nuclear-news

Dame Barbara Judge – Japan has no choice! Nuclear or nothing!

“It will be very difficult to convince the public that nuclear is the solution.”  http://theunhivedmind.com/wordpress3/2013/07/06/lady-barbara-judge-hired-to-help-tepco-rebuild-its-reputation-after-fukushima/

…She added: “I was amazed at how much work had been done to clear up the site and the high aspiration to make the site the safest in the world.””’ http://enenews.com/cnn-american-fukushima-daiichi-fantastic-amazed

….”Yes.” The Japanese have no choice, really, because the alternative—importing liquefied natural gas (LNG)—is far too expensive….

HOT: Uranium

http://www.equities.com/editors-desk/stocks/energy/energy-outlook-what-s-hot-in-2014

During a recent trip to London, I spoke with Lady Barbara Judge, chairman emeritus of the UK Atomic Agency and an advisor to TEPCO on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. I asked her point-blank whether Japan was willing to bring any nuclear reactors back online in 2014.

Her answer was an unequivocal “Yes.” The Japanese have no choice, really, because the alternative—importing liquefied natural gas (LNG)—is far too expensive.

Japan is the world’s largest importer of LNG and has had to double its imports since the Fukushima incident. For that privilege, the country pays some of the highest rates on the planet—almost four times more than what we pay for natural gas in North America.

South Korea also shut down its nuclear plants post-Fukushima to do inspections and maintenance upgrades, and it, too, has had to import a lot of LNG. Both countries are looking to restart their nuclear reactors so they can stop paying a fortune to foreign energy suppliers. When these countries restart their reactors, they’ll also restart the uranium market, so we expect uranium prices to begin to shake loose of the doldrums this year.

Another driver will be throwing the switch at ConverDyn, the US uranium facility that is slated to start converting natural U₃O₈ to reactor-ready fuel in late 2014 or early 2015.

We currently hold two solid uranium companies in the portfolio—one is a US-based small-cap producer (one of the very few in America), the other is the lowest-risk way to play the uranium market that I know of. Both, we believe, will take off in 2014 on the renewed interest in uranium and the associated stocks.

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist

– See more at: http://www.equities.com/editors-desk/stocks/energy/energy-outlook-what-s-hot-in-2014#sthash.s4u3WDuO.dpuf

January 23, 2014 - Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized