will find some novel way of using the waste possibly by recycling it for further use. This does sound like they are trying to kick the canister down the road, so to speak, but either way, it doesn’t have a huge impact on how the uranium market will play out over the next few years, interesting nonetheless.
Renewables are competitive with nuclear power. Now, this is a statement that comes up from time to time and is worth exploring briefly. Lets just set out the fact that all energy forms have some form of subsidy behind them. You may, however, think ‘but surely not big oil as it’s been around for ages and it needs no government support’, and you would be wrong. The International Monetary Fund in 2017 released a report on global fossil fuel subsidies coming up with a number north of $5 trillion, yes trillion, not billion. The IEA says that in 2016, renewables received $140 billion in 2016. Big numbers in both cases but the point here is subsidies are for all by the look of things, and they tend to skew the picture on which energy type is the cheapest. Another reason it’s a cloudy picture is that you also get into semantics about the definition of what a subsidy is.
With that in mind, we will wade on to what is out there with regards to which is cheap and which is expensive. One way to look at this is to go back to Germany, we mentioned it earlier in comparison to France as they have more expensive electricity than France. Germany is also reducing or has reduced its nuclear power electricity generation and chosen the path of solar and wind generated energy. From 2017 counting back ten years, electricity prices have risen by 39%.
Now another area - California, it too has chosen the path of renewables and it too has seen an increase in prices for electricity. According to the EIA, residential prices were $19.30 cents per Kilowatt Hour in March 2019 which is up from $12.51 cents in 2005. So are we seeing a pattern here? Some would say yes and some would say no, either way, we do know that the wind does not always blow nor the sun always shine. In comparison nuclear is steady 24/7, that is unless you get a tsunami or earthquake of course. (last paragraph is in the next post)
If you can click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search page so non redditors can see it. Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
submitted by definitelyunshore to UraniumSqueeze [link] [comments] Dear community, I am the author of the following book which I have posted in its entirety.
I like to research my investments thoroughly, so the following is my thesis that this is a 'when, not if scenario'.
As not many seem to want to buy it on Amazon, I am making it available to read in posts below. Enjoy!
If you click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search ranks so non redditors can see it. Thanks. https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
Due to reddit post size limits, it is in different posts. Link to all chapter links:
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le3ubj/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
Below are Chapters 9-11
Chapter 9 The Japanese - How it can really go sideways (continued...)
To say it must have been a strange hour (closer to 40 minutes) between earthquake and tsunami would be an understatement. Imagine being a worker there, and all the worries racing through your mind, first I’m sure family and friends would be your main concern, and then the dangers from the earthquake, not knowing initially about the tsunami. Anyone there at the time who knew about the design of the plant and especially depth above sea level must have also had some interesting and disturbing thoughts run through their minds. Originally, the plant was to be built on a bluff around 35m above sea level, then during the construction stage, some genius decided it would be better for earthquake proofing and save on pumping if the plant was lowered. It sounds logical and the type of idea that someone got a decent end of year bonus for.
There was also a seawall installed on site. Again a slight issue with height, when the wall is 10m and the wave that struck was over 14m. In fact, determining seawall height centered more on typhoon considerations and the waves that they can whip up - and I was pretty sure tsunami is a Japanese word. Now if those factors weren’t enough in that hour to get your heart pumping here is the little matter of backup generators, which leads us to the question, is there any such thing as waterproof diesel generators? If not, there should be along with all the other electrical parts which make up part of your emergency pumping systems. The keyword here is backup, backup for what? Worst case scenario which brings us nicely back to, a black swan event. Nobody saw it coming quite like this. Incidentally, this power plant is not the only one that got hit. There were two others on the same coast, but they were okay and managed to get to cold shutdown.
So let’s think about post-tsunami and an hour after the earthquake. It’s all rather wet. Also, the water is starting to recede in the reactor which needs water to keep it cool. Once the water reduces around the core, the core starts to melt. The core contains both uranium and the fuel assemblies which are made of zirconium. When zirconium melts in the presence of water you get hydrogen building up in a contained area and eventually...bang, and that is what typically explodes, not uranium (as might be popularly assumed), and that is what happened at the site in Japan.
