Big News For Nuclear Power | Justin Huhn, Uranium Insider

foreign we should be live now welcome to wealthyon I'm wealthy I'm founder Adam Taggart I welcoming you here for a special live discussion today we're going to be talking about the current state of nuclear energy and there's some big news on that front that's been hitting headlines recently we're fortunate to be discussing that with the publisher of the uh investing newsletter uranium Insider um that's Justin hewn who I'm adding right here to the screen hey Justin how are you thanks so much for joining us this morning doing great happy to be here thanks Adam how are you I'm good I'm good I know it's a little early your time on the west coast uh to where I live too but I'm kind of used to doing interviews at this time I appreciate you getting up with the sun with us here to do this oh I've been up for a while we had kamiko's conference call this morning at 5 30 a.m my time so hence the bags under my eyes but uh happy to be here either way okay um well look uh we'll get into the specifics in a moment but I guess I am curious is there anything notable about sort of the industry uh itself that came up on the the camaco call um I think it was kind of run-of-the-mill bullishness coming from the camaco guys um a lot of what they stated I think was already priced into the market um and into the stock as well um term Contracting definitely slowed down a little bit during the summer after a very strong start to the year um they and we expect that to pick up a bit towards uh in the last few months of the year which is typically a very strong season for Uranium um as far as the industry goes you know everything just continues to move forward in a in a very very bullish manner there's huge new builds announced in Canada where camaco is operating from Bruce Power they're expanding expanding with four new large large candial reactors as well as quadrupling the initial SMR build at Darlington they're going from one unit to four units and uh it's just the demand picture looks incredibly robust and continues to improve and they highlighted that in this call and there's some a couple other details from the call I think are noteworthy but as far as the industry goes you know it's it's just really um you know I tweeted out yesterday and the thesis really can be very very simple which essentially is demand is predictable it's stable it's growing Supply on the other hand is in question and is quite fragile and so that that picture continues to uh continues to reiterate I suppose with each passing almost each passing day each passing week each passing month the demand picture gets better and better and better at the supply side um doesn't seem to be improving all that much all right well let's let's dig into both of those sides then and folks as well um because we're doing this live I'll Reserve time here hopefully in the second half of this discussion to take questions live uh from the live chat here so um as Justin and I are talking here if you have questions please start putting them in that live chat and when we get to the Q a part I'll mind that for for questions to surface to Justin here um all right but Justin maybe um before we get into the the real detailed questions if you could just kind of give us an overview of the industry right now why uh you're so optimistic about it and when we were setting up this call I heard if I heard you correctly I think I heard you say you're perhaps maybe the you're very bullish and maybe perhaps the most bullish you've ever been about the prospects for um uranium related stocks so um as we kind of go through this overview of both the demand and the supply side if you can kind of weave in why you think this current environment is is making you so optimistic that would be really helpful so let's just sort of start with with at a very high level like what's the current state of nuclear energy right now um you know it was kind of reviled for a long time over the past couple decades I'd say um but but now it seems the pendulum is swinging back where people are governments are beginning to realize increasingly hey we need this fuel source it's it's not something that that we want to fully decommission in fact we may want to be investing more in it so what's causing this pendulum shift if I'm assessing that right I would say the the main drivers of this pendulum shift are um a focus on clean energy so um actually recognizing nuclear for what it is in terms of emissions which is essentially zero um so finally it's it's getting its day in the sun even though it's been a zero emission base load energy source forever finally now uh I suppose the climate Panic has reached such uh a certain level of chorus that all all mechanisms that can decarbonize are being supported um you know over the past number of years we've had we have we've had increasingly alarming rhetoric uh primarily coming from the environmental left around climate around carbon emissions and we had you know statements like you know in 2020 statements like we have 10 years left basically before the carbon in the atmosphere reaches levels that will cause basically mass extinction and the demise of the human species essentially is what they're saying also no nuclear and they got a lot of pushback from that from the Michael schellenbergers of the world and the and the nuclear Advocates that are uh seemingly growing in number and and finally you know that that sort of rhetoric is kind of reversed and we're even seeing the environmental left even in the United States start to embrace nuclear nuclear support in the United States is now a bipartisan issue um the passing of the inflation reduction act last year with the inclusion of clean energy production clean energy investment tax credits at nuclear qualifies for is evidence of that so it's it's so the first the first part of that is a focus on decarbonization so most countries in the world have quote unquote Net Zero goals or decarbonization goals they're trying to reach and uh and nuclear fits the bill um of course for those goals I would say the second element has to do with security of energy so and this has been highlighted over the past 18 to 24 months with situation in Ukraine with Russia cutting off largely cutting off energy supplies to Europe and a recognition that if you have a nuclear plant on your soil and you've got a few years of fuel stored you have an unbelievably secure source of energy for your populace and that's not something that can be weaponized um at least not in the short term of course you know Russia controlling a large uh they're the biggest player in conversion and enrichment so it's creating some hiccups in the fuel cycle currently that are being attempted to be addressed in the west but security of energy is a major major thing and we're seeing Japan for example start to accelerate their restarts that they just restarted a reactor last week that's the first one that they've restarted in the last two years there's two more on the Block to be restarted within the next six to 12 months and those are boiling water reactors thus far all the reactors restarted and light water reactors so hopefully that sets the stage for more bwrs to be restarted but Japan of course doesn't have a massive you know resource of of energy Supply so they import a lot of a lot of coal a lot of oil a lot of natural gas and they of course import uranium but they can they can store enough you know enriched uranium and fabricated fuel in in a couple of large warehouses to power the country for multiple years and and they they understand that which is why they're accelerating the restarts they're even looking at government subsidies to support um accelerating these restarts so clean energy energy security I would say are the are the primary drivers of this nuclear Resurgence okay and and for folks that may not know um and we're we're kind of touching on topics that you and I have talked about in depth in your prior appearance on this show so I'm not going to rehash all the discussions just so interesting time but um Japan uh very famously shut down its nuclear reactors its Fleet of nuclear actors following the Fukushima disaster but it hasn't correct me if this is not correct but I believe they've publicly announced that they are bringing in the process of bringing all of them back online um so not quite but okay yeah so so they have 54 reactors up and running prior to the Fukushima daiichi accident and they shut all of them down thus far they have restarted 11 of the I think that there's 33 that are operable so that means about 20 have been permanently shut down that won't be restarted um so of those 33 that are operable 11 have been restarted and they have a goal of reaching 20 to 22 percent nuclear as a percentage of their overall grid by 2030 and that would mean basically all of the operable those 33 operable being restarted in the next let's say six and a half years okay so so they're planning to reopen all the ones that can be reopen more or less yes okay great so the purpose of that being is is the country that has the most recent sort of nuclear incident that you would think would be the most cautious about nuclear energy has said hey we're comfortable enough with it that we're leaning back into it pretty much yeah and you know the the population in Japan is in majority in support of restarting nuclear and even looking at new nuclear builds and there's a number of Japanese utilities that are looking into new builds and smrs and some Advanced nuclear designs as well um and they have been and probably will continue to be a very cautious people um that's just kind of their nature culturally and and the restarts have been slow thus far will they hit that goal I don't know but they understand um you know they understand the relative safety they understand the importance of that energy security and the clean energy element of it and so they're moving that direction okay um so again staying on the energy security side for a second here um uh obviously if you are producing nuclear energy domestically uh you're less reliant on you know fossil fuels from other foreign Nations that you might have tenuous alliances with in terms of the the uranium Supply that we use to generate the nuclear energy in our reactors uh how does how is the how well is the U.S position to supply its own uh uranium itself domestically or from close friendlies it's in a decent position um although the mining industry the Iranian mining industry has has basically contracted to almost zero production there's plenty of uranium in the ground in the United