Currently, approximately 190 million pounds of uranium are consumed annually, while only around 130 million pounds are extracted from the ground, creating a supply deficit.

Assuming OP is insinuating someone is building nukes... a quick Google says a nuclear war head uses about 30 pounds of uranium. That wouldn't even be a footnote on the world scale, definitely not enough to drive global demand prices 10% over night

[–] Sc00ter@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I dont know about uranium, but is it traded like oil? Does the futures contract expire today and they only have so much left that can be sold in July, so they basically get to dictate the price at the end of the contract if there is more demand than supply? We saw a drastic squeeze on oil a few years back and it was back to normal in a day

Edit: it was actually the opposite for oil. They had too much to sell and no buyer because stores were full. They literally couldn't give it away and prices went negative https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/oil-markets-us-crude-futures-in-focus-as-coronavirus-dents-demand.html

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

30 pounds of Uranium 235 which is 0.72% of natural uranium, so a bit more but still your point stands.

[–] hglman@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Anyone with the capacity to enrich uranium can probably also make plutonium, which is made from u238, so you really dont need that much. I belive you can chemically it separate as well.

[–] Wintex@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Totally right. Tbh this OP guy is kinda whack. I'd take his posts with a grain of salt.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 2 points 2 years ago

Yes, but he often brings interesting links which we can debate, so I appreciate that.

[+] yogthos@lemmy.ml -11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A 10% spike basically overnight is very obviously dramatic right now.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But we can see that it used to fluctuate much more before.

Anyway the spike is not 'over night' from what I can see it's 3 months in between 3/28/2023 and 6/27/2023. The graph is very misleading, somehow the time axis is not linear, and also I'm getting different dates than you on that source website:

[+] yogthos@lemmy.ml -10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, it has fluctuated before, I'm not sure why you keep bringing this up. Are you saying prior fluctuations did not have any impact on the market, energy production costs, and so on?

Meanwhile, three months is a pretty short timeline, and it's likely to keep going up now that Niger is no longer exporting Uranium to France where there is high reliance on nuclear power. I'm also not sure what you're saying is misleading bout the graph. I'm not really able to follow the point you're trying to make there. Are you trying to say that Business Insider is somehow misrepresenting the data for some reason?

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm just saying the graph is misleading because it changes the meaning of the X-axis significantly. In the screenshot it insinuates that it's data of 6 months, but 95% of the graph is the first 3 months and the last 3 months for some reason are squized into the last 5% which makes it look like it was a spike over night as if something happened yesterday. Instead it might have been a gradual increase over the last 3 months, we don't know because they have only one data point for the last 3 months while thy have 37 data points for the first 3 months of the graph.

[–] FireMyth@lemmy.one 7 points 2 years ago

It's yog the propagandist. Literally every post he makes is easily countered with about 30 seconds of logic/history/reading the next page etc. He's on multiple platforms doing the same thing. Always ragging on the west and pushing a russia/china narrative. One of the least intelligent/useful propagandists I've seen.

[–] zeusbottom@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

demand rose and supply dropped

[–] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's just the war making Russian gas undesirable for meeting our (western world) energy needs causing our use of Uranium for nuclear reactors to skyrocket. This usage boost of course causes prices to rise. Especially since supply is limited. Factor in also that we're moving towards winter time and we have the explanation for the recent spike, nations competing trying to fill their stockpiles.

[–] authed@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

6months means nothing