<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Russia's eyeing its second recession in just seven years.</p><p>This is no surprise: the 40% oil price drop slammed an economy whose energy sector makes up 20% of the GDP, and western sanctions added salt in the wound.</p><p>However, those are just the short-term obstacles that's Russia is facing.</p><p>"[T]he growth slowdown in 2011-2013, with oil averaging over US $110/barrel, reveals a structural component to the current slowdown," according to Morgan Stanley's Alina Slyusarchuk.</p><p>"Structural headwinds to growth including a shrinking and ageing population, high capacity utilization, a flat oil production outlook with oil prices lower for longer and restrictive conditions for fixed investment mean that the government needs to look for new drivers of growth," she adds.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>So far, Russia has focused on a three-fold growth strategy that benefits its domestic producers (aka the state-controlled oil and gas guys): import substitution, a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ruble-slipping-after-strong-streak-2015-5">weaker ruble</a>, and a reduction in labor costs.</p><p>However, Slyusarchuk writes in her note:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"An import substitution policy is likely to restrict modernization and productivity growth in the medium term, as technological imports play an important role in domestic investment and the production process [and] is also likely to result in inflation pressures.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">We see a risk that the policy of a weaker exchange rate will preserve the old structure of the economy, with a prevalence of export-oriented commodity-based sectors, while high-tech industries are likely to suffer."</p><p>As a result, MS analysts suggest that investment growth is the "key for successful import substitution and productivity growth." </p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">However, Russia's foreign policy agenda might affect business confidence and delay structural reform - meaning that investment prospects aren't looking too hot right now...</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-lebron-james-spends-money-nba-salary-2015-4">How LeBron James spends his money</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="A1Y2VudDqRdoRbXU6D5a41TZ_JCLE1oQ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Russia needs to come up with a new growth model

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2015/feb/chicago/0212-bolt-ev.html">General Motors</a></span></p><p class="caption">The Chevy Bolt EV.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The traditional auto industry is frantically trying to get ahead the curve when it comes to electric cars. Numerous automakers are either bringing new electric vehicles to market - or announcing bold plans to do so over the next decade.</p><p>But do they have a shot at success? Morgan Stanely lead auto analyst isn't so sure.</p><p>He explained why in a research note published Tuesday, in which he cut his rating and price target for Delphi, a major auto-parts supplier.</p><p>The target-price drop is notable: $59 from $74. I won't get into Jonas' take on why Delphi is vulnerable - a lot of analysts like the supplier part of the autos sector better than the manufacturer or "OEM" side. They figure that suppliers, due their diversification, will make out better in weak markets than individual OEMs, which are highly reliant on consumer trends, such as the current rage for pickups and SUV in the US.</p><p>Jonas isn't sure that thinking will hold up.</p><p>What's more interesting in Jonas' note is this:</p><p><span>Traditional OEM's are abundantly aware of what Jonas' is talking about. With EV's currently only taking up about 1% of the global market, they represent no threat to gas-powered technology.</span></p><p><span>But if the EV market share expands, and expands significantly, a century's worth of intellectual property could rapidly be as useless as a stagecoach for cross-country travel.</span></p><p><span>Jonas could be too sweepingly bullish on EVs. So far, consumers have shown little interest in the cars, and they've had almost a decade to develop desire for them. They've had Teslas to buy, so there's no arguing that EVs have been held back because they aren't fast, luxurious, or sexy.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Markets Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>The bottom line is that EVs are seen as too expensive and too much of a hassle to charge. There also aren't really any big electric SUVs, and many Americans want that type of vehicle at the moment.</span></p><p><span>However, Jonas has put his finger on something of an Armageddon thesis for the traditional industry. Hundreds of billions in global market capitalization has been created over the decades, almost all of it powered by gasoline.</span></p><p><span>Shares of Delphi were trading down about 4% on Tuesday, to $64.</span></p><p> </p>      <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-motors-software-update-remotely-hacked-model-s-2016-9">Tesla made a big software update after a Chinese company remotely hacked the brakes of a Model S</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="kwNzYxNjE6fcpCIJ2mfm2ApVlpbpZWmM" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Traditional car companies may not be able to keep up with the shift to electric cars

