The available supply of uranium remains unchanged since the Fukushima disaster, and according to the World Nuclear Association demand remains strong.
If we look out over the next 8 to 10 years, which is the amount of time it takes a nuclear power plant to become fully operational, the market will remain 400 million pounds short of needed demand on an annual basis - forget about any increase in demand from new nuclear power plants.
The fundamentals of the current uranium market are clear - there is a significant gap between current supply and demand. Rising future demand will only amplify the shortfall.
The top 5 uranium producers, which make up almost 90% of the uranium supply market, only produced 110 million pounds of uranium in 2010. In other words, uranium producers need to produce nearly four times their current amount just to meet estimated new demand. The new supply will have to come from somewhere, or the price of the existing supply will need to increase dramatically to clear the market. In either event, shares of the uranium mining stocks would likely increase significantly from their current levels.
Furthermore - Ranger is out of commission, Rossing & Ranger are almost depleted and the Yanks and the Russians don't want to pull apart any more missiles (because of the arms race with China).
The bottom line is that even in the wake of the Japanese catastrophe uranium's supply crunch lives on.
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