This was my point. It seems to me that U3O8 supplies may well...

This was my point. It seems to me that U3O8 supplies may well become available but unless the customer has a conversion/enrichment slot it will not be attractive to buy yet more U3O8 if the customer cannot turn it into fuel which requires their to be a pre-booked (and secured) conversion/enrichment slot. As such I can see a rush to secure U3O8 to fulfill booked slots which could well come to screeching halt once these slots are filled. To me the conundrum is how much this is a "zero sum game" since conversion/enrichment capacity does exist in Russia and therefore if those consumers can resell their western focused conversion/enrichment to those in the west at a profit and subsequently backfill with Russian supply to meet their own requirements. What facilitates this type of conduct is that all utilities maintain about 2 years stockpile of LEU; which allows those (such as carry traders) who don't care about sanctions to make a quick profit on the side from dealing with both sides (a bit like arms traders).

To me this situation stresses the need (at least in the short medium term) to invest in:

- existing U3O8 miners (e.g Kazatomprom, Cameco etc)
- short term re-starts (BOE, PLN etc)
- Converters (not many I know of but Cameco is one but also GLE due to the PLEF being a UF6 mine)
- enrichers (GLE/Centrus)
- Fabricators (Lightbridge, Cameco (through Westinghouse) and Clean core Thorium energy)

I feel there could be a "crunch" coming for uranium explorers/developers who still need "permissions"and will not be in production until ~2028 when the likes of Nextgen (and Kazatomprom) will be on in production with their arrow project (i.e 28mlbs/yr)

Also I really don't think the market understands that GLE will be able to produce significantly more nuclear fuel (10% - 20%) from the same amount of NUF6 feedstock (at 0.71% 235U)