The disaster management was a fiasco, apparently this type of disaster wasn’t in the manuals so someone needed to use their initiative. Now maybe, when you have been in an industry for many years where using your initiative is not encouraged, after all, do you really want mavericks operating a nuclear plant by trying new things out?, maybe a bit of ‘MacGyver’ could be just what’s required. Either way, with twelve of the thirteen backup generators down and only one working, It took two weeks for the workers to get the 3 units that had been out of control to ‘stable’. Some ten months later they were declared to be in cold shutdown status which is a lot longer than the usual four days.
In actual fact, there were two waves that hit at 8-minute intervals. The reactors which would normally produce heat and that heat be conveyed away through steam and water is trapped and building up rapidly, a bit like a pressure cooker. Some of the pressure was released by means of safety valves but the steam is radioactive so ideally, it needs to be contained or released to a location that won’t damage the environment. Some of this radioactive material did leak into the environment.
On a slight tangent (but it’s worth it), the sister nuclear plant down the road was battling with issues too. You might think if you’re ‘running’ a disaster with such a far-reaching impact - after all, they were thinking of evacuating Tokyo a city with a population of nine million, that you would have a red phone where you could call for support for stuff that might be useful, beyond champagne and olives. And the guy running the show down the road did request some water from the government. Seeing as things were hot to the point of almost melting that sounds like a reasonable request. He asked for 4,000 tonnes of water. Someone got their wires crossed, and this might just be the greatest example of a communication breakdown in recent times, as one solitary truck rolled in with just 4 tonnes or 4,000 liters of water. Apparently, someone thought the workers must have been thirsty. How disappointing to be short 3,996 tonnes of what you ordered while trying to avert a nuclear disaster.
At that point, apparently, Masuda (the guy running the show) said “Don’t rely on others. Let’s do things by ourselves.” An interesting response in itself - maybe it was in the manual.
Earlier we discussed how the futures market allows a utilities company to hedge against the risk of uranium prices going up in the future, in the context of this chapter we see the utilities too can become the risk. In the fallout of the Fukushima event we zoom forward to 2017 when TEPCO, the Japanese power company terminated a supply contract with Cameco valued at $1 billion. TEPCO says they can legally do this due to something called ‘force majeure’ which is a legal term which basically says if an unforeseeable event occurs, you can walk away from the contract. Cameco is now chasing them in the courts for damages in the region of $680 million.
Zooming out from the event, the implications for the price of uranium was not good. Nuclear reactors in Japan were shut down or had been destroyed, so less demand. This also meant the Japanese were oversupplied. A country typically always keeps some stockpiles in front of their immediate demands to ensure some future supply security. Prices were starting to go up because China was planning to build more nuclear plants and then with Fukushima, the price went from around $60 to around half that by 2014. Since then there is more power generated today globally (2019) by nuclear power than before Fukushima, the prices, however, have not bounced back.
Globally public confidence was damaged which made countries reconsider how they were using and had planned to use nuclear power to generate electricity. That was part of the reason why uranium prices dropped so much and something similar could happen again. If you have money or are planning to put money into uranium, watch out for the big bad black swan.
Chapter 10 Underfeeding - ‘why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five’
This chapter title should be familiar to fans of 'The Office', if you haven’t seen this hilarious scene, search it on YouTube, it’s well worth watching. Explaining something seemingly simple or complicated can be useful if we break it down and try to keep it simple. The following is complicated and here is my attempt to break it down to understandable parts and I hope this works for the reader.
So you may think uranium comes out of the ground and gets used once, but it’s not that simple. This is where we need to understand what a SWU or Separative Work Unit is. So earlier we discussed spinning centrifuges and the good stuff goes to the top and center and is then a bit richer and moves to the next centrifuge and the same again, over and over again. Typically, this moves the U235 from 0.7% to in the region of 3.5% to 5%, we're talking a lot of centrifuges and a lot of spinning.
Now for a bit of trivia, how much would a centrifuge cost if available on eBay? They’re not, I checked, estimates on the internet go from $13,000 to $20,000 and you need many - literally thousands of them.
Ok so back to SWU, that is the amount of work to produce a kg of uranium to a given percentage such as from 0.7% to 5%. That makes sense because to spin it will cost you a lot of electricity. So you spin it and you get two parts, enriched material at 3% to 5% and the waste at around 0.2% to 0.3%. In theory and practice, you could take the waste and spin it for more enriched material. This is called underfeeding. Of course, more spinning means more power usage, so at some point it becomes uneconomical and you are better off sticking to the standard feed material of 0.7%.
