How the Uranium Market Really Works & Why It’s Still Bullish | Per Jander
Summary
Uranium Outlook: The guest emphasizes a persistent supply deficit and rising term prices, noting uranium’s resilience and limited downside despite broader risk-off events.
Market Dynamics: Uranium’s fuel-cycle inertia (conversion, enrichment, fabrication) stretches over years, delaying immediate price responses and contracting, but supporting a steady upward trajectory.
France Life Extensions: France’s decision to extend reactor lifespans across a standardized EDF fleet is a major demand driver, implying roughly 250 million pounds of uranium over the next decade.
Japan Restarts: Post-Fukushima, Japan is accelerating restarts with at least 20 reactors likely to return and construction completions advancing, signaling renewed nuclear commitment.
China Expansion: China is building reactors rapidly (targeting sub-5-year builds), poised to surpass the U.S. by 2030, enabled by repeatable designs and scale.
Technology & Projects: Westinghouse’s AP1000 gigawatt-class design features in new-build plans (e.g., Poland, U.S. support), while the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust activity reflects robust investor interest.
Risks & Timing: Utilities can defer contracting while drawing inventories, but eventual replenishment needs and regulatory approvals underpin sustained demand growth.
Transcript
The supply and demand story is very obvious. That is as I clear there is a shortage of supply and prices will go up in order to get more more minds online. Uh but it it is not necessarily immediate. Greetings and welcome to our Wealthion show. My name's Trey Reich. And we're here today with Mr. Uranium himself, Per Jander. Uh who is director of nuclear fuel and investor services at WMC, a physical commodity merchant based in the Netherlands. Uh Per is joining us today from Monaco. Per, thanks for being here. Uh hey Trey, great to be on. Uh good to see you again. So, as we were just discussing, uh there's a fairly large confab coming your direction there in Monaco. Can you tell us about the conference that's about to unfold? Uh yeah, sure. It's uh yeah, it's uh as I mentioned before we uh before we got on the show here, it's uh it's the first time I actually don't have to travel to go to one of the big conferences. We kind of have four large international conferences every year in our industry and it sort of rotates around the world. There's a big one in September every year in London, but that's the only one that stays in one place and all the other ones tend to rotate. And uh yeah, I just moved here about a year ago and for the first time anywhere I've lived, I actually have a conference in my my hometown and it's uh it's almost ironic that it's the tiniest place place that I've ever lived in in Monaco, but uh it'll be great to welcome all my uh all my industry colleagues here that are starting to roll in in the next couple of days and they'll be here for all of next week. So, it's always great to catch up. It's uh it's the big uh it's the first big conference of the year, so it'll be great to uh to sort of see everybody after after the winter. It's almost like they're like bears, they're waking up, coming out of hibernation. It's just that it's been a bit of a rough awakening this year with everything going on in the Middle East, but I'm I'm sure we're going to touch on that in uh in the next little bit here, though. Mhm. So, that's a that's a great segue for the first topic I wanted to raise, which is obviously 2025 was the year of gold and silver. Um they sort of occupied the headlines and everybody's attention and obviously oil has stolen the headlines away in in the past 6 weeks. But as you look uh forward and as your conference gathers and and all the powers that be look forward to 2026, uh what do you expect? Is uranium destined for the headlines this year or do you anticipate more of a steady as she goes environment? It's uh it changes weekly almost cuz cuz we had uh uh obviously I work with the with the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust quite a lot and and we had quite the start of the year. It was very very busy in in January and rolling into February and then it got a little bit of a reprieve and things quieted down for a bit, but then obviously uh everything started going on over in the in the Middle East. So, uh so then it hasn't been very calm. I mean, uranium itself has actually been fairly stable in all of this. Uh there was a little bit of an initial sell-off when, you know, investors in general just had a risk-off environment, but uh but after that now since then, the physical uranium has has been very stable and if anything, it's it's looks more like it's a strengthening market right now with term price being higher than it's been in a very very long time. So, overall, it feels like it's all things considered what's going to be going on for the last couple of weeks or month or so, considering how stable uranium has been, I think I think it's uh it's certainly been testing it and it held up really well. So, it's uh from from that perspective, I feel pretty confident going forward that it doesn't seem like there's a lot of downside to where we sit today, anyway. So, at at its heart, uh and I'm not a uranium specialist, but I always enjoy our