Enlarge image
Broadcast:
The federally owned company Wismut ended German uranium mining in Königstein, Saxony, at the beginning of June
Photo: Sebastian Kahnert / dpa
"It's rising meteoric", "This fund is moving the market and changing everything", "A lot of upside, baby." In the "Wallstreetbets" forum on the Reddit platform, the run on the stock market is played in the usual convincing tone. The combined power of small investors, which has driven the prices of several stock corporations high since the beginning of the year, is now directed towards a new goal: uranium. One of the most discussed entries promises a "super cycle" for radioactive fuel, which is the only option for a climate-neutral future. A dedicated Reddit channel called UraniumSqueeze is dedicated only to this topic. The share of the largest uranium prospector Cameco from Canada was for days the most discussed on the platform behind Apple and Alibaba.
And the rally begins: Between mid-August and mid-September, the price of uranium futures shot up from less than 30 dollars to more than 50 dollars per pound, as high as it was last in 2012. Shares in uranium companies made even bigger leaps, and little besides Cameco well-known names such as Uranium Royalty, Denison Mines, NexGen Energy, Uranium Energy, Ur-Energy, Aura Energy, Peninsula Energy, Bannerman Energy or Energy Resources of Australia.
The premise of the uranium bet is that the world absolutely needs more nuclear power in order to combine climate protection and energy security.
Therefore, a shortage of the scarce raw material uranium is foreseeable.
At the center of the hype is a multi-billion dollar fund that is actively promoting this shortage: the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, which was launched in Canada at the end of July and has already bought more than 28 million pounds of uranium and wants to hoard the substance as an investment.
The amount is almost a quarter of the world's annual mining output, with most nuclear power plants getting most of their needs from fuel rod recycling.
Bill Gates and his mini reactors
The uranium fans in the stock exchange forums rely on other authorities: above all Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has been preaching for years, "we need more nuclear power to bring CO2 emissions to zero and avert a climate catastrophe". His company Terrapower, founded in 2006, announced in June that it had chosen the US coal state Wyoming as the location for a "mini-reactor" that will cost one billion dollars and will provide a nominal output of 345 to 500 megawatts from the 1930s. Stock exchange legend Warren Buffett is also involved. The electricity supplier Pacificorp, which belongs to its holding company Berkshire Hathaway, wants to operate the new type of system.
Oklo, which is backed by prominent investors from Silicon Valley such as Peter Thiel, Dustin Moskovitz and Tim Draper, received its first license to build a test reactor of the Aurora model in Idaho as early as 2020. The attribute "mini" fits better here: With only 1.5 megawatts, the project would be the weakest nuclear reactor ever built, and the design is reminiscent of a forest hut.
The concepts of Terrapower and Oklo as well as several other companies in different stages of development are small modular reactors belonging to the next generation of nuclear technology. But even these lean and flexible systems are not automatically suitable for game changers. The "Union of Concerned Scientists" explains that the security risks are even higher than with conventional reactors, especially with a view to the spread of potentially nuclear weapons-grade material. A new study by the Öko-Institut Freiburg on behalf of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management also calls the business model into question. The construction costs are "relatively higher than for large nuclear power plants". From the analysis of several different technical concepts it follows that "that an average of three thousand small modular reactors would have to be produced before it would be worthwhile to get started ".
The third generation is already threatening to fail
The current, third generation of nuclear power plants, which promise greater protection in the event of a core melt, is already threatening to fail because of the construction costs. The first example of the European pressurized water reactor is said to be the Finnish reactor Olkiluoto 3. The inauguration of the building, originally planned for 2009, has been postponed again and again, most recently in August to June 2022. Since 2012, the operator TVO has not published any new information on the costs, which at that time had already risen from 3.2 billion to 8.5 billion euros. In June, TVO agreed with the manufacturer consortium on an additional payment of 600 million euros as well as additional damages should the new date not be kept. Siemens is still involved in this, although the company has long wanted to get out of nuclear technology.
Construction of the same model began in 2007 in Flamanville, France, and commissioning has been postponed from 2012 to 2024. But this deadline cannot be kept either. The Court of Auditors estimates the costs at more than 19 billion euros.
The British Hinkley Point C project has even cost around 26 billion euros, but there are at least two reactors there. The delay there has so far been moderate: In May, the opening date was postponed by one year to June 2026. The financial risk lies primarily with the French operator EDF, which has promised the British state a "strike price" of 92 pounds per megawatt hour, possibly with inflation compensation. But the British are not necessarily making a good deal either: with new offshore wind farms, they can get electricity for less than half the price.
There are hardly any plant manufacturers in the West who would be able to technically equip a nuclear revival.
Siemens has withdrawn, the French ex-partner Areva was split up by the state into the uranium company Orano and the plant construction company Framatome, which is now part of EDF.
The manufacturer Westinghouse, which got caught in the construction of the new reactor types in the USA, went bankrupt in 2017 and then fell into the hands of the financial investor Brookfield Business Partners, who are now considering reselling.
The former parent company Toshiba from Japan also came to the brink of bankruptcy due to the nuclear debacle and is currently in a dispute with investors about to be broken up.
German nuclear companies no longer want
Not even a continued operation of the existing nuclear power plants, which avoids such risks, can be implemented that easily. In Germany, where the last remaining reactors have to be shut down by the end of next year, the operators RWE, Preussenelektra (Eon) and EnBW are not showing the slightest tendency to change anything. To do this, they would have to untie a package that would benefit them: They received billions in damages for the nuclear phase-out and a refund of the fuel element tax before the Federal Constitutional Court. On the other hand, they had to pay 24 billion euros into the Kenfo contaminated site fund, but they are also exposed to uncontrollable risks, especially with regard to the still unsolved disposal of radioactive waste.The federally owned company Wismut stopped German uranium mining in Königstein, Saxony, at the beginning of June after 75 years - just in time for the start of the new uranium rally.
Energy economist Claudia Kemfert from the German Institute for Economic Research calls a revival of the nuclear industry "economically simply unprofitable". "It is not the market, but mainly nuclear powers, such as China and Russia, that are sticking to nuclear developments for political and military-strategic reasons."
There, especially in China, new nuclear power plants are actually being built again and again, thanks to the well-rehearsed processes, also those of the third generation with comparatively no problems - enough that in 2018, according to the World Nuclear Association, a record level of 457 active reactors with a total of 402 gigawatts of capacity was achieved worldwide . Since then, more reactors have been taken off the grid than have been added. But even if the 37 planned and 168 proposed new Chinese nuclear power plants were actually implemented, the World Nuclear Association's calculation of a global demand of 62,496 tons of uranium would be far from certain. A first test reactor is due to go into operation in Gansu Province in September, which will produce uranium from thorium and thus make the import of the rare metal superfluous.
The uranium fans from the stock exchange have an answer ready for this case too.
"The uranium market is tiny, super tiny" - small enough that the organized "Wall Streetbets" gamblers could drive the price up at will.
Then there is no longer any need for fundamental reasons to believe in the uranium rally.
ak
