Why has a Western pivot away from #Russia's #Uranium🇷🇺⚛️⛏️⛔️ triggered a chain reaction💥 of higher prices down the #Nuclear fuel cycle from enrichment SWU to conversion?🚀 Let me try to explain in a thread that lays out why #U3O8 & U #stocks are dominoes next in line.⏸️↗️➡️👇2
2) Both #USA & #EU rely on importing #Russia's #Uranium to provide about 20% of annual #Nuclear fuel requirements for their fleets of reactors, the 2 largest fleets in the world.⚛️ Reactor operators are now trying to lock in alternate fuel supply ASAP to fill that 20% gap.🛒 👇3
3) Majority of US/EU imports of #Russia's #uranium is in Enriched Uranium(EUP) with Russia having 43% of global enrichment capacity.🇷🇺 Utilities' first line of attack is to line up alternate enrichment, launching a steep rise in demand & price for enrichment SWU & UF6 feed.⬆️👇4
4) To pivot away from #Russia's #uranium requires other enrichment plants in #USA & #EU to increase output ASAP.🏭 They've been in low demand with excess SWU capacity that's led to underfeeding = large secondary U supply⛏️ that's helped reduce the huge #Nuclear fuel deficit⚛️👇5
5) Skyrocketing demand for SWU enrichment & UF6 feed for US/EU enrichment plants has led to record-breaking spikes in #SWU & #UF6 prices.💲⬆️ Enrichers can't quickly add more enrichment capacity so instead flip from underfeeding to overfeeding of UF6 to get more EUP per SWU.🏭👇6
6) Overfeeding involves feeding more UF6 #uranium into centrifuges than supplied by #Nuclear fuel buyers, so enrichers go to Spot market & elsewhere to buy the extra UF6 needed, if available, spiking the prices for UF6 & for the conversion of #U3O8 to produce more UF6.💲⬆️ 👇7
7) Spiking demand & price for #Uranium conversion services to produce more #UF6 is likely to hasten restart of ConverDyn Metropolis conversion plant in #USA🏭 & ramping up of other #U3O8 conversion facilities in #France & #Canada that have been operating below capacity.⬆️⛏️ 👇8
8) Finally, at front-end of #Nuclear fuel cycle, the spike in demand for #U3O8 conversion will force buyers into the Spot #Uranium market to acquire as much mined U3O8 feed as possible🛒⛏️🚛 as fast as possible.⌛️ Chain reaction💥 likely to send U price & U #stocks soaring.🚀 👇9
9) End result: with ~200M lbs of #Uranium demand & only 135M lbs of mined supply, #Nuclear utilities were relying on 25M lbs secondary supply including ~20M lbs underfeeding.😟 But overfeeding flipped that to >20M lbs of new demand🔀 pushing U supply deficit to 80M+ lbs = U💲🛸🌜
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