States and in most places really there's a decent amount of uranium but the geology in the United States is particularly favorable there's you know I mean most people don't know this but there's a USGS the United States Geological Survey a study done in the 90s based on the Arizona Strip This is a small area kind of north right around the Grand Canyon area where they estimated there was a billion pounds of uranium in the ground just in the Arizona strip we have decently High grades ISR amenable deposits in Wyoming there's a decent amount of uranium in Texas um in a couple of other areas across the country so there's there's plenty of uranium Supply to produce let's say five to ten million pounds a year now we need way more than that do I think we'll reach those levels I do it's probably going to take us five years but I do think there's a decent amount of uranium of course we're friendly with Canada to the north and there's very very high grade uranium in the Athabasca Basin at Saskatchewan a lot of uranium in Australia in fact they have the largest reserves on the planet um so there's there's plenty of uranium for let's say Western friendly Nations to be had and that and we're talking about yellow cake uranium mind out of the ground as far as the rest of the fuel cycle the US is in an okay position we have some uh conversion that literally just restarted at Colorado 9th Metropolis plant in Illinois that we started last month um that's that can also ramp up that can almost double its production levels assuming they have sufficient uh price incentives to do so and they're looking at that they're probably going to work on just getting that basic operational status um happening and and smooth before they even consider ramping up that production but there's conversion at Port Hope in Canada that's run by camaco there's there's some conversion in the EU and then there's enrichment here so and fuel fabrication so we have a decent fuel cycle but it it's an insufficient to uh to supply even our own Fleet of I think it's 92-93 reactors at this point which is about 40 to 45 million pounds of uranium of natural uranium demand per year are we going to get to that level of production that's highly unlikely can we reach that level of of consumption based on friendly nations of course absolutely okay um so I I I'm gonna put a pin in the there's going to be more investment needed uh to get the yields that we want uh to power the fleet that we think we're going to be you know continuing to invest in going forward um but real quick I'm just trying to make a quick case here especially for viewers that haven't watched our our earlier deeper Dives Justin so all right on the energy security side um you know sort of green light that says hey um nuclear is offering the promise of you know High yielding uh carbon free uh you know resilient uh not dependent on foreign partners that maybe we're a little bit nervous about getting into business with um so it takes a lot of boxes on on that side of things just going back to your decarbonization side for a moment um uh I I don't have the full discussion here it's a it's their High emotions on both sides um but when you look at the safety and environmental track record of nuclear energy right when you look at it in terms of sort of deaths or um environmental impact on a per BTU per you know production basis for the lifetime of the energy source again correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's any energy source that has a track record that comes anywhere close to nuclears on both of those sides of things right it's it's such a dense energy fuel we're able to get a tremendous amount of of always-on uh uninterrupted energy from from uh the fuel we've been able to do it incredibly safely over the life of of the industry yes there have been incidents there's been Chernobyl you know there's been Three Mile Island there was Fukushima which we talked about earlier but they're relatively few and far between and when again when you look at the death count of the people that have been impacted it's just it's a negligible fraction of the people who have lost their lives in the oil business and the gas business and the coal mining business again when you look at sort of you know environmentally acreage uh toxins put into the Earth um uh emissions put up into the atmosphere again it just doesn't compare to kind of the major fossil fuels that we've been using to power our economy for the past Century plus is that all correct absolutely it it basically wins on almost every environmental related uh study front that you can throw at it um land use it's the lowest land use per per kilowatt hour megawatt hour however you want to measure it lowest land use of any energy source it's the safest in terms of fatalities per energy created of any energy source ever um gosh doomberg did a recent piece that was that was brilliant that made a very interesting analogy or Illusion I should say that uh talks about the bank Yao dam disaster in China I believe this happened in the 70s if I recall correctly um this was a catastrophic failure of this Dam uh they had a 100 year or 500 year thousand year storm whatever it was the dam failed uh potentially up to 250 000 people perished in that accident and this does not even go into looking at the environment of a catastrophe that dams are this is looking at the human loss of life from this one incident um I don't know that there was any rethink on whether or not we should build Hydro following this accident and that accident um took the lives of more people by orders of magnitude than any any sort of accident that has ever happened um with with civilian nuclear and so it's it's very interesting how how nuclear energy has been maligned and has been aligned with a nuclear weaponry and and nuclear war and you know it's it's just sort of uh it's a case of bad timing in some sense you know we had um a kind of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis all in the similar time frame as Three Mile Island and we had NGO driven um you know massive protests against nuclear that happened following Three Mile Island and then of course uh Chernobyl a few years after that really kind of put the nail in the coffin with new builds at least in the West so uh you know and and the nuclear industry has has not done a very good job um with the quote-unquote propaganda War I mean they've essentially lost the war and I think that's that ship is slowly slowly turning but there's been a lot of influence coming from fossil fuel Lobby and ngos that that have done everything they can to slow down new nuclear builds but they're also the same ones that are going to complain about how how long it takes to build them and how much it costs um I don't know if you've seen the recent uh film by Oliver Stone nuclear now um it's primarily a kind of a climate concern driven narrative around nuclear which I understand the angle that he took I would have liked to have seen a little bit more of a deep dive into all of the incredible elements of nuclear energy that have nothing to do with a lack of carbon emissions but the film did a very good job of going into the history of the anti-nuclear movement to give you one example of kind of how this is played out over the decades the Sierra Club was originally pro-nuclear they had um they had a slogan that was uh atoms not dams they were against hydroelectricity for um obvious reasons if you think about the ecological impacts for 30 seconds um and they were pro-nuclear they understood the land use element they understood the clean energy element the base load element and um and and the absolute engineering Marvel that is nuclear energy and they were in support of it Along Came someone from the fossil fuel industry approached one of the heads of the Sierra Club cut him a check for 200k which at the time is probably the equivalent of a few million dollars this person walked from the Sierra Club started the uh natural resources defense Council the nrdc and all of a sudden the nrdc um was anti-nuclear after that after that big fat check and they still are that organization is still in existence they have been behind the anti-nuclear movement since that moment they have had a big influence on it they're the ones suing PG e right now for extending the life of Diablo Canyon in California they're not going to win they have the support of the political establishment here and pretty much everybody else but um you know nuclear is finally starting to the nuclear industry is finally starting to tell a better story and that story is based on the the benefit of humanity that can be had based on an embracing and expanding of nuclear energy for various reasons some of them have already mentioned all right interesting and and so uh nuclear energy sort of started as a green energy source then kind of became vilified as you know it's all going to kill us um it seems like the track record is finally catching up with it maybe they're finally you know getting a better PR firm or whatnot but where I'm going with this I'm not necessarily trying to change the minds of folks that are viewing here but what I'm trying to to get out here is that it seems that nuclear is now being put back into the green energy space and as we know with the the whole new green deal and everything like that and the the inflation reduction act which has a lot of uh money uh in it to be invested in you know basically rebuilding America's energy grid and whatnot um that like it or not and I think a lot of people like you Justin probably like it but like it or not nuclear is now being perceived as a green energy source and that's probably that momentum is probably likely going to continue and I think you mentioned briefly earlier but there's there's actually a lot of funds and energy in the department of energy now going towards supporting nuclear in a way that the government hadn't been supporting it as much in the past is all that true it is true yeah the department of energy in the United States has become um just unabashed supporters of nuclear and the inflation reduction Act is one one element of that um there's a demonstration project for advanced nuclear smrs there's two designs that have received 1.2 billion in funding each if I recall correctly from the doe for establishing the first demonstration project of these designs and that's Terra power's nature and reactor that's Bill Gates project um that's a a sodium fast reactor that's going to be built in Wyoming that's going to replace a Coal Power Plant in Kemmer Wyoming it's this is a very interesting design and it and there's