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Chip East</span></p><p class="caption">Alphabet CEO Larry Page</p></div><p></p></div></div>In 2015, we bid goodbye to the idea of "Google" as a search engine with an ad business that gushered out so much money that it could fund crazy ideas like self-driving cars.</p><p>Now, we have to call that company "Alphabet." </p><p>Ever since Google <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-new-operating-structure-2015-8">blew up its corporate structure in September</a>, new parent company Alphabet has started reshuffling different projects and breaking out divisions into stand-alone entities.</p><p>Although all the moonshots are still technically being funded by the money-spewing ads business and we won't get to see any additional financials until Alphabet's Q1 earnings report in January, it's still been a wild year for The Company Formerly Known As Google.</p><h2><strong>The good</strong></h2><p>On the stock side, Google soared. </p><p>A share of Alphabet stock will currently set you back nearly $750, up 42% from the ~$527 per share Google was fetching at the beginning of the year. </p><p>Part of that big boost came after <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-ruth-porat-new-google-cfo-2015-3">Google tapped former Morgan Stanely CFO Ruth Porat</a> to come run its financials. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-loves-google-cfo-ruth-porat-2015-7">Wall Street loved her rhetoric</a> of discipline and the stock leapt after her first earnings call in July:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Yahoo Finance" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/567c3a83e6183eee168b4c4b-960/screen shot 2015-12-24 at 10.32.24 am.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#{">Yahoo Finance</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The company also released two <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-smartphones-of-2015-12">well-praised new phones</a>, stared bringing its virtual reality device, Cardboard, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/media/the-times-partners-with-google-on-virtual-reality-project.html?_r=0">into the mainstream</a>, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-creates-sidewalk-labs-to-improve-cities-2015-6">launched a startup to fix cities</a> called Sidewalk Labs. </p><p>But it hasn't all been stock-highs and good product reviews. </p><h2><strong>The bad and the ugly</strong></h2><p>Google finally <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-changes-2015-7">admitted defeat on its ill-fated social network</a>. It <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-robot-group-moves-to-google-x-2015-12">re-booted its robot division</a>. And it dealt with a big 'ol regulatory headache. </p><p>First, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274">The Wall Street Journal published</a> excerpts of a 2012 Federal Trade Commission report that showed that some staff wanted to charge three parts of Google's business with antitrust violations, including illegally taking competitors' content. The FTC documents, which the Journal received <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/feds-gave-wall-street-journal-google-antitrust-report-accident-2015-3">accidentally</a> after filing a Freedom of Information Act reques<span>t, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-new-ftc-report-says-about-google-2015-3">made Google look like a bully</a>. </span></p><p>Then, in April, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-accuses-google-of-antitrust-violations-2015-4?r=UK&amp;IR=T">EU formally accused Google of violating antitrust laws</a> in Europe. Besides the formal charges, the EU has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/26/google-eu-antitrust-chief-margrethe-vestager">another series of investigations into various Google businesses</a>, including Android, Maps, and Shopping. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported in September that, closer to home,<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-25/google-said-to-be-under-u-s-antitrust-scrutiny-over-android-iezf41sg"> the FTC has started investigating Android, too.</a> </p><p>Oh, and don't forget that <a href="http://recode.net/2015/10/05/russia-to-google-unbundle-android-or-else/">Russia said that Google's practice of pre-loading apps on Android was illegal</a>. </p><p>With a new corporate structure and a lot of messes left to be cleaned up overseas, as well as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-talks-google-cloak-and-dagger-2015-12">consistently vocal critics</a> at home, it's been a turbulent year for Google. Here's to whatever new drama 2016 brings! </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hoverboards-hype-explosion-trend-2015-12">We got our hands on a hoverboard to see if it lives up to the hype</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="tpZ3NueTpANokm2Em5E9gev3SzjFPYZ_" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

