Yesterday, South Africa and Brazil said they were willing to help India in its quest for more nuclear power.

This co-operation would involve supplying technology, equipment and material.

International co-operation is crucial if the world is to successfully make the transfer from fossil fuels to nuclear energy. By sharing ideas and technology the world can build more reactors more efficiently and most importantly, more safely.

With the recent incident in Japan, where a nuclear plant suffered a leak after an earthquake, safeguards must be the top priority for all nuclear power projects. This is a fundamental reason for governments and companies to work together in the nuclear industry, as by working as a team nuclear plants will be safer and more efficient as different ideas will be coming together to produce a better overall technology.

Going back to the incident in Japan, this may have a negative short term impact on the nuclear industry and uranium stocks. But the event has in our opinion been hyped up a fair bit in the media. It did take the company 6 hours to announce that they had leaked radioactive water, but this is not a extraordinary amount of time. After all, they have to be 100% sure and six hours actually seems a fairly short amount of time for such an analysis to be conducted. Furthermore they did announce later that the radioactive waste was 50% more dangerous than previously thought but the levels are still not a major danger. Misleading headlines in the press such as “They Underestimated the leak by half” are misleading as although the actual leak was 50% more dangerous than previously thought, they only underestimated the leak by a third, not 50%. Perhaps if the press eased the pressure on the plant for a statement, they could have taken more time over their analysis and therefore better estimated the leak.

Japan is a world leader in nuclear technology, leading the way with the next generation of nuclear reactors. With their level of expertise, we are confident that this is a minor set back that will be dealt with professionally.

In fact, this only enhances the case for building more nuclear reactors sooner. The sooner we start, the more time can be given to plan and construct the plant, which leads to less possibility of an accident. Russia is already moving forward with a large nuclear expansion plan and other countries should follow suit or risk “rushing” the construction of plants in the future to meet energy needs. More reactors means more demand for uranium and therefore higher uranium prices and higher share prices for our uranium stocks.