our meetings because it gives me the opportunity to read up and learn a little bit each cycle. But basically, uranium is is perhaps the purest supply-demand story I've ever seen in in commodities. So, I'm I'm I was trying to figure out a way where to start, where to go. And so I thought, can we look back on last year and just give us the highlights of the supply-demand uh forces and how you expect those to evolve this year? Yeah, it's uh and then the funny thing is that it's obviously like everything is a supply-demand story. Like if you're in commodities or Right. all about supply and demand. As long as there's a price involved, it's going to be a supply-demand story. The interesting thing with uranium in my view is anyway that it's uh it is not immediate. So, that's why a lot of people get frustrated who work in different commodities and they start looking at uranium and they come to exactly the same conclusion you're doing. Like I've never seen anything as obvious as this. Clearly the the price can only go up. And and in my view, in the like I you're absolutely right. It is just that the uh the inertia in uranium is uh is unlike a lot of like any other market almost because if you look at only uranium itself, there's obviously a fuel chain involved in for a nuclear power station. We like they just don't take you take your raw uranium and put it in the reactor. You need to you need to convert it, you need to enrich it, you need to put it in a fuel bundle. And this is like uh this is a three, four-year process almost. So, so because of that, there there is inertia in the system that it's uh you don't need uranium the what the uranium you buy today, you're not you don't need tomorrow. You need that a few years out from now. So, so even though the the supply and demand story is very obvious. That is as I clear there is a shortage of supply and prices will go up in order to get more more minds online. Uh but it it is not necessarily immediate. Uh utility itself can can hold off. They're they're not up against the wall and they can they can afford to wait a few months, uh 6 months, maybe even a year sometimes. And arguably, a lot of them have been waiting because this supply deficit is not, you know, not news to anyone. So, it's just that but you look at the contracting levels, there hasn't been replacement rate contracting, meaning that utilities on a global scale, they use more uranium than they're replenishing. So, working down inventories. And there's only a there is there's obviously limits on how long you can do that. So, at some point, there will need to be replacing not just of the inventories that are depleted, but also to sort of replenish all of your contracts for deliveries going forward. And we haven't really seen that yet. And despite all that, we're still at a price level where the highest ones were about 15 years when it comes to the term price. Spot price bounces around a little bit. Obviously, it's it's uh influenced by other factors as well. But if you look on the term price itself, it it has gone essentially nowhere but up in the last 6, 7 years. So, it's uh it feels like it's ready for for like I'm not necessarily saying it's taking off and going to the moon, but if you look at the price trajectory anyway and if you and if you and like remove the noise around the spot price, it sort of follows around you have a pretty steady increase of the of the term price and the the spot price kind of hovers around that. So, I to me, it's a it's a sign of a healthy market. For someone who's who tends to be a commodity investor and don't focus only on uranium, it feels like why is it acting like molasses? This is obviously it's it's so obvious what's going to happen. It needs to happen now, but you have that inertia in the system that kind of makes it slower. But think of it as a large sort of a oil tanker or a large ship that it's like it takes time for it to turn, but once it start turning, it it would keep turning. So, it's uh so it's just everything is happening in slow motion. But it's uh the the fundamentals are there and I completely agree with your assessment. So, in uh with respect to 26 versus 25, um let's let's take it from the demand side. So, as I read, there seem to be uh several things that are happening simultaneously, which can only increase demand and as an example, there was a French decision, I believe a few weeks ago to extend the life of 52 reactors by 10 years or 20 years. I read different accounts of it. So, give give us, you know, a precis of what's happening there and what it will do to increase demand over the next 10 years. Uh yeah, I think it I mean, the French right if they're in there, I don't know, they have 55 reactors. So, it's on a country to country basis, they're the ones with the biggest portion of nuclear energy. So, you look at the amount of reactors in the US is is is larger because it's just a larger country, but France itself, they have about 70% of the all their electricity coming from nuclear. So, it's it's it's the country that has a almost uh the purest nuclear fleet, if you will. And I and and they I think they've done it exactly right. They have a lot of reactors that were they were built out in the '70s more or less as a response to the uh to the uh oil crisis in the early '70s. And they they copied and pasted