a number of SMR designs that have elements of this where you can actually cycle up and down in terms of its power output more easily than a traditional large-scale light Water Reactor it can it can do it faster and it can do it to more extreme levels whereas a large light Water Reactor might be able to cycle up and down 10 or maybe 20 percent and it takes takes a minute for that to happen it's it's it's less suited towards balancing the intermittency of Renewables which I don't know why we even have to consider that but we do based on the subsidies that are being thrown out at the and the rate at which Renewables are being built out um so most of the time when there's a grid with a large amount of intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar that intermittency has to be balanced out in order to not completely destabilize the grid and that has to happen from an energy source that can cycle up and down relatively quickly usually that's coal or natural gas or in some cases in the EU I guess uh biomass is the same you can cycle up and down easily as well so this nature and reactor um can store excess energy in the form of molten salt and it can actually draw on that excess energy and ramp up from 340 megawatts 340 or 370 and remember the kind of the Baseline up to 500 megawatts and it can also cycle back down below uh the Baseline level so very cool design the other demonstration project is X energies xc100 this is a gas cooled a helium-cooled uh Pebble bed reactor and um this demonstration project is being built in Washington both of these projects are getting a lot of doe funding so uh very cool for that industry in the United States another piece of evidence was the doe put out something called a liftoff report this was two or three months ago they did three separate reports and one of them was focused on nuclear and this liftoff report essentially was taking their uh their Net Zero by 2050 goal and recognizing that nuclear is going to have to play a very large role in that so they essentially are looking at um more than doubling the U.S nuclear Fleet by 2040. and they lay out a couple of different scenarios where if we we start now versus starting in like 2035 and if we start this and get these action new nuclear started to be constructed before 2030 the the chances of reaching that goal are you know like multiples so that that was extremely bullish that liftoff report they're basically saying we need this we are going to do this we have to do this to reach this goal and I'll give you one more example yeah I'm sorry who who published that liftoff report Department of energy okay great in the United States and lastly they did the DOE also did an investigation of the coal power plants existing and retired in operating and retired in the United States and found that about 85 percent of them are viable for uh coal to nuclear switching so actually implementing a small modular reactor in place of of burning coal and leaving the grid intact and leaving the bulk of that facility intact um so I mean these are all pieces of evidence coming from the doe in the United States so that's all moving in a very very good direction the one big question mark for the United States in terms of new nuclear it has to do with nuclear Regulatory Commission the NRC which have uh not exactly been supportive of new design so a lot of these SMR designs have um had hiccups in terms of of Licensing so as of yet we have not seen anything other than a light Water Reactor or a Boiling Water Reactor get an NRC license now we're going to see excuse me we're going to see Terra power and X energy submit applications to license their designs in the next year or two um and hopefully we see the NRC Embrace those designs and license them if we see that then it's game freaking on in the United States if not then what we're looking at is at the very least the bipartisan support of the existing Fleet but I can tell you that more than half of the nuclear Utilities in the United States are actively looking into building new nuclear power plants all right super interesting so um there's a lot of momentum going into this sector uh doe is kind of leading the charge big question mark is whether the key regulator the NRC is going to get on board here um because they have to approve the designs of all these new technologies that you've just mentioned um so that's a big TBD if they do as you said it's Uber game on if they don't uh you know I guess we play politics for you know a few more years to see see who wins out here um you mentioned a couple of terms I just want to briefly Define for our viewers here um so uh you mentioned uh some of these um these new technologies that are being deployed with doe funding but you call them demo plants so basically these are proof of Concepts right um I you use the term SMR just wanted to find that for folks that stands for small modular reactor it basically means a much smaller or substantially smaller plant than the the large installations that we currently have today and that we're familiar with you know from when we see pictures of nuclear plants there's a lot of benefits of smrs if you could just give us maybe the 20 second breakdown of why there's so much interest in smrs Justin oh 20 seconds I'll try um I would say that the people that are generally against nuclear the main benefits of smrs are that they are being designed with different more robust safety mechanisms they will some of these designs will actually produce less waste than the large-scale light water boiling water reactor so those are kind of the the anti-nuclear talking points for smrs I would say in the United States especially the biggest use case uh and for support for smrs has to do with uh financing risk so if you're in an environment with interest rates as they are now you can imagine that delays in construction for a very for multi-billion dollar projects get very very expensive so to the extent that small modular reactors can be built faster even if the economies of scale aren't coming into play in terms of cost per megawatt delivered the overall cost of the project is likely to see more embracing of smaller projects based on financing risk okay and and just to be clear uh they are smaller small modular reactors so smaller means smaller environmental environmental impact when it goes in there uh you mentioned sort of some safety benefits you get from that um you can deploy them faster you can deploy them in way more places because a traditional nuclear power plant needs a very sort of specific set of of elements to be in place right it needs a ton of water to cool it and certain things like that right so you can deploy these in more places that couldn't otherwise get this type of energy and because they're modular you mentioned economies of scale you understand the economics better than I do but but part of I think the logic there is you know kind of every nuclear plant that's been built in the U.S at least to date has kind of been a one-off project where it's it's a custom project everything's kind of being done for the first time to a certain extent everything's kind of bespoke small nuclear reactions can almost be sort of like Factory built right where there's a lot of standardization so you can get economies of scale down in terms of Parts interoperability the talent from one plant can know how to work the other plant because everything's sort of identical you're nodding as I'm saying this uh oh people can actually see that this time in this format it's actually nice I don't have to say it so am I capturing some of the other key benefits too yeah I think you make a really good point there's I'm going to give a shout out to the D couple podcast um that Dr Chris Kiefer does he's a nuclear Advocate based out of Canada this is a fantastic podcast the last episode he did I don't have the person's name right in front of me but this this young man was brilliant and new new every single data point uh about every element of the nuclear industry in the United States and one of the points he made about kind of the failure of new nuclear bills the United States has to do with exactly what you mentioned that there's a lot of Unique Designs that were developed and built out in the 70s and into the 80s and um and we never really got to the point of building these things in quote unquote Fleet mode so we've seen for example in Canada uh their Fleet is exclusively the can-do reactor the heavy Water Reactor um we've seen the Chinese now uh build out a number of Hua long one Haul on two reactors those those reactors are gonna they're building those one after another after another after another and to your point you can have a skilled labor force that can go from one project to the next um I in theory that's one of the attractive elements of that's being proposed with the small modular reactors is the is the is the modular nature of these things and the fact that they can actually be uh built in Factory built shipped out and assembled on-site and you know the the first of a kind um the kind of the test case for these designs is really going to be far more expensive in theory than if we have multiple orders by the way there's orders for hundreds and hundreds of smrs of various designs around the world right now um that that we can see a fleet mode production of these of these reactors and and that's been that's been a problem in the United States as far as that goes yeah um and I think that the labor force really is going to be one of the biggest challenges um in the United States and I I would say in the west generally we've seen recently that um the country of France announced I don't remember the dollar amount I apologize I think it was in the hundreds of millions of Euros uh of support for basically um uh educating and building out a growing Fleet of skilled nuclear workers and France wants to build another six large reactors in the next 10 years these are uh these are epr2 reactors um very large Advanced reactors they're light water reactors but they're they're a new design and then they need to build out their Workforce and they're recognizing that and they're putting forth money to do it um whereas you have you know generally speaking in the East you have much more of a focus on stem much more of a focus on engineering and you have very robust labor forces in South Korea and China Etc okay so um just what I want to put on folks is you know Radars here is is there's kind of this Renaissance of Technology right we can build reactors differently we can use new technologies to power them you also mentioned a term molten salt