Thomas Lamb | from Myriad Uranium

My guest this week is Thomas Lamb, CEO of Myriad Uranium Corporation. Thomas brings a unique background to the table—he started in classics and law before diving into mining. We discussed his journey from building a gold producer in Mexico to leading uranium projects in the US after a pivot from Niger due to a military coup.

Thomas explained the uranium sector's dynamics. The world produces about 160 million pounds annually but consumes 200 million, with stockpiles dwindling. This drives prices from $30 to $75 per pound. Kazakhstan leads production at 43%, while the US consumes 50 million pounds but produces under 1 million. Australia hosts the largest deposit at Olympic Dam.

We covered nuclear energy's role in energy security and climate goals. Thomas highlighted its safety, noting no deaths from Fukushima and designs that withstand impacts. Data centers and AI demand are fueling future growth, with tech giants like Microsoft building near reactors. China builds reactors en masse, slashing costs to 3-4 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Thomas addressed myths: uranium mining poses low risks except for radon in high-grade areas, and it's energy-dense compared to coal. He stressed sovereign risks in Africa versus stable jurisdictions like the US and Canada. For Myriad, focused on Wyoming's Copper Mountain project, he sees potential for hundreds of millions of pounds of uranium, positioning it as a developer with historical data from Union Pacific.

Thomas warned investors about risks like overvaluation, promoter hype, and transition failures from development to production. Myriad trades as M on the CSE, MYRUF in the US, and C3Q in Frankfurt.

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Phil Muscatello: G' day and welcome back to Shares for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. Is nuclear the answer to energy security while helping to achieve climate goals? What's behind the surge in the price for uranium? And what does it mean for miners and explorers? Joining me today to talk about the power of the atom is Thomas Lamb.

Thomas Lamb is the CEO of Myriad Uranium Corporation

Hello Thomas.

Thomas Lamb: Hi, it's a pleasure to be here.

Phil Muscatello: Thomas Lamb is the CEO of Myriad Uranium Corporation. So tell us about your background, which I believe has a lot of arts and classics in it. And when did you get involved in mining and exploration?

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, very good. I was always into science and in high school I actually was, uh, going to be an astrophysicist, but it turns out you had to be on the roof of the, the astronomy building all night most nights of the week, you know, looking at the stars, et cetera. And I wanted to be at the pub, uh, with my friends during. And so uh, I ended up switching to classical history, Latin and Greek and classics. I loved it that in Canada you do an undergrad before you go into law. I did that. Then I became a lawyer and an M and a corporate lawyer, especially for public companies. If you're from Vancouver and you're an accountant or lawyer or something, you end up in mining. A lot of the time that happened to me.

Phil Muscatello: It's a bit like Perth in Australia here.

Thomas Lamb: Just like Perth, Yep. You know, I ended up helping resource companies, also forestry companies. Loved it. Ran into an old friend on the street. We used to play Dungeons and Dragons together when we were nine years old. He's an engineer, I was an M and a lawyer and we decided to be entrepreneurs in the mining space. So we started a mining company, incorporated a company put Some money in the bank account. And then we just built something. We ended up building a gold producer in Mexico that was worth a few hundred million dollars. When we IPO'd, it was a successful company. It's a fair amount of luck involved, I have to confess. But also we learned a lot along the way. And that's what happened. I moved to London, went to London business school, did a master's there, and moved to Russia, got on the board of one of Russia's big companies, big gold mining companies. Second largest gold mining company in Russia at the time. That was 14 years ago. And that was a fabulous experience. And so I really just, you know, had a wild adventure. Built companies in East Africa, sold them to an offshoot of Glencore, which was called Jervois. It was a Melbourne based, an Aussie company. I worked for them as an executive and, you know, here I am now in uranium. As CEO of this company. I'm a bit of an Africa specialist. Our company previously was focused on Niger, which is next to Nigeria in the Sahara Desert. Big uranium producer. But there was a military coup there a few years ago. We refocused to the United States and that has been a great move. And here I am, CEO of myriad uranium with projects in the United States. And I'm a uranium guy now who defunct it, as we say.

Phil Muscatello: That is so strange. Jervois was the first company, the first stock I ever purchased back in the late 80s, I believe.

Thomas Lamb: You're kidding. How interesting. Yep. Aussie companies, they really just go on forever. They. You can't kill them. Yep. Isn't that so? I was an executive for them.