a lot of few They have a very few reactor designs and they just have a lot of them, which means that you have a fleet where you can you can replace uh like interchange for maintenance perfectly. You can take spare parts from one and give to another and loan it from that perspective. So, from an EDF's, the operators in France, from their perspective, they have a they have a very good setup to maintain their fleet. And they can also move uh they can they they sort of take fuel bundles that were slated for one reactor and put it in the other one as well. And if you look at other countries where you're all like all unique designs, you can't do that. So, from that perspective, the French are are are in a very good spot. And I think when you when they built the reactors in in the '70s and '80s, I think at the outset they just like yeah, it's a 40-year lifetime. But but then obviously there's something ongoing and and if I don't know if you've been to a nuclear power station, I used to work at a couple and and you I mean you can eat off the ground. These things are so clean, they're so well maintained that when you know, we're coming to the end of the original life, 40 years, and these things are like new. So, so then you can then you can just extend it obviously some places some parts need to be replaced, but there is a maintenance program and a plan in place for we can extend the life of these things. So, that tends to happen in chunky pieces cuz it could be an operating license or in discussions with the regulator. But I don't if you're um the French society as a whole had obviously been planning for this for a while now. It's like you can't take it lightly, you need to fulfill all the safety requirements and do all the reporting and all the checks and all those things. But I think as an industry, I don't think anyone is a surprise to hear that French are extending the life of the reactors. So, so some of them have been shut down, but the majority of them will have life extensions. And even in the US, it was the same there, 40 years, now some of them are looking at 60 and even 80 years and who knows if you even have to stop there. So, it's because the maintenance techniques have gone a lot wrong. Been sort of improved quite a bit, the technologies are better and and and also the measuring techniques in where you had a couple of orders of magnitude of of sort of error margin because your your simply your measurement systems weren't that great 50 something years ago, now you can do something on a completely different scale, which means that you can remove some of that uncertainty and you realize that you're well within the boundaries of your safety margin still. So, there's a lot of these things happening, but the but clearly it's it's a very big fleet and the fact that they're now officially okay to extend the life for at least a decade or possibly more, that it you're absolutely right. It's a it's a great demand story and it's something that at least in some models where they only take only going to model what's approved. So, like from the regulator what's approved, well, all of a sudden here you have 20, 30 reactors that this extended with 10 years. That's pretty significant. Um I don't know exactly which models that have that included in them and which one doesn't. But but it it's it's certainly is a vote of confidence from France as a whole and I'd say the nuclear industry in general that these life extensions they they they are happening and they will continue to happen. So, I read a number I'll just bounce off you, which is 250 million pounds over 10 years. Is that in the frame of reference that you would associate this No, no, it sounds it sounds about right. I think the French use about 25, 26, 27 million pounds a year and 10 years, that's yep, you're sounds about right. >> go. Um you mentioned eating off the floor. I do have to offer a footnote that the gold industry with which I'm much more familiar has this terrible reputation for being environmentally damaging, but uh you know, gold miners have been 20 years ahead of ESG and just as you said, um they're some of the most environmentally uh responsible operations in any industry in the world. So, it's just ironic that nuclear and gold mining have a reputation uh for being one thing, but in fact are pretty much the opposite in terms of their impacts on the environment. Yeah, as you probably gave me that too, that will not be allowed to eat off the floor in a nuclear reactor at all. I'll be sent out right away even before I try, but technically it is clean enough, so you could do it, but it's definitely not allowed. So, I before I get some colleagues at over at power stations calling me after this thing and saying that I'm an idiot. So, and and as another example of the demand side, I read a lot about the acceleration of restarts in Japan. So, not that we're going to go through every country in the world, but I think these are two interesting countries. Can you talk a little bit about Fukushima, what happened and what's happening now? Yes, of course. I mean overnight after Fukushima and again, everybody thinks you know, it's like the the the major the absolute tragedy about Fukushima was an earthquake. There was 20,000 people that died in a tsunami. Now, most people when you say Fukushima and you don't they don't even think about the tsunami, they think of the that couple of nuclear power stations that that obviously got permanently damaged and there was a partial meltdown on it, but in that no one died from that nuclear incident itself. But that that's water under the bridge now, we can move on from it. But what did the the impact of that was obviously that the all the Japanese reactors were shut down overnight. So, that's I think it was about 30 reactors or so. So, that's a pretty big significant impact on on the demand side, of course. And then you had, you know, countries like Germany who tends to not have any at least not be in the risk zone of tsunamis in in Bavaria in southern Germany, but they followed suit and also shut down their nuclear program eventually. But you look at the Japanese themselves that they they they don't have a lot of natural resources, they have to import all their oil, all their gas. So, for them it was obviously a a huge blow to shut down all their nuclear power stations overnight. And and it's taken quite some time to like some of them are never going to restart obviously, but a lot of them will. And it's like say there's at least 20 of them that will and and likely even more. And now they like started the construction of some of them went to finish the construction that were started a while ago. So, the Japanese program is clearly recovering and that is if nothing else a vote of confidence that they did like Japan who was impacted very very much by Fukushima obviously, they are coming around and they're and they're actually picking up speed in in getting the reactors back online as well. So, clearly vote of confidence. Their neighboring country Korea has also on a trajectory to phase out all their nuclear program and they come around there. And now they're one of the biggest exporters of nuclear reactor technology as well. They have an extremely successful program in the UAE close to Abu Dhabi. So, it's yeah, it's very much a success story in that part of the world as well. And I read 10 reactors a year about on average in China um and then Europe and US just give me some highlights on what you expect from those three. I mean there's announcements uh >> [laughter] >> there's there's announcements every week almost it feels like now. But yeah, but the the Chinese are obviously the the fastest growing country when it comes to it. They've already a bigger program that their program is bigger than France and it's it's on trajectory to be bigger than the United States say 2030. So, by then they'll be the largest operator in the world. And yeah, not they they've been they're they've become so good at building the reactors too that now it's essentially how it is exactly what the French did in the '70s. They have one or two or three designs and they just build a lot of it and they keep repeating it. And when you do it enough times, you become very good at it. So, for them it takes them less than 5 years to build a reactor now. And that's where the West needs to be. We're obviously very very far from it, but I also think it's quite misleading when someone just rolls their eyes and say we can't have more nuclear because it takes 15 years to build a reactor and it's like yes, they were they took 15 years to build a reactor in Finland or in France or or the the Vogal ones in the US quite some time as well. But it's the first one. It's like you you can't really judge if you're if you're for a for a biotech company to uh to come up with a new new prescription medicine. It's like you can't judge it from the first pill that comes out. It's like you're going to look after for a while and all the research efforts and everything else that goes into it. That's going to be spread out once you start mass producing this thing. And sure, you don't mass produce reactors, but it the gist is the same. You need to start doing a lot of the same and I'm I'm quite excited to see how many AP1000s are going to be built now. Like if there there is you look at the two they built at Vogal between the first and the second, What's an AP1000? But tell us what that is. What's an AP1000? Oh, sorry, yeah. That's it's a reactor from Westinghouse. So, it's a US technology reactor. Is it smaller? Uh no, it's a 1000 megawatts. So, it's it's regarded as a as a big gigawatt class reactor. So, it's more or less as big as they come. Say, the biggest the EPR, the French one, is about 1600 megawatts, but between 1000 and 1600, that's still regarded as a as a big regular reactor if you will. So, And this is a new design that was just developed? Uh I mean it was developed uh I don't know if they start they started building I don't know even know when they started building. It was a long time ago. So, it's been in the making, it's been building off of previous designs, but it's obviously a very big improvements on them and and it's it's it's an ongoing process where they do it. But I think it was designed mostly in the '90s, maybe early 2000s. Um but it's again, it's been taking some time to build it. But clearly some improvements based on lessons learned and operating experience from existing reactors. But it's it's one of the big sort of western technology reactors anyway. And yeah, it's like there there seems to be quite a lot of new announcements being like you know, the Polish nuclear program is going to build some of those and and it was the the Trump administration mentioned that they're they're going to have financial support for I don't know if it's up to eight or 10 reactors as well. So it's it there is a lot of good things happening and these announcements are are happening for each week or so. So it's we're going to see how big the build out is going to happen. Now it's easy to talk but but there are it's more than just talk now. You're actually seeing you know announcements being made and sort of coalitions of companies that are ramping up to be able to meet this demand. So it's it's very much an exciting time. >> [music]