2015 was a wild ride for the company formerly known as Google

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Greece is getting ready to default on at least some of its debt payments, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c5964f9c-e1ef-11e4-bb7f-00144feab7de,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fc5964f9c-e1ef-11e4-bb7f-00144feab7de.html%3Fsiteedition%3Duk&amp;siteedition=uk&amp;_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fhome%2Fuk">according to the Financial Times</a>.</p><p>The country has entered a pretty dire fiscal situation. It desperately needs to unlock bailout funds from its creditors, but progress negotiating that cash is shaky at best. If it doesn't get it soon, something will have to give</p><p>So if Athens doesn't get its next €7.2 billion ($7.58 billion) bailout tranche by the Eurogroup meeting of European finance ministers on April 24, default gets a lot more likely and it seems like the government is already making plans. Here's the FT: </p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Greece is preparing to take the dramatic step of declaring a debt default unless it can reach a deal with its international creditors by the end of April, according to people briefed on the radical leftist government's thinking.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">The government, which is rapidly running out of funds to pay public sector salaries and state pensions, has decided to withhold €2.5bn of payments due to the International Monetary Fund in May and June if no agreement is struck, they said.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"We have come to the end of the road... If the Europeans won't release bailout cash, there is no alternative [to a default]," one government official said.</p><p>The <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/eurozone-greece-default-idUSL5N0XA3SR20150413">Greek government denied that it is planning for a default</a> quickly after the FT's story emerged. But given the country's financial situation right now, it would probably be careless if they weren't at least looking at the scenario.</p><p>The International Monetary Fund makes a point of never restructuring debts it's owed. If Greece doesn't make a payment, it has a grace period of around a month to transfer the money, at which point it would have undoubtedly defaulted. </p><p>Greece's talks with its creditors have started again, but according<span> German media reports at the weekend, eurozone officials said Greek representatives were acting "</span><span></span><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/eurozone-officials-slam-greece-for-acting-like-a-taxi-driver-asking-for-more-money-and-for-no-reform-plans-2015-4">like a taxi driver</a><span>" in the talks. So that may not have kicked things off in the best way. The lenders want a more solid and detailed plan of reforms, and to see how they're going to progress through the country's parliament. So far, what's been presented by Greece isn't enough.</span></p><p><span>Below, a chart from Morgan Stanley shows why eurozone officials may be less bothered about a Greek default this time around. There's less risk of contagion into the rest of Europe, so Greece may be able to sink without dragging other countries on Europe's periphery down too: </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Morgan Stanely" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/552cb95add0895555f8b459d-960/screen shot 2015-04-14 at 7.34.11 am.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Morgan Stanely</span></p></div><p></p></div></div><br /></span></p><p><span>The situation is now so grim that Morgan Stanley analysts think "full membership" of the eurozone is no longer the most likely outcome for Greece, and 45% chance of Grexit:</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Unfortunately, continued full membership of the euro now has become an outside scenario for us with a subjective probability of only 40% (see What Are the Implications of Grexit for Europe, March 17, 2015). Either an exit from the euro or a suspension of the membership via the introduction of capital controls instead seem more likely to us, with a subjective probability of 25% and 35%, respectively. Given that we see the risk of Grexit rising to 60% once the country is forced to impose capital controls, we compute a total probability of 45% for a Grexit.</span></p><p><span>And it's worth remembering the current deal on the table is <em>only a stopgap. </em>The bailout was meant to last four months (though will probably now not last that long, even if it's dispensed soon), and then the country will be back in this position again.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/maps-big-countries-world-geography-russia-greenland-antarctica-2015-3">9 animated maps that will change the way you see the world </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="xnMTYzbTrjVXj7b6Ir8JPwdraRakXLY4" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

