What the Nuclear Power Revival Means for the Price of Uranium

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Tracy, are we calling it a nuclear revival yet? No, I mean, for real, is that a thing?

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

You know what's gonna happen, as soon as you start calling it that, it's gonna peter out, fizzle.

Joe Weisenthal (0:37)

Don't say that, don't say that. Some people would say, we saw the recent Three Mile Island news, we've seen some other things of that nature. Some people would say that, at least in the US, there's something of a nuclear revival going on.

Tracy Alloway (0:51)

Yes. You know what I find kind of funny is, if you look at one of the price impacts of a nuclear revival, it's uranium, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

Yeah.

Tracy Alloway (1:00)

But uranium started to go up, I think, right after the pandemic, and now it's come down a little bit from its heights, its recent heights. So it's kind of funny. Like, it's sort of acting like a meme stock.

Joe Weisenthal (1:14)

Yeah, that's literally what I was gonna say. That for a certain portion of the public, uranium is like Bitcoin. There's certain assets out there that have these sort of cult-like things where it's not just that people are bullish, but they think that in the future, if they're smart and savvy enough to get in now, they're gonna make this huge fortune, and I would put crypto in there, and I would put the people who play those stub equity of Fannie and Freddie in that category. And then there's the uranium cult on social media who thinks we're gonna buy uranium and one day, everyone will wake up and realize that nuclear is the future of energy, that all electricity will be powered by nuclear, and those of us who are smart to get into uranium now will be the new inheritors of the earth.

Tracy Alloway (1:59)

You know the funniest thing I saw when this became a thing back in 2021? So there's a uranium market subreddit.

Joe Weisenthal (2:06)

Of course there is, yeah.

Tracy Alloway (2:08)

And someone posted on there that they're a broker for physical uranium. So if you're interested in buying physical uranium, you can buy it in like 100,000 pound increments. So I don't even know like who the target is for this. Who is the retail trader that is buying 100,000 pounds of uranium and presumably storing it somewhere?

Joe Weisenthal (2:29)

One day that person will have the mandate of heaven. But the question is, when will that be? Even if there is a nuclear revival, even if all across the rich world, they're like nuclear is the way to go. What does that actually mean for the price of uranium? I'm not really clear. Yeah, me neither. Well, I'm really excited to say, because we do have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking to someone who knows everything about every commodity in the world, as far as I could tell, at least related to energy commodities, and maybe metal commodities. To, he's someone on the sell side. Tracy, there are a few people on the sell side, not many. Many people on the sell side are worth reading. There are some people who's writing, I consider it to be a crime, that they're locked up within sell side, because it's so good and so interesting, that it just shouldn't be the type of thing that traders click on for five seconds, and we're going to be speaking to one of them.

Tracy Alloway (3:20)

Yes, actually this analyst, I think their research does get published in a book.

Joe Weisenthal (3:24)

Oh yeah.

Tracy Alloway (3:25)

Every once in a while, I have some of those, some old ones, and they stand the test of time, which is something that you can't say for all sell side research.

Joe Weisenthal (3:33)

No, you absolutely can't. So we are going to be speaking with the one and only Bob Brackett, literally the perfect guest. I've had him on the podcast before. He is the head of America's Energy Transition. At Bernstein Research. Bob, what's your deal, because, like I said, you don't...

Tracy Alloway (3:47)

What's your deal?

Joe Weisenthal (3:48)

You know, like when I read your report on uranium, you're going into the science of how it's mined, you're going into the science, you have a copy and paste of Einstein's letter to Roosevelt talking about how this uranium thing could be big for bombs and electricity and so forth. They don't really look like typical analyst reports.