How the Uranium Market Really Works & Why It’s Still Bullish | Per Jander
Summary
Transcript
The supply and demand story is very obvious. That is as I clear there is a shortage of supply and prices will go up in order to get more more minds online. Uh but it it is not necessarily immediate. Greetings and welcome to our Wealthion show. My name's Trey Reich. And we're here today with Mr. Uranium himself, Per Jander. Uh who is director of nuclear fuel and investor services at WMC, a physical commodity merchant based in the Netherlands. Uh Per is joining us today from Monaco. Per, thanks for being here. Uh hey Trey, great to be on. Uh good to see you again. So, as we were just discussing, uh there's a fairly large confab coming your direction there in Monaco. Can you tell us about the conference that's about to unfold? Uh yeah, sure. It's uh yeah, it's uh as I mentioned before we uh before we got on the show here, it's uh it's the first time I actually don't have to travel to go to one of the big conferences. We kind of have four large international conferences every year in our industry and it sort of rotates around the world. There's a big one in September every year in London, but that's the only one that stays in one place and all the other ones tend to rotate. And uh yeah, I just moved here about a year ago and for the first time anywhere I've lived, I actually have a conference in my my hometown and it's uh it's almost ironic that it's the tiniest place place that I've ever lived in in Monaco, but uh it'll be great to welcome all my uh all my industry colleagues here that are starting to roll in in the next couple of days and they'll be here for all of next week. So, it's always great to catch up. It's uh it's the big uh it's the first big conference of the year, so it'll be great to uh to sort of see everybody after after the winter. It's almost like they're like bears, they're waking up, coming out of hibernation. It's just that it's been a bit of a rough awakening this year with everything going on in the Middle East, but I'm I'm sure we're going to touch on that in uh in the next little bit here, though. Mhm. So, that's a that's a great segue for the first topic I wanted to raise, which is obviously 2025 was the year of gold and silver. Um they sort of occupied the headlines and everybody's attention and obviously oil has stolen the headlines away in in the past 6 weeks. But as you look uh forward and as your conference gathers and and all the powers that be look forward to 2026, uh what do you expect? Is uranium destined for the headlines this year or do you anticipate more of a steady as she goes environment? It's uh it changes weekly almost cuz cuz we had uh uh obviously I work with the with the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust quite a lot and and we had quite the start of the year. It was very very busy in in January and rolling into February and then it got a little bit of a reprieve and things quieted down for a bit, but then obviously uh everything started going on over in the in the Middle East. So, uh so then it hasn't been very calm. I mean, uranium itself has actually been fairly stable in all of this. Uh there was a little bit of an initial sell-off when, you know, investors in general just had a risk-off environment, but uh but after that now since then, the physical uranium has has been very stable and if anything, it's it's looks more like it's a strengthening market right now with term price being higher than it's been in a very very long time. So, overall, it feels like it's all things considered what's going to be going on for the last couple of weeks or month or so, considering how stable uranium has been, I think I think it's uh it's certainly been testing it and it held up really well. So, it's uh from from that perspective, I feel pretty confident going forward that it doesn't seem like there's a lot of downside to where we sit today, anyway. So, at at its heart, uh and I'm not a uranium specialist, but I always enjoy our our meetings because it gives me the opportunity to read up and learn a little bit each cycle. But basically, uranium is is perhaps the purest supply-demand story I've ever seen in in commodities. So, I'm I'm I was trying to figure out a way where to start, where to go. And so I thought, can we look back on last year and just give us the highlights of the supply-demand uh forces and how you expect those to evolve this year? Yeah, it's uh and then the funny thing is that it's obviously like everything is a supply-demand story. Like if you're in commodities or Right. all about supply and demand. As long as there's a price involved, it's going to be a