REPORT: Greece is getting ready to default

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Wikimedia Commons</span></p><p class="caption">The problem, more or less.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Uranium isn't like other commodities for one very simple reason: It's impossible to vaporize an entire city with a single petroleum or coal-based weapon that's smaller than a two-seat car. </p><p>What makes uranium so promising as a source of energy is also what makes it a potential menace to civilization.</p><p>Uranium is compact, easy to transport, inexpensive, plentiful, and radioactive. A few hundred pounds of uranium can cleanly and cheaply power a civilian nuclear reactor - or it can be used to create an unimaginably powerful weapon. </p><p>The material's trade is governed under a unique <keyword id="6356001" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="international">international</keyword> regulatory system, as well as through stringent country-level controls.</p><p>As Gabrielle Hecht of the University of Michigan explains in her book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Being-Nuclear-Africans-Global-Uranium/dp/0262017261">Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade</a>," uranium is simultaneously treated as a banal commodity - with its own <a href="http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/UX/W">futures market</a> and supply- and demand-related pricing mechanisms - and as a material with an intrinsically exceptional character. As Hecht recounts, uranium didn't have anything resembling an agreed-upon market price until the 1960s and '70s.</p><p>"For buyers and sellers alike," she writes, "the biggest roadblock to commodification was nuclear exceptionalism, which made it difficult to separate the politics of uranium from the economics."</p><p>This tension between uranium's banality and its exceptionality has some important implications for how uranium markets are organized. Uranium is a commodity. But it isn't bought and sold in the same way that most other commodities are.</p><p>The contradictions of this "nuclear exceptionalism" are particularly visible in Niger, where Business Insider traveled in September. The landlocked West African country is <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/NER">nearly last on the UN Human Development Index</a>. It also has <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Uranium-Resources/Supply-of-Uranium/">the world's fifth-largest recoverable uranium reserves</a>, some 7% of the global total. Niger's two major uranium mines are the country's second-largest employer, aside from the government.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>For over half a century, the country has struggled to benefit from its uranium wealth.</p><p>The small number of buyers and sellers of uranium has given outsize power to France's state-owned nuclear services company, which operates the mines in Niger, a former French colony.</p><p>At the same time, Niger has to deal with the tangible question of how or even whether to incorporate the material's exceptionality into its price. The banality versus exceptionality issue isn't abstract for a country that depends on two remote uranium mines for <a href="http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/country/ner/">a third of its exports</a>. </p><p>The uranium market is unlike any other commodities market in the world - in ways that make it hugely complicated for a country like Niger to effectively reap the benefits of its mineral wealth.</p><p>Here are some of the factors that set uranium apart. </p><p><strong>It's under intense safeguards</strong>. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) oversees <a href="http://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/meetings/PDFplus/2009/cn175/URAM2009/Session%201/4_114_Petoe_IAEA.pdf">the mining of uranium</a>. Most of the world's countries have what's called an <a href="https://www.iaea.org/safeguards/safeguards-legal-framework/additional-protocol">additional protocol</a> (AP) with the IAEA that determines country-specific safeguards and regulations relating to the signatories' nuclear infrastructure. (Niger signed an AP <a href="https://www.iaea.org/safeguards/safeguards-legal-framework/additional-protocol/status-of-additional-protocol">in 2004)</a>. Violating an AP is considered a violation of the <a href="http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/NPT.shtml">Nonproliferation Treaty</a> and can result in international sanctions. Raw uranium is a ways away from being bomb fuel, but the IAEA still has a role in monitoring its extraction. And defying the IAEA is considered a serious breach of international order.</p><p>Nuclear regulations are more specific within individual countries, where they also tend to be very strict. Even in the relatively free-wheeling US energy market, the <a href="http://www.nrc.gov/">Nuclear Regulatory Commission</a> keeps a special eye on the country's <a href="http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=207&amp;t=3">99 commercial nuclear reactors</a>. Other countries have multiple levels of state-owned nuclear infrastructure, sometimes consisting of a company that procures uranium, a second company that refines and enriches it, and then government electrical utilities that purchase and utilize the material.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Armin Rosen/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Old mining equipment in Arlit, Niger, the town closest to the country's two mines.</p></div><p></p></div></div><strong>No one really knows what the actual global market price is. In fact, there is no real single market price.</strong> There are several semi-official prices for uranium - with an emphasis on the "semi" part.</p><p>The uranium market analysis firms <a href="http://www.uxc.com/">UXC</a> and <a href="http://www.uranium.info/">TradeTech</a> both come up with a "spot price" for the material, which is the price for the immediate purchase of a single pound or kilogram of uranium. The companies formulate a longer-term price as well. </p><p>These prices are the result of these two firms' analyses of various uranium transactions around the world and the general state of the market. The prices aren't set by market activity the same way that say, the global oil price, might be. Instead, the UXC and Tradetech prices are approximations of some unknowable ideal price that can then be used as a guideline for pricing individual transactions.