Here is a slightly imaginary (but not that imaginary) scenario which may help us understand the economics of underfeeding. The spinners are only allowed to produce so much a year. Let’s imagine that the spinning never ends, it always on for the whole year - 24/7. Lets then say they reach close to their quota in September of how much they are permitted to produce using standard 0.7% feed which cost money to buy and they also have a mountain load of ‘waste’ out the back at 0.2% to 0.3% concentrations. They want to run down the clock until the end of the year and if they keep using standard feed, the centrifuges will sit with nothing inside them for the last few months so at that point they decide to put in the waste and run down the clock cause ‘waste’ is ‘free’ versus using the 0.7% feed.
That is similar to what happens to make the actual production numbers difficult to estimate. Of course, if the price of the 0.7% feed increases then the waste out the back might be used more, as it has now become cheaper in relation to what they are paying for the standard stuff.
Gas centrifuge plants use around 50 - 60 kWh to make 1 SWU, that is to say, to get a kg of uranium to the enriched stage (3-5%) from the ‘natural’ stage (0.7%). I’m now going to choose UK prices here because US state prices are all over the show. In the UK a KWh will cost around USD 0.76 at wholesale prices from the supplier (ignoring negotiation for a better price) so 60 kWh will cost you around USD 0.76 x 60 = USD 46. We are saying 1 SWU will cost $46. If the power station needs nuclear fuel of say 25 tonnes for the year, then the spinner will get an electricity bill for enriching that amount in the region of 12 million dollars ($46 x 25,000 tonnes). Again, this shows uranium in the ground to the point of actually generating electricity is not as simple or as cheap as it may initially sound. It also sounds a bit circular, generating electricity for generating electricity, I’m thinking chicken and egg syndrome at this point.
Here is another factor to think about it. The power plant reduces their demand for enriched uranium which is called LEU (lower enriched uranium), so the spinners have no real reason to spin but they do anyway, but they use the waste out the back instead of buying from the miners / U3O8ers / UF6ers which depresses the prices of uranium while at the same time increasing the amount of LEU available for when there is a demand, that is a double whammy for the miners and we call that inventory, or at least another source of inventory. Somebody will go bankrupt and that is what has happened, miners and enrichers too, or if not bankrupt, at the very least they are offline.
So when SWU price is low that means the spinners/enrichers are not getting paid much and there is an opportunity to underfeed when the price goes up. Concerning enrichment, we have already mentioned that U3O8 is at 0.7% uranium and that we need it to go to 3-5% to get it ready for the nuclear reactor (LEU) and then sometimes it’s enriched to 20% for research purposes.
Then there is HEU which stands for highly enriched uranium at the 90% region and that is used for weapons. So an interesting question is how much SWU does it take to enrich it to HEU in comparison to LEU? For LEU we can say around 850 SWU/ tonne and HEU its around 1300 SWU/ tonne based on WNA numbers and at our British electricity wholesale rates mentioned earlier let's say a tonne of LEU will cost $39,000 and HEU $59,000 which illustrates it doesn’t take much to get from LEU to HEU.
All numbers shown here are very rough and for illustration purposes, prices change and other variables come into play, for example, storage and disposal are two factors that enrichers need to consider when dealing with uranium.
At times, LEU goes to HEU and back again to LEU and so lets understand how this happens. When two ‘advanced’ nations get uptight with one another, it’s quite possible they will want to create weapons and even overproduce them. Think US and Russia or even India and Pakistan.
With 15,000 nuclear weapons on the plant today, that is enough to wipe out mankind many times over which will never happen because you can only wipe out an ant colony once - once it’s gone, it’s gone. Anyway, later when relations cool between the protagonists there is a chance they may want to do something about the ‘overproduction’ of weapons.
This is pretty much what occurred with a proportion of the nuclear grade uranium/plutonium between 1993 to 2013. This is of interest to us because if we bring in another supply stream to an existing market, it may create an oversupply and that is what happened in this instance. HEU which is around 90% U235 was blended in with other less enriched uranium and used to make electricity. It seems to be much more sensible use of the material I’m sure we would all agree.
