Fukui Prefecture Governor Approves Ohi 3 and Ohi 4 restartYesterday the Governor of Fukui Prefecture in Japan...the host community to Kansai Electric's Ohi 3 and 4 reactors approved their restart. This is the last hurdle and means Kansai will be able to restart Unit 3 in January and Unit 4 in March. Also, for the tech buffs here, they are both 1180 MW plants...BIG PWR's with 193 fuel bundles each reactor. Meanwhile Kyushu Electric is scheduled to restart Genkai 3 and 4 along similar timelines and they already have all the political approvals required.
So by March Japan's running reactor MW output will more than double. The stockpile of Japanese Uranium built up from previous supply contracts is getting smaller and smaller every day. Neither of these two utilities will be selling ANY uranium on the spot market and they may well be in a position soon to buy it.
With Abe in for another 4 years Japan will steadily restart its fleet and put 42 reactors back into consumption mode .Nine out of those 42 will be running by March.(That is 23.8% by simple number of reactors but it is the restart of the bigger reactors that use more Uranium that is key. Takahama has 157 fuel bundles.
Simply a matter of time before the demand floodgates open only to find there is not much Uranium to be had.
Also...and probably much more importantly...enrichment plants will need to supply Japan with enriched Uranium which means they will reduce their tailings enrichment operations in favour of a product (enriched Uranium) that makes them alot more money.
All you gotta do is bide your time.
Malcolm