It’s shot from about $30 a pound last year to nearly $50 today – a 67% gain.
That’s a nine-year high.
And the Global X Uranium ETF (URA) – which gives you exposure to a basket of uranium mining stocks – is up 113% since this time last year.
That’s almost four times the return of the S&P 500 over the same time.
I (Chris Lowe) put the rally in uranium on your radar in the June 2 dispatch. And I urged you to buy URA to get broad exposure to uranium mining stocks.
But it’s still not too late to profit.
As our commodities investing expert, Dave Forest, has been showing his readers, we’re only at the start of an even more spectacular rally.
The first was when humans started burning wood to cook on and warm themselves with.
This gave us energy-rich food. It also allowed us to survive harsh winters.
The second was when animal power allowed us to farm at scale. This paved the way for settled societies and large cities.
The third was when we entered the Industrial Age. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas powered this transition.
Now, we’re moving from fossil fuels to fuels that don’t drive climate change.
Politicians prefer to talk about wind and solar to enhance their “green” credentials with voters. What they don’t like to talk about so much is that uranium – the key ingredient of nuclear power – will also play a crucial role in this transition.
There are some prominent environmentalists who support using nuclear power.
But the movement in general has managed to persuade people that nuclear energy is unsafe.
Contrary to its reputation, though, nuclear is the safest energy source we have.
An energy source’s “deathprint” is the number of people it kills – from accidents and air pollution – per terawatt-hour of energy production. (One terawatt-hour is enough to power nearly 87,000 homes for a year.)
According to Our World in Data, coal is the worst culprit. It causes about 25 deaths per terawatt-hour.
That plummets to 0.02 deaths from solar – mostly from installers falling off roofs and having accidents while constructing solar farms.
Nuclear power’s deathprint isn’t much higher…
Including deaths related to the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents… as well as accidents involving uranium mining… nuclear power kills 0.07 people per terawatt hour.
That’s based on how much greenhouse gas each energy source produces over the life cycle of a power plant or a wind or solar farm.
Coal emits 820 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere per gigawatt-hour. (A gigawatt-hour is enough to power 86 homes for a year.)
Solar emits 5 tonnes. Wind emits 4 tonnes.
Nuclear emits just 3 tonnes.
For Dave, it all adds up to one conclusion…
Around the world, there’s a growing recognition that nuclear is probably the fastest path to zero-carbon energy.
Even if the climate change debate puts you off, the transition to cleaner fuel sources is going ahead.
Governments and corporations will throw trillions of dollars at reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
And nuclear power is a no-brainer to replace coal and other fossil-fuel-based power sources.
As we’ve covered, it has the best safety record of any energy source. And it emits the least carbon.
So it’s no wonder the world is building out more nuclear capacity. International Atomic Energy Agency figures show there are 52 nuclear power plants under construction around the world. And many more are being planned.
Even better, investors have largely ignored the uranium industry since the Fukushima disaster in March 2011. That was when a 46-foot-high tsunami slammed into the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
It holds a basket of shares in companies involved in uranium exploration, mining, and refining.
This exchange-traded fund (ETF) launched in November 2010. That was four months before the Fukushima incident.
Following the disaster, URA got shellacked…
It lost as much as 94% of its value.
But here’s what’s so interesting about uranium stocks as a speculation right now…
The 113% rally over the past 12 months is just a blip on this chart. There’s plenty more room for uranium stocks to run.
Even if URA recovers to just its 2011 levels, that’s a gain of 443% from here.
As you’ll see, financial companies are now starting to stockpile uranium in anticipation of the coming rally.
And as Dave explained when I caught up with him about it, this could take URA past its previous highs.
Tomorrow, I’ll share with you the Q&A I had with Dave… including the name of the blue-chip uranium miner he recommends as a way to play the coming rally.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
September 22, 2021
Barcelona, Spain