Nowhere was it more evident of battle lines being drawn between suppliers and end users in the nuclear fuel sector than at the Platts Second Annual Nuclear Fuel Strategies conference on September 26th. Since April, various utility consultants and fuel brokers have routinely contacted StockInterview to 'talk down' the uranium price. Frequent is the mantra about how speculators and hedge funds are driving the spot uranium price higher. But spot uranium and long-term contracts march higher each month. While utilities appear complacent, there is now an underlying panic lurking beneath the surface.


About an hour after UxC announced Tuesday's weekly spot price hike - now to $54/pound, Rajiv Kundalkar, Vice President of Nuclear Engineering for Florida Power and Light took the podium in the Pavilion Room of the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. to pound the table as to why uranium prices should take a dive. As Mr. Kundalkar progressed through his presentation, many in the audience wondered if he was the industry's latest sacrificial lamb. Kundalkar galloped out of the presentation room within moments after he answered the final question.

...Had he not scrambled away from the conference, Kundalkar might have been shocked by the disclosures in the afternoon presentations which followed him. Had Kundalkar presented his thesis to a less savvy audience, he might have received something more than a polite applause when he stepped down. From the disgruntled audience, one long-time industry consultant asked Kundalkar point blank: Have you heard of peak oil?