Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/1125235
J U N E / J U L Y 2 0 1 9 www.resourceworld.com 29 stock over a long weekend. They seem to be sort of more market involved than exploration involved which is why I think 80% of them lose money. RW: Uranium is trading at about US $25 a pound. Will a recovery in the price of uranium finally take place somehow, sometime? RR: I think if you look in the three-year time frame now – I used to say a five-year time frame but that was two years ago – if you look in the three-year time frame, the construction of newly built plants around the world will take care of the oversupply of uranium. A rebound sooner than that will have to do with two things: renewal of the fuel cycle, meaning that a lot of plants are coming off old supply contracts and need to re-contract. But more importantly, as we've been saying for some time, Japanese reactor restarts. To the extent that we see contin - ued strength in Japanese reactor restarts, you will see the uranium price increase sooner than later. To the extent that we don't, it could easily take another two or three years for a combination of supply destruction occasioned by these very low prices and demand creation as a conse - quence of a record pace of new nuclear plant construction around the world to affect prices. It is important to note, however, this is a question where the answer begins with 'when' not 'if'. We know that nuclear is an important source of base load energy worldwide and we know that despite the fact that in some western countries, uranium is looked at with disfavour. The market is building nuclear power plants like mad on a global basis. It's interesting to note that global uranium demand has increased and now exceeds what global demand was before the Fukushima power plant disaster, despite the fact that Japan was the second largest consumer of ura - nium, is still largely offline. RW: The Venture Exchange Index has been more or less flat-lining since the beginning of February. Do you have any idea when the general mining stock recov- ery will resume or what it will take to jump start it? RR: I have absolutely no idea! For myself, my preference would be that the TSXV Index fell by half which would make the high quality companies, those few companies in the Index which are very high quality – cheaper, and would also cause The lame, the halt and the blind to go broke or go into the cannabis business. I'd love to see the number of resource list - ings fall by half. n SPECIAL OFFER: Rick Rule would be happy to rate Resource World subscribers' natural resource portfolios, on a no obligation basis. All subscribers need do is email their portfo- lios to him at rrule@sprottglobal.com with company names and symbols in the text (not as an attachment) and he will rank their port- folios and send them back by return email. INVESTMENT