That's a complex question. To start with we are in an industry that has been on it's knees for the past 10 years, uranium prices were and still are in the basement, reactors were being shut down and those disenchanted with nuclear power ran to renewables as if they were the saviour of the world. Very few investors wanted to commit cash to a new enrichment system in a declining industry when the incumbent system was doing the job albeit less efficiently. Our mates GE got into financial problems and virtually shut down any project it had that wasn't earning money or was seen to be a drag on their financial resources, GLE was up for sale. So Silex down scaled their operations to conserve our nest egg, but kept key personnel and continued to work on the laser. Years passed and we couldn't find a party to replace GE and Hitachi so MG played his cards and said we were pulling out of the US and started working from Lucas Heights. That left the US with a problem, they were potentially going to lose the desperately needed, valuable advanced technology, Laser Enrichment Technology. With 700,000 tonnes of depleted UF6 sitting in Kentucky with no easy disposal solution, no domestic enrichment services other than the slow and costly centrifuge system but on a very small scale, no enrichment of HALEU and LEU. So the Yanks came back to Silex and struck the "deal of the century" with Silex to acquire 51% of GLE and Cameco 49%.
We are now working through the next very exciting phase, we are still effected by market forces, but the wind is changing, instead of being in our face it is now at our backs. The world has been going through a hard time and hard times force people to make hard decisions. Nuclear is back as a reliable power source and we are in the very early stages of (in my opinion) a boom in energy prices and production.
MG refers to Paducah as a tier 1 mine and I agree with him, but that puts us in the category of all the other miners and therefore are subject to the whims of the market. In mining they have super cycles because of investment patterns. No one will spend 100s of millions if not billions on any mine unless they are absolutely certain the market will pay handsomely for the product. Copper is going through this stage now as is Uranium. The price of copper has almost doubled since last year yet a mine such as the Hillside project by Rex Minerals in SA is still looking for finance, fully permitted and ready to going the tigger price was $3/lb it is now $4.28/lb, fantastic. Uranium is set to correct, probably like copper, in the near future but when is anyone's guess.
Short answer is it's all about time and money.
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