Could this happen again in the future? Possibly. No one really knows but the power companies must have been delighted to be getting, arguably, a cheaper priced product. The initiative between the two states occurred during a thawing of a rather cool relationship (that’s why they called it the cold war) and going forward for it to occur again, there would likely have to be good relations between the two nations. Experts feel that is presently not the situation. So although it‘s unlikely to occur in the near future, it’s a piece on the board that we do well to remember could move at some future time again.
You will also hear about something called MOX in the uranium space. MOX stands for mixed oxide fuel and is a mix of uranium and plutonium oxide. When we use the word plutonium we are in the realm of highly enriched fuel (HEU) and that means military grade. So before we come to MOX we need to understand where plutonium comes from. Earlier we said that the stuff that fissions is U235 but that the percentage is only 3-5% in the reactor which means the rest is U238 and when this in the reactor a small fraction changes to become plutonium, specifically Pu239, and most of the plutonium fissions along with the U235 to generate heat and make electricity which sounds fine so far.
Pu239 is what was dropped on Nagasaki in World War II and was very, very unpleasant for the people living there at the time - think mushroom clouds. Pu239 cannot penetrate human skin but again eating or snorting it is not recommended. A dozen milligrams will probably kill you. A single grain of quartz sand with a two-millimeter diameter weighs around the same, just to give some perspective of what we are talking about here.
The day eventually arrives when the reactors need to be refueled with new pellets and so the used fuel can be sent for waste disposal but there is also an opportunity to recycle. One way to do this is to separate the plutonium and recycle it with depleted uranium and, hey presto, we have MOX.
Earlier we mentioned the deal that the US and Russia had done to recycle their weapons and this is the way that this is done using MOX. Currently, 5% of new nuclear fuel is MOX and in France, the figure is double that. People these days love the idea of recycling so that’s what this sounds like to me, more recycling. MOX fuel is yet another ‘supply stream’ that makes the whole ‘we mined one lemon and spent two lemons in the reactor’ argument much more complicated than to just say the supply and demand is between miners and users. The plot thickens yet again.
Chapter 11 Moving parts - The art of thoughtful disagreement
The expression ‘the art of the thoughtful disagreement’ comes from Ray Dalio, a brilliant hedge fund manager who surrounds himself with people who disagree with him, not for the sake of causing division, but in order to improve the chances of avoiding mistakes when his firm invests. If you like the bullish case, spend as much time as possible looking for the bear case too. Your decisions will be more informed.
The time has finally arrived to start arguing with oneself (and others, if you like). That is to say, set out why you should and should not invest in uranium. So far we have seen that there are more moving parts to this uranium business than mining and throwing rocks into the furnace of a power plant (which won’t get you very far either way). Explorers, miners, producers, enrichers, and users. It's an intricate web where you pull one strand and it affects the system in some other place.
Saying we are positive about the prospects of the uranium market may not mean bullish for the stock prices of uranium miners and explorers. The same is true for negatives about nuclear and the uranium industry. While something may sound negative, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the stock will go up or down. It’s important to understand the moving parts and determine whether the underlying positive or negative narrative will be bullish or bearish for the uranium market.
The following outlines the type of positive and negative information that is out there concerning the market and can be ‘spun’ either way. In order for us to determine whether this type of information will have an impact long term or short term, we need to dig a little deeper than a statement that appears to have some validity. We need to remember this is a game of chess where some pieces may or may not have a material impact on future gains or losses.
So, after all that we have considered, let’s play both sides of the fence starting with the bull case. For beginners, bull case means we think it is a good idea to invest in uranium for the future. So let’s throw some generic numbers at it as a form of summary from earlier.
Uranium equals electricity, which is 10-11% of world demand. So unlikely they will switch the power off. It’s currently not fashionable to generate carbon dioxide. Nuclear doesn’t generate carbon dioxide (or at the very most, in negligible amounts). What is happening with nuclear power in the future? The answer is mostly all about China, they operate 36 reactors, are building 20 and have planned another 100. Japan may come back online which is neither here nor there as we just don’t know what they will do. India is also coming up the track too.
In 2019, U3O8 demand will be around 200 million pounds, mine supply is at 130 million, underfeeding supply (that’s the guys spinning the centrifuges) 25 million, MOX supply <5 million. Total supply equals 160 million, which means we’re short 40 million pounds a year.