supply-demand story. The interesting thing with uranium in my view is anyway that it's uh it is not immediate. So, that's why a lot of people get frustrated who work in different commodities and they start looking at uranium and they come to exactly the same conclusion you're doing. Like I've never seen anything as obvious as this. Clearly the the price can only go up. And and in my view, in the like I you're absolutely right. It is just that the uh the inertia in uranium is uh is unlike a lot of like any other market almost because if you look at only uranium itself, there's obviously a fuel chain involved in for a nuclear power station. We like they just don't take you take your raw uranium and put it in the reactor. You need to you need to convert it, you need to enrich it, you need to put it in a fuel bundle. And this is like uh this is a three, four-year process almost. So, so because of that, there there is inertia in the system that it's uh you don't need uranium the what the uranium you buy today, you're not you don't need tomorrow. You need that a few years out from now. So, so even though the the supply and demand story is very obvious. That is as I clear there is a shortage of supply and prices will go up in order to get more more minds online. Uh but it it is not necessarily immediate. Uh utility itself can can hold off. They're they're not up against the wall and they can they can afford to wait a few months, uh 6 months, maybe even a year sometimes. And arguably, a lot of them have been waiting because this supply deficit is not, you know, not news to anyone. So, it's just that but you look at the contracting levels, there hasn't been replacement rate contracting, meaning that utilities on a global scale, they use more uranium than they're replenishing. So, working down inventories. And there's only a there is there's obviously limits on how long you can do that. So, at some point, there will need to be replacing not just of the inventories that are depleted, but also to sort of replenish all of your contracts for deliveries going forward. And we haven't really seen that yet. And despite all that, we're still at a price level where the highest ones were about 15 years when it comes to the term price. Spot price bounces around a little bit. Obviously, it's it's uh influenced by other factors as well. But if you look on the term price itself, it it has gone essentially nowhere but up in the last 6, 7 years. So, it's uh it feels like it's ready for for like I'm not necessarily saying it's taking off and going to the moon, but if you look at the price trajectory anyway and if you and if you and like remove the noise around the spot price, it sort of follows around you have a pretty steady increase of the of the term price and the the spot price kind of hovers around that. So, I to me, it's a it's a sign of a healthy market. For someone who's who tends to be a commodity investor and don't focus only on uranium, it feels like why is it acting like molasses? This is obviously it's it's so obvious what's going to happen. It needs to happen now, but you have that inertia in the system that kind of makes it slower. But think of it as a large sort of a oil tanker or a large ship that it's like it takes time for it to turn, but once it start turning, it it would keep turning. So, it's uh so it's just everything is happening in slow motion. But it's uh the the fundamentals are there and I completely agree with your assessment. So, in uh with respect to 26 versus 25, um let's let's take it from the demand side. So, as I read, there seem to be uh several things that are happening simultaneously, which can only increase demand and as an example, there was a French decision, I believe a few weeks ago to extend the life of 52 reactors by 10 years or 20 years. I read different accounts of it. So, give give us, you know, a precis of what's happening there and what it will do to increase demand over the next 10 years. Uh yeah, I think it I mean, the French right if they're in there, I don't know, they have 55 reactors. So, it's on a country to country basis, they're the ones with the biggest portion of nuclear energy. So, you look at the amount of reactors in the US is is is larger because it's just a larger country, but France itself, they have about 70% of the all their electricity coming from nuclear. So, it's it's it's the country that has a almost uh the purest nuclear fleet, if you will. And I and and they I think they've done it exactly right. They have a lot of reactors that were they were built out in the '70s more or less as a response to the uh to the uh oil crisis in the early '70s. And they they copied and pasted a lot of few They have a very few reactor designs and they just have a lot of them, which means that you have a fleet where you can you can replace uh like interchange for maintenance perfectly. You can take spare parts from one and give to another and loan it from that perspective. So, from an EDF's, the operators in France, from their perspective, they have a they have a very good setup to maintain their fleet. And they can also move uh they can they they sort of take fuel bundles that were slated for one reactor and put it in the other one as well. And if you look at other countries where you're all like all unique designs, you can't do that. So, from