Kyushu Electric Power confirmed on Monday that Sendai nuclear power unit no 1 would be restarted yesterday and be generating electricity by Friday.

Full operation is expected in early September.

It marks the first Japanese restart since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in early 2011.　

The uranium spot price remains at $US36 per pound.

London’s Numis Securities estimates it will take more than that to break the current stalemate between uranium producers and nuclear utilities.

“The key will be the return to long-term contracting – long-term average term volumes are circa 175 million pounds per annum, but were only 24Mlbs in 2013 and 77Mlbs in 2014, according to Cameco estimates,” Numis said.

“At present there is no incentive for producers to lock-in low prices going forward, and on the other foot, utilities are not under pressure yet.”

Numis said the big unknown was the level of inventories.

“So, whilst it is early we think we should start to see some significant price traction for uranium over the next two years, and the long-term fundamentals still stack up given the restart of Japanese reactors [24 applied for restart] and the build out in China [24 reactors under construction], plus dwindling secondary supply and a lack of new projects in the pipeline,” he said.

“On Cameco's numbers, there are 64 reactors under construction worldwide, which should see an increase in uranium demand of 3-4% per annum and take consumption from 165Mlbs to 230Mlbs over the next 10 years.”

Producers such as Paladin Energy and Cameco have stated that the price would need to rise to at least $75/lb to incentivise new projects.

Australia’s uranium stocks were mostly higher yesterday, including a 12.5% rise by Peninsula Energy, which is one of the few companies globally building a uranium mine.