The cost of production is probably around $60 per pound and spot prices and long term prices say it is currently nearer $30 per pound. More mine closures are coming in the next few years with no like for like replacements (or at least that’s the argument). The buyers/users are coming to a point where they need to renew contracts, so if they all rush at the same time to get a secure supply, there could be a bit of a jam at the door and some may have to pay big prices to secure a dwindling supply. That seems to be the historical pattern so far.
Remember we said at the lemon stand, someone wants to buy fifty drinks for the next three months to secure supply, well he’s in the queue with ten other guys who want the same thing. That is the expectation for a lot of investors in this space. That’s part of the reason why when uranium prices go up, they tend to overshoot. For example 2003 - 2007, $15 to $130, and 2010-2011, $40 to $70. Uranium stocks follow the uptrend, but not by double or triple like uranium, but in the hundreds or thousands of percentage increases.
So prices tend to overshoot, based on the historical patterns of when the buyers enter the market to buy uranium, they mostly always come in when the prices are at the highest and they don't buy as much when it is at its lowest, there is a little bit of chicken and egg going on here. So which comes first, the high prices because demand is going up, or prices are going up because the supply is low? Either way, if historical buying patterns are anything to go by, the next time the buyers come to market in a ‘herd’ type situation, we can expect to see overshoot. Later comes the longer periods of undershooting as the prices remain below the price of production.
If uranium prices go up, the stock starts to look attractive and then they will be in high demand, now we have another jam at the door, but this time it’s not the power plants, it’s the investors. Doug Casey a famous writer and speculator once said “When the market wants into gold stocks it’s like trying to force the contents of the Hoover Dam into a hose, in the case of uranium stocks, it’s more like a soda straw. it’s a very small market.” The combined market value of mining companies in this sector is $15 billion. Bill Gates is worth $95 billion - one guy, he could buy the whole lot (in theory). Another quote you will hear in this context is ‘it’s not a case of if but when’ (or words to that effect), the only trouble with that expression is it applies to death too. Patience is required for this. That about covers the bullish arguments, so we shall move on and continue arguing with ourselves on the other side of the fence.
A bear viewpoint means we would not want to invest in this market. So what are the popular arguments out there that the uranium market is a bad idea?
First, some of the existing fleet of nuclear reactors in the US are coming to an end. 98 current reactors will drop to somewhere nearer 89 by 2025. This will obviously mean less uranium is required. The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that nuclear electricity generation will fall from an all-time peak in 2018 and decrease 17% by 2025. From 2019 to 2025 12 nuclear plants are scheduled to close.
The average life of these reactors is around 40 years old. It’s not unheard of, to get a license extended by another 40 years, so it is possible that the licenses to operate some of these reactors is extended,but playing the bear case means we should discount that.
Also in the US, any new nuclear plants are considered by the bears to be very costly to build. Costly includes budget overruns and time overruns. Here are a few examples. Vogtle nuclear power plant situated in Eastern Georgia (the state not the country) not far from Southern Carolina. The plant is currently constructing reactors 3&4 which is, by the way, the only units in the country built in the last three decades which doesn’t sound too bullish. Construction costs were initially planned to be $14 billion with a ‘ready for operation’ date set for 2017. Currently, costs are estimated to be north of $27 billion and the current date they are working too is 2021-22, with monthly cost overruns at around $100 million.
You would think they would have learned some lessons, and maybe the did, from when they installed Units 1 and 2 with an original construction budget of $1 billion, but finally coming in at $9 billion - Ouch. So a doubling of the budget on Units 3 & 4 sounds like a bargain compared to Units 1 & 2.
Another project is Flamanville is France where they are adding Reactor Unit 3 to an existing site. Construction commenced in late 2007 with a budget of 3.3 billion euros and the intent was to start operations in 2012. It’s currently considered that it’ll be up and running by mid-2020 at almost 11 billion euros in costs.
If those two projects are a representative sampling of how project budgets and schedules run in the nuclear power plant building game, it doesn’t sound great. I feel sorry for the project managers and recommend they take up the game of ‘blind folded darts’ as they may find that more satisfying.