reactor which is just sort of one one of the many different Technologies that's being looked at to produce nuclear energy perhaps more efficiently and more safely than the existing technologies that are out there um we have um these can be mobile um I I know when we were kind of doing our prep for this discussion Justin you mentioned to me that that there's companies that are looking at basically creating kind of these you know nuclear generators if you will that can be put into a shipping container essentially and just be sort of delivered on site right um and you you give a nod to the fact that you know there are ways to basically convert coal powered plants eventually to nuclear in the future so there's there's all there's kind of like this huge stack of new technology that's just waiting to get applied to this industry um but you know what's the challenge here is to get kind of everything approved regulatorily and to get out there test it and then run with it it sounds like some of the testing is beginning to be done you know the U.S probably behind some other countries but as you've said the doe is is testing some of these demo plants but let's take the case of of smrs small some small module reactors how many are actually like built and deployed in operating worldwide right now well I mean we have we have the Nuclear Navy in the United States and various other countries that have essentially small modular reactors powering submarines that have been that's been there for more than 50 years you're right that's very true we we have proven the SMR in in our naval fleet right it's a very good point many people forget that but that's still kind of you know older technology my point is and correct me if I'm wrong I don't think we have any that are that are actually built deployed and commercially operable on land yet am I wrong correct yeah the first one is being built in China right now it's it's close to First criticality that should probably be achieved within the next 12 months or so um but there's various others that are actively being constructed currently in in a number of countries yeah I mean the interesting thing with smrs really is my excitement around smrs has pretty much everything to do with where I want to see Humanity going um you know the the the energy density that comes from fission is unparalleled and never since the advancement of civilization have we gone um from a relatively high energy return on investment source of energy um and and gone in reverse and we're doing that now going from fossil fuels to Renewables largely that's not going to bode well for Humanity in the prospering of humanity um so my my take on on new nuclear smrs and otherwise has everything to do with where I want to see Humanity going what's going to benefit Humanity the most as far as the investment case we don't need to see another single new reactor bill in the next five to ten years for this to play out so all of this is gravy on top all of the reactor Construction in the world can stop right now and we're going to see higher uranium prices based on the existing Fleet so that's why all of this is just it's so it's gravy on top and I can tell you right now everybody that's doing supply and demand modeling on the investing side of the nuclear thesis and uranium mining stocks that has a modeling going out in the future looking at overall Supply overall demand and what they ex where they expect it to go nobody is modeling out for Uranium demand coming from small modular reactors for example so any demand that comes from these um at whatever level they're rolled out whether it's a complete dud and nothing happens on the SMR front or it's an absolute uh Snowball Effect and we see these uh just really gain Steam and I think that's where it's going to go anyways and one of the primary nuclear consultants and price reporters Trade Tech they expect that we'll see 200 million pounds of uranium demand uh cumulatively between now and 2035 and that's on top of the demand from the existing and expected to grow Fleet of large reactors so it's all gravy on top as far as supply and demand modeling goes but the exciting thing about nuclear for me has nothing to do with the investing case the investing case is very simple it's we have this existing Fleet these are the reactors in the construction now that are expected to be grid connected these are the reactors that will likely get Life Extensions and this is the supply that's happening now and we expect for the next few years that's basically easy math it takes some time to model it out but once you see it you can't unsee it so the price is going way higher whether or not smrs are the next big thing or it's a complete dead okay so what I hear you saying is sort of under the base assumption almost sort of the Steady Eddy case when you model the demand out you look at the supply and you say oh my gosh we're going to need a lot more uranium then there's the potential that you know China releases its SMR maybe some other countries you know reactors new reactors begin to come online and the world really wakes up to the potential of nuclear and then there's kind of a land rush that goes on to say okay gosh we got to do a lot more of this stuff right that as you said that's all gravy on top of the base case but even the base case demand for uranium sounds really attractive to you right now so so let's now move over to the supply side what are the Dynamics of the supply and and it sounds like you think that it's going to be playing ketchup for a long time even under the base case scenario yeah it definitely is um there's no slam dunks on the supply side really um it's it's basically very fragile and it's increasingly complicated due to the bifurcating the market that we're seeing right now that doesn't necessarily have to stick for the investment thesis to work out but it's looking like it's probably likely to stick um and I'm talking about kind of East versus West or let's say like bricks Nations versus the oecd and the way that that's happening currently is basically Western nuclear utilities are mostly voluntarily not engaging in new business with Russia and Russia has been and continues to be the largest player in both conversion and enrichment with about 43 of enrichment capacity globally and about 37 of conversion capacity globally so this bifurcating Market is creating some problems in the fuel cycle for the West to the West is scrambling to address in the meantime Western enrichers have to raise their tails assays and their enrichment process and without getting into the Weeds on that basically needs more more uranium is needed in order to produce uh more enriched uranium with fixed capacity now uranco is already uranco is a Western and richer they've already announced that they're going to be expanding their enrichment capacity but it's going to take some time it's going to take a couple of years to add a minimal amount of investment capacity it's great they're doing that it's moving in the right direction but all else being equal more uh higher Tails assets for Western riches means more uranium demand and that's that's happening now uh conversion uh limitations in conversion are sort of keeping a lid on the extent of the overfeeding that can happen at Western and Richards but it's already happening a little bit and riches are big uh buyers of conversion So when you say oh the conversion is completely uh it's completely tapped out there's no conversion available until 2027 well that's basically true there's a little bit in the west but some of the biggest customers of that conversion are the enrichers so the enrichers are able to kind of tweak those Cascades a little bit raise as Tails us has a little bit bring in more feedstock they've been out there buying uf6 to the extent that's available and there's not much they've been buying conversion they're buying a little bit of uranium so uh in the near term with the continuation of the bifurcated Market we're going to see more uranium demand this year next year 2025. unless and until the market de bifurcates and all of a sudden Russian enrichment and conversion capacity is just wide open and available to Western utilities uh or we see substantial more capacity built out in the West and it's it's kind of this complex scenario I hope I described that decently but but basically the supply side to answer your question a little bit more clearly um we have because atomprom is the biggest supplier um in Kazakhstan and in the world so Kazakhstan on 100 basis produces about 43 of the world's uh uranium Supply as of last year and because Adam prom um on on just their own basis is you know about half of that Supply so they have a bunch of JVS they have joint ventures with Japanese we have joint ventures uh within a number of joint ventures with the Russians and the Chinese and then of course a couple with the French and one with kamiko at inkai now uh interestingly enough over the past uh since we spoke last year Adam um because Adam prom sort of kind of pushed through a backdoor deal with rose Adam with a Russian nuclear uh nuclear entity and this was for a new mine it's the six and seven blocks of the budanovskoy mine it's a very large deposit in Kazakhstan and they pushed through this deal for Rose Adam to own 49 of that and that was back in December um following this deal a bunch of the c-suite because Adam prom basically left bailed out and we've seen a lot of uh heads of this company leave the company over the past year year and a half and now we know why um but this in my opinion is a story that was just almost utterly ignored by the market that the largest producer in the world is deepening ties with Russia and regardless of how any of us feel about about that personally the reality is that the Western uh that the West is is moving away from Russian supply of essentially everything and that's not there's no difference with that with with nuclear so the fact that the biggest producer of uranium has deepened ties with Russia it has potentially huge implications for Western utilities and what that means for for production going forward basically what it means to us not only that but this other very large contract we've yet to have uh specifics on with uh China National nuclear and because Adam prom more pounds coming from the country of Kazakhstan are going to remain in the East period the end so even if Kazakhstan or because at a problem let's say can quote unquote turn on the TAPS in ramp production which a they can't they will they will increase production but it's going to take a lot of money and a lot of time and uh clean