Spot prices of U3O8, or yellowcake, have rebounded 39 percent from a nine-year low in June as U.S. plant owners and speculators stockpiled uranium in anticipation of stronger demand, according to TradeTech LLC and Ux Consulting Co. Kyushu Electric Power Co. received approvals to restart two Japanese reactors as early as 2015, the first since all 48 of the country’s nuclear plants shut after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
U.S. plants, which consume 28 percent of the world’s nuclear fuel, are struggling to stay profitable after a 70 percent drop since 2008 in natural gas, a competing fuel for power generation. Available supplies have tightened after a Russian treaty to process uranium from warheads expired last December and miners slowed or delayed expansion plans.
“Fuel costs are probably going to increase, there’s no question of that,” Treva Klingbiel, president of TradeTech, a uranium pricing and analysis company in Denver, said Nov. 24 by telephone. “Nuclear is still the most competitive form of electricity in the U.S., right behind natural gas.
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Entergy Corp. will permanently shut its Vermont Yankee reactor by the end of this year, more than 17 years before its operating license expires, because of mounting costs while low gas prices depress electricity rates. Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. nuclear operator, is retiring its Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey in 2019 and will decide early next year whether to shut another five in Illinois for economic reasons. Four U.S. reactors were shut permanently over the past two years, partly because of low electricity prices.
Read more at U.S. Nuclear Plants Squeezed by Cheap Gas, Uranium Costs
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