Fabi Lara, Founder and Publisher of The Next Big Rush, joins me to dig into the major demand drivers and supply disruption news that is underpinning a longer-term bull market for nuclear power and uranium mining. We then pivot over to a comprehensive review of the opportunities in producers, developers, and explorers in the US and Canada.
We’re back with another longer-format discussion where we initially get into the announcements from China this week about its goal to produce 10% of electricity from nuclear power by 2035 and 18% by 2060. It stated it could build 100 new nuclear reactors by 2035, and could keep the pace of approving at least 10 new nuclear reactors per year, over the next 10 years. It has also been highlighting its new fourth generation of reactor as something it could export to other nations that are also looking to expand nuclear power capacity.
Then Fabi outlined the news this week from Meta/Facebook that it has sent out a request for proposals to technology developers that it is seeking to bring multiple nuclear reactor units online that target one to four gigawatts of electricity, starting in the early 2030s to support data centers and communities around them. This has Meta joining a flurry of high-profile megacap tech companies that have announced going all-in on developing more nuclear energy to fuel their energy-intensive data centers. In a sector that already has seen surging demand from all the traditional reactor builds in the East and Middle East, the push for more SMRs in the West is pushing demand up even further.
We then shift the conversation over from the growing demand to the very pertinent question of where all the new supply will come from in the uranium mining sector. It’s a very nuanced conversation about a where the uranium production is coming from, where outside of Cameco (TSX: CCO; NYSE: CCJ) and Kazatomprom, the only uranium supply coming online is from the US producers and near-term producers like Energy Fuels (NYSE: UUUU) (TSX: EFR), enCore Energy (NASDAQ: EU) (TSX.V: EU), Ur-Energy Inc. (NYSE American:URG)(TSX:URE), Peninsula Energy Ltd (ASX:PEN, OTCQB:PENMF), and Uranium Energy Corp (NYSE American: UEC). This will not be enough supply to meet the production deficit globally, but it will underpin a premium for domestic producers.
Wrapping up we pivoted over to the large amount of money that has been raised and put into the ground over the last 2 years with uranium exploration companies, with not many results to show for it. Fabi outlines that some of the companies she follows that seem to be on to early-stage success in vectoring in on the right geological settings and radioactive mineralization are Stallion Uranium Corp. (TSX-V: STUD) (OTCQB: STLNF), and Forum Energy Metals Corp. (TSXV: FMC) (OTCQB: FDCFF). She also points to the high-grade discover that F3 Uranium (TSXV: FUU) (OTCQB: FUUFF) has made in the last couple years being the product of years of prior exploration programs, highlighting the longer time frames needed to delineate economic uranium deposits.
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