China is buying unprecedented amounts of uranium, signaling that prices are poised to rebound after three years of declines.
The nation may purchase about 5,000 metric tons this year, more than twice as much as it consumes, building stockpiles for new reactors, according to Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium- industry analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Prices will jump by about 32 percent next year, the most since 2006, RBC Capital Markets said.
India and China are leading the biggest atomic expansion since the decade after the 1970s oil crisis to cut pollution and power economies growing more than twice as fast as Europe and North America. The boom, combined with slowing supply growth, may benefit Cameco Corp., a co-owner of the world’s largest uranium mine, and Areva SA, the largest builder of reactors.
“China’s demand is insatiable,” said Dave Dai, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong. “They will have to take almost whatever is available.”