Legendary stock picker James Dines recently compared uranium stocks to the high-flying net stocks of the halcyon days of the Internet expansion era. While the much-hyped and fleeting Y2K crisis never materialized, the U.S. energy crisis for highly sought uranium has been developing for more than twenty years. Still early in the current bullish uranium cycle, investors are scoring triple-digit returns on what some are calling a renaissance in nuclear energy.
Just as investors caught the curve of a new paradigm in communications and commerce with Internet stocks, many early birds have already begun investing in the nuclear energy story. The nuclear story pitch is simple: How do you accommodate a massive rush for electrical power demand while faced with the dire threat of carbon dioxide emissions and its direct impact on global warming? The growing consensus is that fission-based nuclear power may become the significant stop-gap energy alternative for this century and possibly until reliable technologies can effectively provide the means for renewable-sourced energy.
Nearly 2 billion people across the planet have no electricity. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) believes nuclear energy could reduce the fossil fuel burden of generating the new demand for electricity. The WNA forecasts a 40-percent jump in worldwide electricity demand over the next five years. The worlds most populated countries, China and India, are in the process of creating the largest energy-consuming class in the history of earth. Both plan aggressive nuclear energy expansion programs. Dozens of lesser developed countries, from Turkey and Indonesia to Vietnam and Venezuela, have announced their eagerness to pursue a civilian nuclear policy to benefit power needs for their burgeoning middle classes.
In a nutshell, global utilities are going to need uranium to help feed the increasing number of nuclear power plants proposed over the next twenty years. Herein lays the crisis: the world has been living off rapidly dwindling inventories since the last uranium up cycle. Uranium is now in shorter available supply for civilian energy use than ever before. Over the next decade, as demand continues to outstrip supply, analysts are predicting utilities will snap up known uranium inventories sending spot uranium prices to record highs. During this launch phase, investors have taken notice, chasing up the stock prices of many uranium producers and exploration companies.
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