reliable source of sulfuric acid that is unabated and that's all very difficult um but they will be able to increase production a little bit but most of that increased production is just going to stay in the East and most of the demand for Uranium exists in the west we're talking 70 of global nuclear production and uranium demand is in the West so Supply is very fragile it's very fragile and there's no there's no Panacea out there where we're just going to see uranium flowing in out of anywhere we have strategic inventories there's massive inventories in the world there's over a billion pounds held in inventory those are strategic utilities have to hold inventories because of the time it takes to run this material field through the fuel cycle so two to three years of inventory is standard for every single utility on the planet China is holding three or four hundred million pounds of inventory you think that's going to flood into the spot Market when they're building 10 reactors a year I don't think so so it's it's it's a very again it's very simple demand is stable and it's growing you know when I first started looking at this sector demand was expected to grow by one or maybe two percent a year now it's expected to grow four to five percent a year and it's very easy to model out Supply however you know it takes a very long time and it's very complicated to build mines we can just look at the only uh Green Field uranium mine that is set to come online in the next few years is global atomics Dasa project in Nigeria there was a coup last week in Niger the supply coming from that mine that was basically expected by the market and by a number of Utilities in 2025 is now in question um you know it's Supply is no guarantee and we're gonna we're gonna keep seeing evidence of that not just from Niger or from you know we saw we saw kind of some Shenanigans with some uh two companies in the U.S or one of those companies expected production is now delayed because they got the rug pulled on them with the with the product processing facility in Wyoming that's two pieces of of expected production in the next few years that have been delayed and this is in the last 30 days um supplies for agile demand is not basically going to put it really simply wow um yeah and those numbers are just staggering so um most of the demand of future demands coming from the West the growth rate of that demand is going up so you said it's about 70 percent of future world demands going to come from the West now growing expected to grow about 4.5 a year but 43 percent of world uh uranium Supply comes from Kazakhstan which is moving closer to Russia so you're basically saying the growth of the growth of that source is going to be slow period and we may decide we don't want much of it going forward you see the terms used it's probably going to stay in the East largely for geopolitical reasons so yeah that does show some very big Trump you know I would say maybe tremendous Supply gaps and I think you said the only Greenfield new mine that's expected to come online in the next couple years meaning that the the world is playing catch-up is going to take us a while uh they just hit a coup there so who knows what's going to happen with that so you know with all of this you would think the market would say whoa okay wait a minute the value of your right future value uranium you know is going up let's boost the uranium price higher and obviously that plus just the Dynamics of the demand side would incent you would think companies to say okay well we got to start mining more and hey let's start mining in some of these friendly locations both for energy resilience as well as just for hey you know it's it's attractive economics like let's go do it you mentioned that America's got a lot of deposits Canada's got a lot of deposits Australia's Got a lot of deposits okay those are very safe places to do business in what's happening there is the market in the process of responding to this yet it is yeah um so I don't want to paint a picture that there's no Supply coming online that's not true um you'll hear people say there's no new minds no that's not true either um there are new minds in development it's just going to take so long to bring that Supply online that we're going to see a price response far longer far far earlier before the supply comes online and even when it comes online it'll be insufficient to fill that Gap so uh in in Canada we have next-gen developing the Aero deposit there in the environmental review process that's going to take a couple of years I believe um and then they have to build an extremely large Mill they're looking at producing potentially up to 30 million pounds per year as uh according to their feasibility study um we've never seen a mine that large an underground mine that large it's it's a very deep mine it doesn't have the same geological complexities that we have at MacArthur River cigar lake with the freeze walls Etc but um I think that there's there was a recent research report that was put out I don't remember who put it out it might have been can Accord that basically said they they expect first production from Next Gen in 2027 and while that's technically possible I mean we've seen you know you'll see these time lapse videos of the Chinese building an overpass in 24 hours uh or in 12 hours overnight you know these these things are technically possible um we've never seen a mine built on in that time frame in the west or in Canada specifically so these underground mines you know the discovery of cigar Lake from the discovery of that deposit to the production first produced pounds was something like 20 to 25 years um but you know nexgen is in stages of development that will be a mine eventually will it be producing uranium in 2027 I find that highly unlikely but it's possible um Denison is in early stages of development of the Phoenix deposit there's a bunch of exploration projects arano is well established in Saskatchewan that's the French uranium minor and uh they they have a technology called saber where they basically send a borehole down into the deposit and do like this rotational uh rotational jet boring where then they can suck the slurry out of the same borehole in the same uh piping that drove the hole very cool they've proven it out it works they'll be able to mine more there Iran was developing ISR in Mongolia that's expected to be producing Maybe by 2030. um there's another arano JV in Kazakhstan there's like I mentioned the budanovski six and seven there's I think one more deposit that's being developed in Kazakhstan so those mines are coming online the uzbeks are ramping they're expected to double their production by 2030 that'll be another eight or nine million pounds so there is Supply coming but based on the demand growth and based on the reactors under construction that will be grid connected by that time and the existing Fleet which much of that will be life extended um all of that production online still doesn't fill that Supply Gap and I'm telling you all of that production is not going to come online on time and on budget so um there is Supply coming online but it's insufficient and too late to stop what's about to happen with the price okay and when you say what's about to happen in price what do you see happening the price from here well there's a great piece of evidence actually in today's conference call um with kamiko where Grant Isaac stated basically he actually we oftentimes don't get these sort of pricing hints uh coming from producers especially because most contracts have ndas now he was just kind of throwing out some rough numbers but he's basically said that they're looking at base escalated contracts um that are that are essentially Market referenced instead of uh fixed price contracts with some element of that market reference so in the past in a buyer's market utilities want fixed price producers want Market reference because producers understand where the price is going to go and um I mean put simply it's going higher so producers want Market reference utilities want fixed as much as possible so that they can understand what they're going to be paying going on in the future as much as they can and de-brisk um and have some some line of sight on budgeting well what Grant Isaac said today is they're looking at uh Market reference contracts that are base escalated with with a floor around 50 bucks a pound and ceilings uh somewhere around 80 bucks a pound so when you have a ceiling 80 bucks a pound that's basically means that you and the utility you're signing the contract with expect the price to breach eighty dollars a pound because yeah where is it right now what is the price per pound right now uh the spot price right now I think off the top of my head is about 56.25 a pound if I recall correctly and the term price is just barely slightly above that the three year and five year forward are are in the 60 pound range but um yeah spot price 56 bucks a pound okay I just wanted folks to be able to know relatively the 80 price you're talking dollar price you're talking about is so sorry to interrupt but that was useful no it's fine it's fine um but these you know the floors the floors on a contract are to protect the producer to maintain and guarantee a minimum amount that they can make by that production and the seedlings are to protect protect the utility so to put a ceiling at 80 a pound that's basically an understated acknowledgment that the price is going to breach 80 a pound and they want protection for that uh price spike um so so that's where you know camaco one of the biggest producers and utilities that they deal with usually you know large serious utilities they're both saying the price is going way higher and we need some protection to that upside so that's I mean that's a piece of evidence that was just today from the conference call um and that 80 price ceiling really is probably somewhere in the ballpark of where we're looking at marginal production so when you look at some of the low-grade projects that need higher prices you know these are some of the lower grade open pit mines let's say in Namibia for example for those of you developed we need consistent prices above that level and that is going to need to happen eventually to fill the supply Gap based on expected demand that we're modeling out and that others in our industry are modeling out so that marginal cost of production basically sets kind of what sets the floor really and where this needs to go and above and beyond that really just has to do with with basic supply and demand and and the buying the