Now seeing as China is building so many, it would be good to consider what they are facing with regard to overruns in terms of budgets and schedules. Haiyang is a power plant that was supposed to be constructed in 63 months, Unit 1 took 100 months and Unit 2 110 months. Unit 1 should have cost $5.8 billion and reportedly came in at $7.3 billion.
Sanmen Units 1 & 2 started construction in 2009 and were connected to the grid by 2018. Initial estimates of a 68 month construction time turned into around the 100-month to 110-month time frame. It was supposed to come in at just less than $5 billion and cost $6.1 billion. Note too, costings for Chinese power plants were difficult to find so they may not be as accurate as they should be. Either way, based on these two examples we see time overruns as we do in the West, but the costs don’t seem to explode as they do in the West. In terms of quality of construction, that is more difficult to measure and there may be a difference there too.
This may seem negative for nuclear, particularly in the West and that may be true, but remember the relationship between some of these arguments may not be heavily connected (or at all) with whether uranium stocks go up.
By the way, when we put out a number of ‘x’ reactors, the more important number is how much uranium they are actually using not how many reactors there are.
Supply destruction is a term that doesn’t really apply to companies that have been set up to buy and hold physical uranium only to dump it on the market later. So they lurk and could really be a dampener on the party. This point, in my view, is valid. However they are in the game to maximize their profits too, so it is not in their interests to flood the market. Another factor here is the skill level involved in knowing when to sell the uranium they hold. This leads us to consider that if an investor holds a company, when do you get off the elevator? Too early you make less than you could, too late and you ride the price up, and then back down (we’ll go through a real world example of how even the pros in the industry have done this later). To answer that question perhaps goes beyond the beginner so we leave it at that for now but thought-provoking nonetheless.
Another part of the risk here is that the nuclear industry has had some infamous accidents in the past which can sour things. Some say it is very safe or not as dangerous as other energy sources, and while that may be true, in this world, perception is everything. We need to remember the ripples of Fukushima on other governments and how that could occur again. \
That brings us to another part of our argument. Since Fukushima, some governments have reviewed and changed their policies to nuclear energy generation and reduced demand with the attraction of nuclear power waning. What we are really talking about here is loss of trust for how these plants operate and and some preconceived ideas with regards to how safe they are.
The OECD wrote an interesting study on this in 2017. The report highlights that Western Europe was probably affected the most, with shutdowns in some countries, although they were partly on the table anyway, it seemed to just make the decision easier. Italy voted not to pursue nuclear and it is quite possible that decision was in part due to what had occurred in Japan. According to the report, most countries conducted safety reviews of their existing plants.
Taiwan, oddly enough, did shut down its reactors which ran 15% of the electricity on the island, then it had a vote to decide what to do with nuclear power going forward with the question: “Do you agree with abolishing the first paragraph of Article 95 of the Electricity Act, which means abolishing the provision that ‘all nuclear-energy based power-generating facilities shall cease to operate by 2025?’”. Although the majority wanted to keep nuclear power going, the authorities are still planning on chopping it. The authorities are also expecting power shortages by 2021. An interesting way of running things there, I can’t say I am a fan of power cuts as I find electricity really handy.
Another argument we would need to consider here, is the question of how fast can miners get the product to market if the price goes up. So if we are negative on uranium investing, the argument goes that as soon as there is a demand, think of switching on a light bulb and a few pumps and, hey presto, we have uranium ready to go to the mill.
We covered earlier that mines that are currently offline can take significant lengths of time to come back online. For example, McArthur River mine in Canada which just went offline could take two years to get back online and producing and that is a mine that was operating already and is under a care and maintenance regime currently, which implies the company knows what is involved to get it back to production. Imagine a new mine where the unknowns are much greater.
Another substantial mine that may come online one day is Arrow which is considered to be huge, analysts think it will produce 21% of world supply, and the cost per pound is less than $20. Again time to production is an issue and the expectation currently is 2023-24 at a cost of $1.3 billion to get it started. Based on other examples we have considered, staying and on budget can be kind of tricky. So again this sounds like a great mine but if we are expecting an upturn in the market in the next five years, is this going to even produce a pound before the price has already risen? We don’t know, however, if we link this to long term contracts it is certainly a piece in play but maybe more of a takeover target to the right company. Remember Rio Tinto and the Roughrider mine that never was.