that perspective, the French are are are in a very good spot. And I think when you when they built the reactors in in the '70s and '80s, I think at the outset they just like yeah, it's a 40-year lifetime. But but then obviously there's something ongoing and and if I don't know if you've been to a nuclear power station, I used to work at a couple and and you I mean you can eat off the ground. These things are so clean, they're so well maintained that when you know, we're coming to the end of the original life, 40 years, and these things are like new. So, so then you can then you can just extend it obviously some places some parts need to be replaced, but there is a maintenance program and a plan in place for we can extend the life of these things. So, that tends to happen in chunky pieces cuz it could be an operating license or in discussions with the regulator. But I don't if you're um the French society as a whole had obviously been planning for this for a while now. It's like you can't take it lightly, you need to fulfill all the safety requirements and do all the reporting and all the checks and all those things. But I think as an industry, I don't think anyone is a surprise to hear that French are extending the life of the reactors. So, so some of them have been shut down, but the majority of them will have life extensions. And even in the US, it was the same there, 40 years, now some of them are looking at 60 and even 80 years and who knows if you even have to stop there. So, it's because the maintenance techniques have gone a lot wrong. Been sort of improved quite a bit, the technologies are better and and and also the measuring techniques in where you had a couple of orders of magnitude of of sort of error margin because your your simply your measurement systems weren't that great 50 something years ago, now you can do something on a completely different scale, which means that you can remove some of that uncertainty and you realize that you're well within the boundaries of your safety margin still. So, there's a lot of these things happening, but the but clearly it's it's a very big fleet and the fact that they're now officially okay to extend the life for at least a decade or possibly more, that it you're absolutely right. It's a it's a great demand story and it's something that at least in some models where they only take only going to model what's approved. So, like from the regulator what's approved, well, all of a sudden here you have 20, 30 reactors that this extended with 10 years. That's pretty significant. Um I don't know exactly which models that have that included in them and which one doesn't. But but it it's it's certainly is a vote of confidence from France as a whole and I'd say the nuclear industry in general that these life extensions they they they are happening and they will continue to happen. So, I read a number I'll just bounce off you, which is 250 million pounds over 10 years. Is that in the frame of reference that you would associate this No, no, it sounds it sounds about right. I think the French use about 25, 26, 27 million pounds a year and 10 years, that's yep, you're sounds about right. >> go. Um you mentioned eating off the floor. I do have to offer a footnote that the gold industry with which I'm much more familiar has this terrible reputation for being environmentally damaging, but uh you know, gold miners have been 20 years ahead of ESG and just as you said, um they're some of the most environmentally uh responsible operations in any industry in the world. So, it's just ironic that nuclear and gold mining have a reputation uh for being one thing, but in fact are pretty much the opposite in terms of their impacts on the environment. Yeah, as you probably gave me that too, that will not be allowed to eat off the floor in a nuclear reactor at all. I'll be sent out right away even before I try, but technically it is clean enough, so you could do it, but it's definitely not allowed. So, I before I get some colleagues at over at power stations calling me after this thing and saying that I'm an idiot. So, and and as another example of the demand side, I read a lot about the acceleration of restarts in Japan. So, not that we're going to go through every country in the world, but I think these are two interesting countries. Can you talk a little bit about Fukushima, what happened and what's happening now? Yes, of course. I mean overnight after Fukushima and again, everybody thinks you know, it's like the the the major the absolute tragedy about Fukushima was an earthquake. There was 20,000 people that died in a tsunami. Now, most people when you say Fukushima and you don't they don't even think about the tsunami, they think of the that couple of nuclear power stations that that obviously got permanently damaged and there was a partial meltdown on it, but in that no one died from that nuclear incident itself. But that that's water under the bridge now, we can move on from it. But what did the the impact of that was obviously that the all the Japanese reactors were shut down overnight. So, that's I think it was about 30 reactors or so. So, that's a pretty big significant impact on on the demand side, of course. And then you had, you know, countries like Germany who tends to not have any at least not be in the risk zone of tsunamis