</p><p>In Niger, for instance, the purchase price of uranium is determined partly by averaging out UXC and Tradetech's long and short-term prices - and partly by negotiations among the uranium mines' owners, namely the Nigerien government and Areva. </p><p>"Negotiators have these two prices as references," one Niger-based uranium official told Business Insider. "And the rest is really a political issue."</p><p>"Between Niger and France, it's more a matter of politics than a matter of markets," the source added. Still, with uranium, the line between politics and the market is notably thin. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Source: The Ux Consulting Company, LLC" title_caption="The full history of the UXC spot price" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/563cd8aabd86ef10008c7cd8-960/uxc_graph_u3o8.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.uxc.com/">Source: The Ux Consulting Company, LLC</a></span></p><p class="caption">The full history of the UXC spot price</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>The market is opaque.</strong> The small number of transactions, and the difficulties of pricing uranium, means the price can be sensitive to factors that are difficult for even very high-level analysts to fully discern. </p><p>This past summer, Business Insider spoke to Joel Crane, an Australia-based vice president of research at Morgan Stanely and an expert in uranium markets. He said the price of uranium remained low because of the shutdown of Japan's nuclear reactors after the Fukushima incident. But that wasn't the entire story. Japan's sales of its stockpile of excess uranium were impacting the market - but the country's actual trading activity was still shrouded in mystery.</p><p>"The problem post-Fukushima is that no one knows how much uranium Japan has and how much they're selling back into the market," Crane said. </p><p>The price can shift for reasons that no one seems to understand. One uranium industry official Business Insider spoke to in Niamey recalled attending a conference along with some of the world's top uranium market experts. One night, the spot price jumped over 15%. Nobody at the conference seemed to know why. </p><p><strong>There's a very small buyer's pool.</strong> <a href="https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm">The majority of the world's 438 nuclear reactors are in five countries</a>. Only 31 countries even have a nuclear reactor. Relatively few of them have multiple utilities or mining companies that actively compete for uranium. </p><p>"Uranium is a particular product," Abu Tarka, the<span> head of Niger's High Authority for the Consolidation of Peace, explained to Business Insider.</span> "It's not like oil. You can't sell it to just anyone. Uranium depends on people who can buy it and have a nuclear industry."</p><p>The "price" is determined through a small number of often-secretive transactions, including long-term deals that sometimes determine price, volume, and production levels for a buyer and seller for years into the future. "Unlike oil which is traded several million times a day, uranium is traded once or twice, or sometimes zero times per day," Crane told Business Insider. "It's a very illiquid market."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Kazatomprom worker checks the radiation level of uranium oxide at the East Mynkuduk PV-19 uranium mine in southern Kazakhstan in 2006.</p></div><p></p></div></div><strong>The buyer's pool for raw ore is particularly limited.</strong> In the uranium industry, only the owners of a mine can purchase the ore from that mine. </p><p>Here's what that means in practice: In Niger, the mines are operated by the French state-owned nuclear services giant <a href="http://www.areva.com/">Areva</a>, one of the industry's leading companies. Ownership-wise, the mines are structured as joint ventures between Areva and the Nigerien government.</p><p>Sopamin, the company repsonsible for selling the Nigerien state's portion of the country's uranium, owns an average of 33% of the mines. Areva owns the other 67%. Areva purchases two-thirds of the mines' output from that French-Nigerien joint mining venture, while Sopamin purchases the remaining third. They each pay the same price for the ore, based on a price and a production level that the mines' French and Nigerien governing board sets each year.</p><p>Sopamin sells its share of the uranium to a small group of buyers around the world. If a buyer wants to purchase uranium from either of Niger's mines, it would have to do it through Sopamin or Areva. This is one of the many awkward things about the uranium industry in Niger: Sopamin and Areva are partners in operating Niger's mines, but they're sometimes competitors in the broader marketplace.</p><p><strong>Uranium follows a very circumscribed supply chain.</strong> There's another wrinkle to the uranium market that warps the buyers' market even further.</p><p>Milled uranium isn't close to reactor-ready: The uranium has to be refined, enriched, and then loaded into fuel assemblies that can be inserted into nuclear reactors. The milled uranium has to be sent to the small number of companies that can refine it into enrichable form, companies called converters.</p><p>Only three large-scale converters exist outside Russia and China: <a href="http://www.converdyn.com/">Converdyne</a> in the US, <a href="http://www.cameco.com/usa/">Cameco</a> in Canada, and the Areva-owned <a href="http://www.areva.com/EN/operations-756/comurhex-pierrelatte-the-final-step-in-the-conversion-of-natural-uranium.html">COMURHEX facility</a> in France. All of Niger's uranium goes to COMURHEX. Technically, Sopamin doesn't actually take ownership of the material until it arrives at the converter in France. When a utility purchases uranium, it pays a negotiated rate direct to the supplier, along with refining costs paid to the conversion company.