Uranium and Specialty Metals: A Few of My Favorite Things, Part II

Uranium ? One of the best investments you can make right now is to pick up relatively secure, low-cost uranium ? the feedstock for nuclear reactors. The demand for uranium is building in intensity like a heap of hot coals. There are already 436 reactors up and running today. And there is a surge in demand coming in the next decade from the hundred or so new reactors expected to come online. Yet the industry is about 400 million pounds short of meeting that demand, as shown in the chart below. The market has been in deficit for years, as it burns off Cold War stockpiles, which are finite and dwindling. Another way to look at it: Uranium demand is on its way to hitting 226 million pounds per year. Yet last year, the top dogs ? which make up 90% of the market ? produced only about 110 million pounds of uranium. So essentially, the industry needs to produce almost four times that to meet the estimated new demand through 2018. On an annual basis, the industry will need to about dou...