Uranium is poised to enter a bull market amid tightening supply as producers shut mines and delay projects, more than three years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan sent prices lower.

The atomic fuel has advanced as much as 18 percent from a May 20 low of $28 a pound, according to data from Ux Consulting Co. in Roswell, Georgia, which provides research on the nuclear industry. Prices closed 0.5 percent higher at $32.65 yesterday and have averaged $31.80 in 2014.

Eoin Treacy's view

The uranium market still has to recover from the post Fukushima backlash that saw reactors shuttered in Japan and even France retiring some of its older plants. The news flow has been somewhat more positive recently with Australia agreeing to supply Indian reactors. Indian demand represents a significant growth trajectory not least because of the new Modi led government’s development focus.

This article from Gizmag today highlights how companies are endeavouring to develop reactors capable of consuming transuranic waste. Here is a section:

What Hitachi and its partners are trying to do is to find ways to design next-generation reactors that can use the low-level transuranium elements as fuel; leaving behind the high-level elements to quickly (relatively speaking) burn themselves out in no more than a century or so.

That’s not a particularly new idea. Some modular nuclear reactors already use nuclear waste as fuel. But what sets Hitachi apart is that it's looking into designs based on current boiling-water reactors that are known as Resource-renewable Boiling Water Reactors (RBWR) and are being developed by Hitachi and Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy Ltd.

The idea is to develop a new fuel element design using refined nuclear waste products along with uranium that can be installed in a standard boiling water reactor. This would not only make such reactors more economical to build, but would also use decades of safety and operations experience to achieve efficient nuclear fission in transuranium elements.

Hitachi says that it’s already carried out joint research with its partners starting in 2007 and is now concentrating on the next phase, which deals with more accurate analysis methods, as well as reactor safety and performance, with an eye toward practical application of what’s been learned.

Assuming they are successful in developing such reactors, work could begin on changing the incredibly negative perceptions the general population has about the safety and sustainability of nuclear plants.

Uranium prices rallied last week to push back above the 200-day MA for the first time in more than three years. The reaction of related shares has been modest, but a delayed response is understandable until it can be demonstrated that higher metal prices can be sustained.