in in Bavaria in southern Germany, but they followed suit and also shut down their nuclear program eventually. But you look at the Japanese themselves that they they they don't have a lot of natural resources, they have to import all their oil, all their gas. So, for them it was obviously a a huge blow to shut down all their nuclear power stations overnight. And and it's taken quite some time to like some of them are never going to restart obviously, but a lot of them will. And it's like say there's at least 20 of them that will and and likely even more. And now they like started the construction of some of them went to finish the construction that were started a while ago. So, the Japanese program is clearly recovering and that is if nothing else a vote of confidence that they did like Japan who was impacted very very much by Fukushima obviously, they are coming around and they're and they're actually picking up speed in in getting the reactors back online as well. So, clearly vote of confidence. Their neighboring country Korea has also on a trajectory to phase out all their nuclear program and they come around there. And now they're one of the biggest exporters of nuclear reactor technology as well. They have an extremely successful program in the UAE close to Abu Dhabi. So, it's yeah, it's very much a success story in that part of the world as well. And I read 10 reactors a year about on average in China um and then Europe and US just give me some highlights on what you expect from those three. I mean there's announcements uh >> [laughter] >> there's there's announcements every week almost it feels like now. But yeah, but the the Chinese are obviously the the fastest growing country when it comes to it. They've already a bigger program that their program is bigger than France and it's it's on trajectory to be bigger than the United States say 2030. So, by then they'll be the largest operator in the world. And yeah, not they they've been they're they've become so good at building the reactors too that now it's essentially how it is exactly what the French did in the '70s. They have one or two or three designs and they just build a lot of it and they keep repeating it. And when you do it enough times, you become very good at it. So, for them it takes them less than 5 years to build a reactor now. And that's where the West needs to be. We're obviously very very far from it, but I also think it's quite misleading when someone just rolls their eyes and say we can't have more nuclear because it takes 15 years to build a reactor and it's like yes, they were they took 15 years to build a reactor in Finland or in France or or the the Vogal ones in the US quite some time as well. But it's the first one. It's like you you can't really judge if you're if you're for a for a biotech company to uh to come up with a new new prescription medicine. It's like you can't judge it from the first pill that comes out. It's like you're going to look after for a while and all the research efforts and everything else that goes into it. That's going to be spread out once you start mass producing this thing. And sure, you don't mass produce reactors, but it the gist is the same. You need to start doing a lot of the same and I'm I'm quite excited to see how many AP1000s are going to be built now. Like if there there is you look at the two they built at Vogal between the first and the second, What's an AP1000? But tell us what that is. What's an AP1000? Oh, sorry, yeah. That's it's a reactor from Westinghouse. So, it's a US technology reactor. Is it smaller? Uh no, it's a 1000 megawatts. So, it's it's regarded as a as a big gigawatt class reactor. So, it's more or less as big as they come. Say, the biggest the EPR, the French one, is about 1600 megawatts, but between 1000 and 1600, that's still regarded as a as a big regular reactor if you will. So, And this is a new design that was just developed? Uh I mean it was developed uh I don't know if they start they started building I don't know even know when they started building. It was a long time ago. So, it's been in the making, it's been building off of previous designs, but it's obviously a very big improvements on them and and it's it's it's an ongoing process where they do it. But I think it was designed mostly in the '90s, maybe early 2000s. Um but it's again, it's been taking some time to build it. But clearly some improvements based on lessons learned and operating experience from existing reactors. But it's it's one of the big sort of western technology reactors anyway. And yeah, it's like there there seems to be quite a lot of new announcements being like you know, the Polish nuclear program is going to build some of those and and it was the the Trump administration mentioned that they're they're going to have financial support for I don't know if it's up to eight or 10 reactors as well. So it's it there is a lot of good things happening and these announcements are are happening for each week or so. So it's we're going to see how big the build out is going to happen. Now it's easy to talk but but there are it's more than just talk now. You're actually seeing you know announcements being made and sort of coalitions of companies that are ramping up to be able to meet this demand. So it's it's very much an exciting time. >> [music]