</p><p>So Sopamin and Areva purchase uranium from a French-Nigerien joint venture at a price negotiated between Areva and the Nigerien government. The companies can then sell uranium to utilities based on a second negotiated price once the uranium arrives at the converter in France. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Armin Rosen/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Discarded truck hoppers once used at Areva-operated uranium mines sit in a lot in Arlit.</p></div><p></p></div></div><strong>No one knows where the market is going, or when, or even why.</strong> There have been uranium boomlets in the past. In the mid-to-late 2000s, it looked like one of the smartest investments out there. But the price spike was had a lot to do with the fact that Cameco's <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=aYNr8siTro.Q">Cigar River mine flooded in 2006</a>. Today, the <a href="http://www.uxc.com/review/UxCPriceChart.aspx?chart=spot-u3o8-full">UXC spot price is less than one third of what it was in 2007</a>.</p><p>The uranium price (such as it is) is remarkably sensitive to unanticipated freak events. As one industry official scoffed in Niamey, when a chemical plant blows up in China, as one did this past August, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/tianjin-explosion-china-sets-final-death-toll-at-173-ending-search-for-survivors">killing 144 people</a>, there aren't calls to ban all chemical plants. The nuclear industry is always one accident away from a crisis. </p><p>Right now, the shutdown of the Japanese reactors, and the discoveries of high-purity ore in Canada and Kazakhstan, have uranium prices <a href="http://www.uxc.com/review/UxCPriceChart.aspx?chart=spot-u3o8-full">stuck in a long-term trough</a>. That will probably change once Japan gets its reactors back online, and after China fires up the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/niger-uranium-mine-and-nuclear-china-2015-10">dozens of nuclear power plants</a> it's building. There are plenty of reasons to think that uranium, and nuclear energy in general, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-energy-chart-iran-deal-2015-8">has a bright future</a>. But no analyst can predict with certainty when the price will rebound.</p><p><strong>All of this puts a country like Niger in a difficult spot.</strong> The government of Niger has a single major uranium customer: Areva, the company that operates the country's two mines and buys a majority of the material those mines produce.</p><p>Niger doesn't really have a plausible alternative partner at that level of production or demand - Nigerien uranium is thought to provide <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2013-12-19/areva-niger-who-benefiting-uranium">a third of all commercial electricity</a> in France. This power imbalance produces some strange dynamics in the Nigerien uranium industry. Because Areva and Sopamin purchase uranium at the same price, a high price for Nigerien uranium arguably hurts the government's overall bottom line. If Areva pays a high prices, so does Sopamin.</p><p>And there's little political appetite for the government to hoard uranium and wait for prices to increase. That tactic would be hard to justify <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/niger-wfp-2015-9">in a country as poor as Niger</a> and would only convince Areva to scale back its production. After all, Areva is <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/06/areva-ratings-idUSL5N0W81MR20150306">suffering from problems of its own</a>, and doesn't have limitless resources to continue potentially unprofitable mining ventures.</p><p>The close partnership between the two becomes especially strained when Areva's business interests clash with what Nigeriens believe to be their country's national interests. In early 2014, Areva and the Nigerien government <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304811904579586071532799210">shut down the development of a planned mine at Imouraren</a>, in northern Niger.</p><p>This made perfect business sense. Areva could not justify putting thousands of tons of uranium ore on the market when prices were so low. It might even make long-term sense for Niger to wait for the market to shift before it develops additional uranium sites. </p><p>In the near-term, though, the mine's closure put hundreds of Nigerien workers out of a job, and denied the country's often resource-strapped government of potential revenue.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Armin Rosen/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">A vehicle formerly used by the Imouraren mine, which is currently closed.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Niger has to work within the realities of its business relationship with Areva, which is partially shaped by the unique nature of the broader global uranium industry. And it has to defend its own urgent national interests at the same time. It can't <em>just</em> treat its ties with Areva as a normal business relationship.</p><p>One Nigerien uranium official described the dilemma this way: "If you care about fixing social issues or providing jobs in the north and you still want to make money, it's very complicated."</p><p><em>Armin Rosen reported from Niger on a fellowship from the <a href="http://internationalreportingproject.org/">International Reporting Project</a>.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/map-every-nuclear-bomb-explosion-history-2015-10">Animated map shows every nuclear-bomb explosion in history </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="k2ZThheDor7PLVd9x8ZGXdrTglwjaH3i" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "morgan stanely" and got 5 results

Russia needs to come up with a new growth model

Elena Holodny

Traditional car companies may not be able to keep up with the shift to electric cars

Matthew DeBord

2015 was a wild ride for the company formerly known as Google

JILLIAN D'ONFRO

REPORT: Greece is getting ready to default

Mike Bird

The market for the one energy source that's a menace to civilization is absolutely mind-boggling

Armin Rosen