Thor Mining, THR, Up 30% In Week – The Uranium Excitement?

Thor Mining (LON: THR) shares are up some 30% over the past week, 5% just today. This appears to be a mixture of two different effects. The sector as a whole, uranium supplies domestic to the United States, is becoming more interesting. Further, Thor’s exploration programme for that domestic uranium appears to have taken another step forward. Each of these is potentially value additive and thus the effect upon the Thor shares.

The background first. President Biden has signed off on using the Defense Act to try to encourage domestic to the US exploration and extraction of critical minerals. This is the usual list of fashionable items, lithium, cobalt, rare earths, nickel, for the EV and battery revolution. This doesn’t mean a huge amount, for it’s still State law that governs mining permissions in most cases. But it means the Feds are in favour of development now, not as is often the case, against.

Also Read: The Best Uranium and Uranium Mining Stock to Buy

This also applies to the penumbra, to vanadium for example, which is a potential battery material. And then there’s uranium. Russia is one of the world’s leading suppliers, both of yellow cake and also of the actual nuclear fuel itself. Given events, there’s a certain desire to be doing more of this at home. Looking for uranium and vanadium inside the US is therefore a good place to be at present.

Which is exactly what Thor Mining is doing at its Wedding Bell Project in SW Colorado. They’ve done the field sampling, the very first stage, and confirmed the historic results for the area. The next stage of such exploration is to go drilling – to see what’s well under the surface as well as what’s on it. Their announcement is that they’ve received the necessary County permissions to go and do this. Next comes the Bureau of Land Management and so on. It’s entirely normal in the US that there are these multiple, overlapping, licences necessary.

As with many such explorations, the basic mineralogy of the area is well enough known. There have been historic mines in the area, that’s why there’s a uranium mill not far away at White Mesa (the Energy Fuels one). What isn’t known is the absolute detail of exactly how much there is and precisely where – that’s what the drilling programme is designed to update upon.

The truth is that this exploration is at a very early stage, and there’s no guarantee that the programme will be successful. However, given that political background change, what has changed is that if it is, then the necessary licences and permissions to extract look as if they’ve just got a bit easier. It’s also true that the global uranium price has risen recently, making successful prospecting potentially worth more.

This is all still very early days for Thor Mining. But the general winds seem to be at their backs, rather than being headwinds.