purchasing manner that utilities could engage in um we're in year one of a Contracting cycle that typically will last four five six years and we haven't seen a single year of replacement rate Contracting which is you know 180-ish million pounds a year contracted by the nuclear Utilities in the calendar year we haven't seen that since 2012. this year we believe we're going to hit that we're currently at 118 million pounds per year uh year to date excuse me in long-term contracts and we think we're going to hit that 170 580 million pound level uh by the end of the year and that'll be year one of a Contracting cycle so uh and that's not even factoring in kind of these quote unquote X factors which are the financial players and whether or not we'll see Capital flow and a major risk on way again into the sector um we're not going to need it to see a price appreciate appreciation but if it comes it's going to have an extreme influence on the spot price because there's just not a lot of material flowing into the spot Market on a consistent basis so if we have risk come on into Sprott physical grain trust for example or into the recently launched Zuri invest or the two or three other physical entities that are expected to come online in the next you know 12 months or so physical funds we're going to see probably a price spike that is going to go far beyond what is necessary for the healthy functioning of the market okay um I I I'd love to talk more about that but I I got to start bringing in some of these user questions we're going to run a little bit over the hour if that's okay just because I want to make sure we get we get the questions and and this has been such a great discussion um but yes there are these big investment trusts uh that have been created and are being created that are basically just going out and buying tons of contracts on uranium or in certain cases just the product itself um and uh those are just big new buyers coming in capital flowing into this Market that already is somewhat Supply constrained so that's going to be providing again some additional upward pressure on price here before I get to the first question Justin is is from an investing standpoint is investing in the nuclear sector in terms of um producers and I'm thinking more the miners here of uranium but but maybe you can speak to other players along the chain as well is it similar to like the the precious metals mining industry where you have the prospects for the base metal itself um but then the mining companies and whatnot on top of that um they're like Leverage plays on it so if you expect the the price of the the underlying commodity to do well then the folks that are out there mining it supplying it their stocks you know could go up multiples of what the uh what the actual metal itself does typically yes um I mean we've seen that we saw that definitely in the previous bull market for Uranium that happened you know 04 to O7 we've we've seen that in uh in the first big leg up for this Market which essentially was December 2020 to November 2021 about a 12-month period we saw a huge huge leg up and you can see that you can see the uh the movement of uranium participation Corporation at the time which became this brought physically uranium trust uh versus the movement of the large cap producing and large cap development stocks versus the small caps and the small caps you know pretty substantially outperformed the large caps in that first big leg up but the opposite true is true on this consolidation that we've had since that time period we're going on you know in the next few months it'll be two years that we've seen this consolidation we've seen a couple of blips during that period of time short runs that last for a month or two and then kind of pull back and we've seen a decent recovery since March of this year to this point now you know you are a urine M up 20 25 since my but for the most part it's been a downward and then sideways consolidation over about an 18-month period um and during that period of time the small caps are down way more than the large caps and of course the physical is up during that period of time so if you look at a chart of um of spots of the spot physical uranium trust for example that is in this big beautiful ascending triangle making hitting similar resistance for the past year and making higher lows um which you know if you're making a bet on the price going up I think you know which way that's probably going to break and we believe it's going to break to the upside um so yeah generally speaking the mining stocks are leveraged on the commodity uh and in both directions yeah in both directions and it's important to uh to remind investors of that um okay so um let me let me start bringing some questions in here folks folks as you have questions ask them here in the live chat and I will do my best to surface as many as I can so Shannon here says Australia has the most uranium in the world have all you want there is no shortage of Supply so I'd like you to react to the spirit of this question which is like hey we got tons of it um but you you said look you know to get a mine like up and running from concept to production it's like 20 25 years in the west right now like why does it take so damn long well not that also you know depends on jurisdiction depends on red tape and bureaucracy and government bureaucracy and things like that um in Australia you have uh some jurisdictions that are that are in support of uranium Mining and some that are not so yes there they do have the most uranium they have the largest reserve largest known reserves on the planet there isn't any nuclear energy in Australia as of this moment but there's a number of groups that are advocating for that so hopefully we see them go in that direction but you know it's not really on anybody's bingo card um it's you know it just it takes a very long time uh exploration is difficult uh inexpensive and you have you know these small cap uranium mining explorers that have such a small market capitalization to do a small drill program they've got to have decent a decent amount of dilution to fund that uh it's it's a very very difficult game to discover once you discover deposit you have to have uh pricing in the industry to support the development you have to have typically long-term contracts signed with nuclear utilities sufficient to de-risk the development of that project you have to have you have to raise the capital um right now I would argue that money is expensive it's not it's you know in a higher interest rate environment it is not cheap to develop new minds and you're going to have to be damn sure that development is de-risked with uh a minimal level of long-term contracts and an expectation that we're going to see a pricing environment that's going to support that production once you get into production there's huge risks for developers huge risks financial and otherwise so you have to have an environment that's going to support that at all levels you have to be in the right jurisdiction you have to have the political support you have to be able to raise the capital you have to have the price in the right place for the commodity itself you have to have utilities stepping up to the plate and signing contracts with you and then you have to have the expertise and the know-how to actually bring it into production all of those boxes have to be checked so that can take a very long time and in most cases and most discovered deposits it never will happen it just never happens so in Australia there's some there's some very big projects pardon me um in Queensland for example where uranium mining there's still a moratorium there there's currently a couple of Brownfield ISR restarts bosses uh honeymoon project and um gosh the other one escapes me right right now I apologize for that but a lot of uranium there um but it's it's doesn't look like there's a lot of new development and new production expected to come online the biggest production increase of Australia is going to come from BHP in their Olympic Day online which is primarily a golden copper mine uh uranium is kind of a bonus there and they produce you know somewhere around 8 million pounds a year in that ballpark been very consistent their spot Market sellers or they sell shorter term spot reference contracts and they'll probably get another two three four million pounds per year out of that mine in the next few years okay and um I'm just curious I'm asking you to prognosticate here but like what do you think are the the best candidates for triggers that could get at least in the west um you know politicians and Regulators to work together to streamline this whole process like if you know I don't want to oversell and say it becomes the next Manhattan Project but like if the world really gets religion around uh nuclear and they decide okay we need more of this stuff um what do you think of the most likely triggers and what do you think realistically it could be compressed down to if we as a country said yeah we really want to do this honestly like I mentioned earlier perhaps the biggest impediment at the moment is the NRC so if we see some reform at the NRC and we see them license another new build um well for example they have licensed one SMR and that's new scales uh Voyager reactor they've licensed the 50 megawatt SMR new scale is however of course um promoting and planning to build the 77 megawatt version of that reactor and that application was just filed uh two days ago and the NRC responded to that basically said we have accepted this application so that's apparently a big step is just accepting the application even though they've already approved and licensed and permitted the smaller size of this exact same design but that process is going to take two years up to two years for a design they're already familiar with and is already licensed to slightly larger so basically the same design just a little larger and that's going to take years to yes now the good news on that front is that the carbon free Power project which is a subsidi a subsidiary of uamps which is a Utah a conglomerate of of Utilities in Utah uh cfpp just applied also to the NRC for early construction permits so they expect this to be approved and permitted this larger 77 megawatt design and they expect they want to start building it before that permitting even happens so they just applied for that early construction so it's looking likely that's going to happen that'll basically be the first new nuclear build in this country since uh Vogel which just literally started commercial operation within this