FROM THE BROKING DESK
The painfully slow Japanese nuclear reactor restart programme got a boost last week when Kansai Electric Power Company restarted Takahama #4. Back in late 2015 both Takahama #3 and #4 were restarted, but they were then taken offline again in March 2016 after a court injunction was issued reversing the restart on safety grounds. The Osaka High Court has now lifted that injunction, and with #3 also expected to restart next month, this will bring the number of operational reactors in Japan back to five. Not exactly many. Still, two more reactors are set to restart in the coming months and it's hoped that a few more will be operational by early 2018. Of a fleet total of 54 reactors, 19 have now applied to restart.
That March 2016 injunction took a lot of momentum out of the restart programme and it remains controversial. While the Osaka High Court's decision was somewhat buried by news on the same day that Toshiba had put Westinghouse US into bankruptcy protection, this could be the ray of light that the sector has been looking for. On the Westinghouse news, this might imply the end of the NuGen Moorside Project in Cumbria, although I read a report in The Sunday Times that the Chinese state-owned power company SNPTC is sniffing around this.
The uranium space is certainly confused right now. The developed world seems ambivalent about nuclear energy (Switzerland is set to phase out all its reactors), but the macro story of China continues to promise much for this beleaguered sector.
Given all these developments, a small Investor Seminar on the Uranium Market would be very useful. Incredibly, we'll be hosting one of these events on Friday 2 June at our London office. This will start at 12:00 and will involve:
?EUR? a talk by Adam Christopher from TradeTech on the uranium market;
?EUR? a follow-up Q&A over a sandwich lunch; and
?EUR? a presentation by Mike Young, CEO of Vimy Resources.
We should be finished by 14:00.
TradeTech is the leading independent provider of uranium prices and nuclear fuel market information. Adam's talk will analyse the uranium fuel cycle. Mike's presentation on Vimy Resources will cover the company's development of the 76.8Mlb Mulga Rock Project in Western Australia (targeting 3Mlb pa of U3O8 production over 17 years). The project was approved by the Western Australia Government in 1Q17. Vimy's major shareholders include Resource Capital Funds, the Forrest Family and the Australian institutions Macquarie and Acorn Capital.