Another reason that makes it difficult to start or restart mines is the need for skilled workers as this is a specialized field, and there are only so many workers to go around to get mines restarted, so miners may find themselves short on skilled miners when the time comes.
Earlier we mentioned the downblending of weapons which we would be further supply and that Damocles sword will continue to hover over the market.
Nuclear waste is also an argument against this sector. So it’s currently very fashionable to recycle, eliminate waste and the like, so nuclear waste is ever present and is perceived as a major issue with using uranium as an energy fuel. Years ago one approach to get rid of waste was to put it in barrels and sail out on the high seas and dump it, most barrels would sink but a few didn’t so the sailors shot at them to make them sink, sometimes a machine gun would be more effective. Now that doesn’t sound too good, especially if you are either a scuba diver or a fish. Times have moved on and this is no longer the way to dispose of nuclear waste.
According to the WNA, waste is divided into three categories from the spent fuel which is in the high category to the tools and clothes used by workers in the plant which is in the low category. When the used fuel comes out of the rods, it is hot and remains so for many years, so for that time period, the spent fuel rods are kept underwater in a storage pool. The WNA website has a great photo of some workers looking into the storage pool which looks very like a swimming pool. They are not wearing masks or any other personal protection equipment aside from safety helmets. The most ironic item in the photo is the life ring buoy in the background. Now in the first instance, you probably don’t want to fall in, but if you really have to be saved by a lifebuoy from a pool with nuclear rods, you might be delaying the inevitable. Safety helmets for that matter seem kind of ironic there too. Apologies for getting sidetracked.
So the disposal of low and medium level waste is buried underground but not too deeply. The high-level waste is not disposed of, as there are no disposal sites currently, so disposal means storing it out the backyard, typically, of the nuclear power plant. Now that doesn’t sound like a good solution but according to Mr Shellenberger (a guy who thinks nuclear is the bees knees) ‘If all the nuclear waste from U.S. power plants were put on a (US) football field, (around 5000m2 ) of it would stack up just 50 feet (15m) high. In comparison to the waste produced by every other kind of electricity production, that quantity is close to zero’.
All forms of energy generation have some form of waste product and nuclear waste problems, although long in duration are compact in relation to these. While keeping them in canisters valued at a half million to a million dollars a piece seems as though that is not a solution, it kind of is, it has worked for now. In terms of deaths, in comparison to other energy sources, waste nuclear is not really causing any problems, as long as you don’t dump it at sea or anywhere else for that matter and take pot-shots at it with a rifle.
Another example of a perceived problem becoming a solution is as research and technology develop, scientists will find some novel way of using the waste possibly by recycling it for further use. This does sound like they are trying to kick the canister down the road, so to speak, but either way, it doesn’t have a huge impact on how the uranium market will play out over the next few years, interesting nonetheless.
Renewables are competitive with nuclear power. Now, this is a statement that comes up from time to time and is worth exploring briefly. Lets just set out the fact that all energy forms have some form of subsidy behind them. You may, however, think ‘but surely not big oil as it’s been around for ages and it needs no government support’, and you would be wrong. The International Monetary Fund in 2017 released a report on global fossil fuel subsidies coming up with a number north of $5 trillion, yes trillion, not billion. The IEA says that in 2016, renewables received $140 billion in 2016. Big numbers in both cases but the point here is subsidies are for all by the look of things, and they tend to skew the picture on which energy type is the cheapest. Another reason it’s a cloudy picture is that you also get into semantics about the definition of what a subsidy is.
With that in mind, we will wade on to what is out there with regards to which is cheap and which is expensive. One way to look at this is to go back to Germany, we mentioned it earlier in comparison to France as they have more expensive electricity than France. Germany is also reducing or has reduced its nuclear power electricity generation and chosen the path of solar and wind generated energy. From 2017 counting back ten years, electricity prices have risen by 39%.
Now another area - California, it too has chosen the path of renewables and it too has seen an increase in prices for electricity. According to the EIA, residential prices were $19.30 cents per Kilowatt Hour in March 2019 which is up from $12.51 cents in 2005. So are we seeing a pattern here? Some would say yes and some would say no, either way, we do know that the wind does not always blow nor the sun always shine. In comparison nuclear is steady 24/7, that is unless you get a tsunami or earthquake of course. (last paragraph is in the next post)
If you can click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search page so non redditors can see it. Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