past week um but I think honestly when we see when we see another new reactor build be licensed and start construction I think it could be game on if we see some sort of Reform at the NRC um would be a very positive sign if we see any other type of design approved and licensed and permitted in the United States that is not light water boiling water so if and when we see natrium's Terror power or Terra powers and Atrium or the xc100 or even the bwrx 300 uh ge hitachi's design if any of those are permitted in the United States then I think it's going to be game on okay all right like I mentioned currently actively nuclear Utilities in the United States are looking into building new nuclear and technically they can you know apply for construction permits for already uh permitted designs of you know these large-scale light water boiling water reactors that have already been constructed and and can be permitted so that can happen the problem with the large-scale designs in the United States and there's a lot of lessons to be learned from from Vogel which by the way in that liftoff report there was a whole section dedicated to sort of doing a forensic audit of what happened at Volvo what went wrong and how can we fix it and one of the biggest things is just having having every single piece of engineering and design 100 complete before you break ground that was not the case with Vogel and they ran into so many problems that it bankrupted Westinghouse you know during the process of construction the cost overruns were huge it took seven or eight years longer than it was supposed to which at six seven percent interest rates you have a seven year delay on a multi-billion dollar project that's going to bankrupt whoever's building it so there's a lot of de-risking and engineering and uh you know Capital risks that need to be considered before any nuclear Utilities in the U.S start to move towards building large-scale nuclear but there are some that are considering it in addition to the smrs but most of the focus for U.S utilities that are considering new builds they're looking at it as a nuclear looking at smaller projects okay all right so during this discussion in the chat um there was a lot of debate back and forth between kind of the pro-nuclear folks and the pro natural gas folks and um some of the arguments that were being made is like we don't even need to look at nuclear we've got just an unlimited supply of natural gas and we should just be leaning totally into that and forget nuclear um this comment here from Jack I'd maybe like you to react to you where he says nuclear and gas are complementary Energy Systems and I'm curious um when people bring up natural gas in its abundance and its cheapness and all that stuff um how do you see that in nuclear playing together or do you not see them playing together um I definitely see them playing together yeah um natural gas I I'm not against Natural Gas Energy production by any means um it's really interesting you know president Trump got a lot of flack for uh abandoning the Paris Accord but out of all of the countries that signed the Paris Accord the U.S was the only country that reduced its carbon emissions because they transitioned a number of coal power plants to natural gas which is orders of magnitude less uh pollutive so you know natural gas I think is a fantastic fuel to move from burning coal burning biomass burning oil to produce electricity towards uh an expansion of the nuclear renewal Renewables are going to place some role new natural gas of course is I would argue even more complementary to Renewables than it is to nuclear because because of what I mentioned earlier that it can cycle up and down relatively easily and and augment that intermittency that comes from solar and wind um but yeah I mean by all accounts natural gas is is more abundant than oil at this point it's relatively cheap still at this point um you know the main argument against it I suppose is that it's still a fossil fuel or that it is you know it is eventually going to we're eventually going to tap out even natural gas supply and so um expanding that and expecting that it will be abundant and available and cheap forever I think would be an error but I do think it's it's uh it's complementary and I'm not against the expansion of natural gas production and energy production from that gas okay um you've already touched on this but maybe we could just do a quick deeper dive uh Rob asks hey aren't they building uh an SMR online in Wyoming um this is one of those demo plants that you were talking about just just give us the quick backstory on the technology that's being deployed there and and if it goes well what you think the implications will be um so this is this is Tara powers and Atrium uh project this is uh one of the two designs that has funding from the Department of energy um it is set to be constructed in Kemmerer Wyoming where there currently exists a Coal Power Plant and it's going to replace that this is um Terra Powers Bill Gates uh Bill Gates brainchild has also has backing and funding from Warren Buffett um like I said it was out of the dozens and dozens of reactors and designs that were submitted to the doe um in in hopes of receiving this funding the two projects they chose this was one of those two so it for whatever reason the department of energy has high hopes for this design um this design is something called a fast reactor I am not a nuclear engineer so I'm not going to be able to dive into the ins and outs of the engineering of this plant my understanding is that it has uh it can store excess heat in the form of molten salt and that molten that heat stored in the molten salt essentially acts like a battery and so it will allow this this reactor to draw from that held energy in the molten salt heat and produce and ramp up the output of electricity so it's Baseline output if I recall correctly I think it's 340 megawatts and it can ramp up by pulling from that molten salt storage to 500 megawatts for something like five hours it can also cycle down more easily based on designs that I can't explain to you so very very intriguing design um very hopeful if this is a success if it does get built and does replace this coal plant and goes off without a hitch and of course there's going to be a hitch in the first of its kind but um I would say that it bodes well for it to be officially licensed by the NRC and permitted and more of these can be built especially with the doe already saying 85 of the coal power plant sites decommissioned or operational currently can be replaced with small modular reactors I mean that's them saying that not me that's that's super impressive 85 yeah that all of a sudden you get a great alternative to and and Pathway to replacing all your Coal Fire plants whether they're operational or decommissioned um all right here's a question from Mr James um what direction should young people go if they want to get into this Market nuclear science mining policy I guess construction is another one I'd put in there if we're going to be constructing more of these um what do you think oh gosh um all of the above and seem like very very promising to me um I would say if you are uh of sufficient intellect to be a nuclear engineer go for it I think that's probably the biggest shortage is going to be skilled skilled nuclear engineers and uh potentially even on the construction side um that I think if you if you have skills that can be applied to being part of the construction of nuclear power plants you can probably work anywhere in the world um but honestly any any of those nuclear science mining policy I mean we need all of the above so hard hard to really choose one of those I would say whatever you're most interested of those I mean the policy side sounds the most boring but might be the most important um nuclear science sounds the most interesting and if you happen to be uh super into rocks you know uh we need more we need more skilled miners as well all right um all right well we're gonna have to start wrapping it up here folks um Justin uh thank you for going so long with us um folks uh thanks for hanging a little bit over an hour here um really enjoy these kind of From The Trenches uh real-time updates from folks I tried to pose many questions as I could from uh the live chat here also in a number of my questions I was kind of amalgamating a lot of the discussion that I saw here so hopefully we captured most of what you folks are interested in hearing from Justin um if you do like these live formats with the ability to ask questions and have them addressed live by the speaker please let me know in the comment section when we've done that in the past folks have said they'd like to see more of this which is one of the reasons why I reached out to Justin to do this but obviously I want to keep doing more of these if you want me to or something else if you'd rather have a different format um Justin so for folks that are um engaged on this topic excited from what you've just described here um would like to learn more and specifically follow you and your work um where should they go and and tell them a little bit about what you do at your publication sure um I can be found at uraniuminsider.com um we basically cover the sector thoroughly our 100 focus is uh nuclear energy and uranium mining stocks and the investing case for both um I've been doing this since August of 2019. we've almost 4xed our original investment during that time and outperformed The Benchmark significantly during that time um but we we cover very in-depth macro we put out a monthly newsletter that's 30 to 40 pages we do a monthly members only webinar or we talk with uh industry folks industry professionals and some of our industry contacts on a monthly basis and then of course we put out email bulletins with trade alerts and uh it's it's been a fantastic experience we expect this Market could go for another few years and then some it could very well be kind of a commodity super cycle um interestingly enough if you look at the commodity space and how Commodities have traded generally speaking over the past six to 12 months and expected kind of deflationary environment uh in expected recession which is basically 100 consensus at this point look at the price of uranium it's it's very very insulated from economic effects of recession and that's has to do everything with uh inventories that nuclear utilities build the long lead time from nuclear fuel etc etc um I'm also on Twitter uh I'm not spending as much time there over the past year or so I've been focusing more on on servicing our