Wiliam - I can understand that as you lost money on SLX you may well be a bit tainted by the false optimism of the period around 2006 - I too got in at about that time but (fortunately for me) sold out in 2007 (at a profit) and only got back in in 2017. I have talked to others in the business and there certainly was "hype" in the 2006 period - I guess GEH/Cameco also bought into that same "hype" and they should have been well informed of the project status. Unfortunately immature "hype" is a common affliction with new technology - one of the "rule of thumbs" we used when I was employed (now retired for over 20 years) was that the cost of "commercializing" a product was about x10 that of a lab test bed model.
Nuclear development appears to be worse than the "rule of thumb" since you also have the NRC to deal with (and anti sentiment) and the underlying market was also thought to be "dead" after Fukushima (2011). Jeff Baran was chairman of the NRC in 2014 to 2023 - he was bizarrely "anti-nuclear" (see HERE) and has been a hammer blow to the industry; the "withstand an aircraft" crash rule deriving from 9/11 was another blow. Recently the ADVANCE act has been passed so hopefully the sun will start to emerge but NRC fees is US$323/hr (paid by the applicant) and typically take about 3 years- we applied for the PLEF in December with a further submission planned for June (it's expensive and a major barrier to entry). Hopefully the successful application made by GEH in 2013 will ease the process and be a future saving from the money spent at that time.
Hopefully things will improve for "grumpy old men" - my wife says I am also one (but not over SLX which I luckily escaped)
SLX Price at posting:
$4.56 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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