The uranium ore question is moot. Ore cost has a negligible impact on total kWh cost in the nuclear sector. It will always be competitive with fossil fuels. And there will be no shortage because:
I read in a professionnal paper last year that at the end of 2005, about 20% of uranium extracted worldwide was being bought by hedge funds just for above-ground storage, not by fuel enrichers. They'll dump it when it's worth 10 times what they bought it (i.e. a couple more years at present pace). Pierre
(I've been looking for a uranium-tracker myself, to no avail).
Such things can be build without actually holding much, if any, physical ore: by proper assembly of ore futures and of shares and derivatives of listed uranium prospection/mining/processing companies with a track record of correlation between ore spot / share spot.
I must confess I already hold such a thing for crude oil (and I'm a peak oil believer). And lately, I bet on a leveraged put on the french stock markets (so you can count me in the "hard landing" proponents). Of course, these two investments hedge each other to some extent. Pierre
Two new publicly traded uranium investment funds are adding to the competition. The funds are similar to gold and silver exchange-traded funds, raising money from investors in initial public offerings of shares to buy uranium.
New Uranium Participation Corp. Follows Gold ETF Footprints By David J. DesLauriers 30 May 2005 at 06:05 PM GMT-04:00 TORONTO (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Uranium is trading at 23-year highs and has been quite a hot topic in the last few months, with many well-known resource bulls and prognosticators calling for much higher prices before the end of this decade. Aside from all of the juniors rushing to stake and revive projects of dubious value, a group has come together to facilitate a direct bet on uranium for retail and institutional investors. This is similar to the various Gold ETFs in Australia, London, Toronto and New York that have taken billions of dollars of gold off of the market, with the most popular ETF, StreetTracks [NYSE:GLD] now holding more than $2 billion worth of gold bullion in trust. UPC Uranium Participation Corporation [TSX:U] recently raised C$100 million in an IPO at C$5. As of May 10 the company had made commitments to buy 1.85 million pounds, or 835 tons, of uranium at $27.87 a pound for a total of $52 million. UPC follows in the footsteps of Portland, Oregon-based fund Adit Capital Management, which started buying uranium in December, and reportedly had physical uranium valued at more than $26 million.
By David J. DesLauriers 30 May 2005 at 06:05 PM GMT-04:00
TORONTO (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Uranium is trading at 23-year highs and has been quite a hot topic in the last few months, with many well-known resource bulls and prognosticators calling for much higher prices before the end of this decade. Aside from all of the juniors rushing to stake and revive projects of dubious value, a group has come together to facilitate a direct bet on uranium for retail and institutional investors. This is similar to the various Gold ETFs in Australia, London, Toronto and New York that have taken billions of dollars of gold off of the market, with the most popular ETF, StreetTracks [NYSE:GLD] now holding more than $2 billion worth of gold bullion in trust.
UPC
Uranium Participation Corporation [TSX:U] recently raised C$100 million in an IPO at C$5. As of May 10 the company had made commitments to buy 1.85 million pounds, or 835 tons, of uranium at $27.87 a pound for a total of $52 million.
UPC follows in the footsteps of Portland, Oregon-based fund Adit Capital Management, which started buying uranium in December, and reportedly had physical uranium valued at more than $26 million.
I've been very wary of putting money in uranium firms: most new ones are just exploratory start ups, and only those few which really find the richest veins will keep growing. Established mines with a track record and predictable production/reserves are under control of big companies, sometime states (Areva, parent of Cogema, one of the world's biggest, is only a few % floated, through just ADR-like stuff, the rest is french state, and it's not even a commodity pure-player: they also build the reactors and provide lots of services). Pierre
Ore cost has a negligible impact on total kWh cost in the nuclear sector
Maybe 25 % of O&M costs, but capital dominates nuclear power. Fuel is 5 % of the cost and one third of that is ore, one third is enrichment and one third is fuel element manufacture. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