members and putting out daily content I put do a daily market update video just about every day for our paying members as well um but yeah it's it's it's a very very exciting uh investing space it's a feel-good investment the case for higher price uranium is is very simple and very easy to understand but the the industry in the market is extremely complex and that's essentially what we focus most of our energy on is distilling information that comes to us on a daily and weekly and monthly basis into what it means for you as an investor and making sure that our members understand where this Market is and where it's going that's our primary Focus and I think we do a pretty good job of that we have very high retention rate for our members um I want to give a quick plug for my friend art Hyde from segre Capital we talked a lot about smrs today and they have written a brilliant blog piece they wrote that six or eight months ago if you go and Google search segra Advanced nuclear fuel cycle the piece is called we can work it out and they always they always use a Beatles song in their titles at their blog post site I'm just realizing that but um this they go they go pretty deep in in relatively readable and shorter format into the implications of smrs and the demand that can be expected uh possibly coming from this industry they're very heavily uh into this industry they have a a private fund that's focused on on nuclear opportunities and uh and small modular reactors Advanced reactors that's separate from their from their fund that's focused on uranium mining stocks um so yeah these guys do great work and that blog post is is a must read if you want to know more about smrs especially when it comes to the investing implications all right great for sharing thanks so much for sharing that um two quick uh things as we wrap up here one is just to remind folks that uh you will be speaking uh uh at the wealthy on online conference on Saturday October 21st uh we're gonna have a a two-party panel we're going to have doomberg and you uh we'll talk with doomberg first sort of about the General State of energy across all major field sources around the world um but then we'll get into more specifics on uh the what's happening in the nuclear energy space of course we're going to be several months ahead of where we are now uh at the time of the conference um duberg has very particular uh opinions and strong opinions about nuclear uh their mirror a lot of yours so I think it's going to be a really interesting and Lively discussion uh very educational for folks so I just wanted to make folks make sure folks keep that on their their calendars secondly uh there was a question here uh that I'm going to try to pull up real quick um uh and just talk to the spirit of it I know that folks should be going and reading your material and listening to uh the specific picks that you make in the space but I think a lot of people are probably thinking this hey there you're any minors they're approaching the July low should I wait for lower lows to come um or you know essentially is this a good time to sort of start gaining exposure to the space do you have just sort of a general perspective short-term expectations are very very difficult in this market um I can just say what we tell our members on a monthly basis we put in every single newsletter which is uh make a rational allocation to the sector enter into positions over multiple tronses over at least multiple weeks if not multiple months that's critical um at this point in time we also recommend against using margin and Leverage The sector will punch above its weight when the when the sector runs so you don't need to be overweight especially don't be overweight in any particular name diversification is important especially if you're investing in the minors um I would say right now is kind of an interesting point because we have inarguably overbought broad Market that has been melting up and and just absolutely crushing the shorts uh melting up and climbing a wall of worry over the past couple of months that looks like it's got some airspace below it um and if that drops in the next let's say four to eight weeks our uranium stocks are probably going to get hit as well so that could present an opportunity we are leading into what is usually a strong season for Uranium typically the summer time is very slow so the fact that we've seen um you know a 20 to 20 to 30 move up from March to now um is is kind of different from a typical year usually that's a period of time of a pulling back for the sector and for the price of uranium and we've seen the price of uranium stay very very stable six months ago uh I said 50 bucks was the floor I think 55 is the floor now and this is going to go higher um people that work in the industry that are not myself are expecting the price to have a decent Jump by the end of the year I'm not making any price predictions but I do believe it is going to head higher before the end of the year we have two uh two primary things that influence or probably multiple more than that but two primary things to influence what is typically a strong season for Uranium which is one the wna conference in London in early September um every two years they put out something called the nuclear Field Report where they they actually do their own modeling that goes out uh like to 2040 and they have lower reference and uppercase scenarios based on a number of different assumptions there's a dozen people working on these models that all work together on the supply side and demand side and that report is something the industry waits for and waits to see uh with baited breath every two years this uh this conference I think is going to be an important one because of what's happening in the world because of not only just this Resurgence of nuclear we've been talking about for the past hour and a half but uh this bifurcated market and the challenges in the fuel cycle and the expected Contracting cycle that's just starting utilities are very active and they're they're um they're certainly waking up to some Supply realities that are pending um so that conference is a big Catalyst and then you have just generally nuclear fuel buyers for utilities coming back from their summer vacations going to this conference going to the Nei Conference in October which actually is happening the day after our our chat with doomberg um and then they they typically will come to the table we think this year is going to be more robust than most it doesn't happen every year but we're moving into that part of the year and generally speaking I think dips that are granted to us by factors that have nothing to do with this sector so if the s p sells off 10 in the next eight weeks that has nothing to do with uranium but it's going to gift you with a lower entry price so I would not go all in at this point but I might buy a tranche just to have a seat at the table and I would keep some cash um you can also hedge by shorting if you do end up going in in size but uh yeah hard to really say I don't really know what to expect in the short term I guess long answer short but uh the long term is pretty darn clear um we're basically just betting you know we're we're fully long in our in our uranium allocated portfolio and we expect higher prices and that's going to happen soon and we plan to be holding on for the most part obviously there'll be some trading in and out but we we expect to be mostly long or entirely long for a number of years and that depends on various factors Capital flows the buying a physical by Financial entities or not that will have an effect on the trajectory of this trade but yeah for the most part expect to be in this market for at least two or three years possibly more expect immense volatility enter entrances keep your eye on the physical Market as much as you can understand it uh read as much as you possibly can about the nuclear fuel cycle in the physical Market because that's going to tell you where the market is going generally speaking equities follow the physical of course there's exceptions of that huge swings like we're seeing now but um I think the miners offer an incredible value uh proposition right now because they've been hit with this consolidation over the past 18 months while the use case and the and the investing case for nuclear and uranium mining stocks has never been better the the commodity is holding up extremely well so compared to the metal the mining stocks actually are back to valuations uh similar to what they were before we even saw the first leg up compared to the metal itself yeah so big value proposition in in my personal opinion all right all right we're really well said and folks again if you want to continue to follow this space uh go to uranium Insider com and consider subscribing to Justin's excellent Services there if you've enjoyed this discussion would like to see Justin come back on and see us do other Live Events like this where we take user q a please let us know by supporting this channel by hitting the like button then clicking on the red subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it and again if you're investing in uh decide to invest in in nuclear stocks we always encourage people especially when investing in a new sector that you're you're unfamiliar with to do so when you can following the guidance of a good professional financial advisor want to understand you your needs your risk tolerance your life goals all that stuff can put together a personalized plan for you and then help you execute that plan if you've got a good one great stick with them if you don't consider talking to one of the ones that wealthian endorses to do that just go fill out the short form at wealthyon.com you'll see the URL right there on the screen Justin again I just want to thank you so much for coming on program looking forward to doing this again soon and looking forward to seeing you here again live at The Wealthy on conference on Saturday October 21st I can't wait I'm so I'm so happy you invited me uh doomberg is one of my favorite speakers and thinkers uh he's like a brother from another mother I love his perspectives he was our guest our members web and our guest in July so we had a fantastic conversation I'm really looking forward to this all right great all right Justin thanks so much again for joining us so early this morning everyone else thanks so much for watching

Channel: Wealthion

Views: 21,517

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Id: FSZEpzX6Zj0

Length: 84min 4sec (5044 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023