Phil Muscatello: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's such a, such a coincidence.

There can be problems with operating in some of Africa's sovereign jurisdictions

Um, so there's so many questions that, uh, come to mind out of that. Well, one of them obviously is sovereign risk because there is a lot of mining that does happen in Africa, but there can be problems with operating in some of those jurisdictions.

Thomas Lamb: You know, 100%. Investors must keep in mind that, you know, you really have Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Western Europe, I would want to say the United States. But the United States is getting pretty, it's evolving. But you've really only got a few countries that are just really strong in terms of predictability. You hear politicians talk about we have to cut regulations, we have to fight business people. Actually, regulation is really strongly correlated with wealth and growth and human well being, et cetera. Now

00:05:00

Thomas Lamb: you just have to make sure that it's the right regulation and efficient, etc. Well, Africa is not particularly regulated and it doesn't have institutions. It doesn't have, generally speaking, the history, uh, and culture that we take for granted sometimes in Canada and Australia. So yeah, as an investor, you will hear the promoters of companies talk about their projects in Africa saying this is the very best of something. The best copper deposit in the world, or uranium or gold. And it very well could be. However, local people, they're there and you're not. And even executives from Australia, Canada, Europe, the U.S. i mean, they go home to their home city and they live their nice relaxing life. They're not going to the middle of Congo to enforce the contract they have with the local people. You can't. You simply can't. You think you have an agreement with the government or et cetera, but those things can be torn up on a whim. And then, uh, things change. So you have to heavily discount projects. The value of projects in unpredictable jurisdictions.

Phil Muscatello: Yep. And sometimes you end up getting run out of town at the point of a gun as well. Anything can happen often. Thomas Lamb: We had a military coup in Niger.

Phil Muscatello: Oh, that, yeah.

Thomas Lamb: We Myriad's first project was a beautiful uranium project in the middle of Niger in Central West Africa. And there was a military coup. Our people were stuck in the middle of the desert for weeks and maybe two months and no fly zone, you couldn't drive around. And that was it. We lost all of our projects and, uh, whoosh, there goes years of work.

Phil Muscatello: And because you hear all these, the whole mining industry is built on stories, isn't it? And that's just something that you've got to be really careful about.

When did you first become aware of uranium as a sector

But let's turn to uranium. When did you first start, uh, becoming aware of uranium as a sector and growing your knowledge in that space?

Thomas Lamb: The company that I started with my childhood friend called Gold Group in 2005 shared an office with a company called Universal Uranium. I don't remember the details of that company, but I do remember that, say, 2006, 7, 8, uranium was hot, the price was skyrocketing and the entrepreneurs in our office started Universal Uranium and raised millions of dollars. And I think that company, like all the rest, ended up evaporated. But I thought, wow, uranium can get really hot really fast and can be very exciting. That's when it started for me. Then three or four years ago, I was actually sitting on the beach drinking a margarita and my phone rang. We had sold our Cobalt company to, uh, this offshoot of Glencore called Gervois and it's a Melbourne based company and I was an executive for Gervoie. And then I left and I was going to think about what to do next, sitting on the beach. Good friend of mine called and he said, I've got some issues. I have a uranium company, projects in Niger. And he said, I'm not an Africa guy and I don't speak French well. I spent 11 years on and off in Africa and I speak French. So I came in to help for three months. This is how these things happen. I put down my margarita, I said, okay, I'll help for three months. And here I am years later as a CEO. That's often how you think you're going to be a consultant for a few months. You end up CEO.

Phil Muscatello: Yeah. These sliding door moments that, uh, change your life.

Thomas Lamb: That's right.

The world consumes 200 million pounds of uranium per year and produces 160 million

Phil Muscatello: Can you give us an overview of the uranium sector and the industry, what the size of it is and how many reactors there are and you know, what's the shape of it?

Thomas Lamb: Don't hold me to this exactly, but I think there are around 400 large scale nuclear reactors globally. Around 100 of them are inside the United States. Each of those consumes roughly 500,000 pounds of uranium per year. Then there are other uses for uranium weapons and medical things. The world produces roughly 160, maybe 163 million pounds of uranium per year. The world consumes 200 million pounds of uranium per year. Because the Soviet Union and the United States were building nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, they were mining a lot of uranium and globally a lot of uranium was, was produced during the Cold War. There's huge civil stockpiles. That's extra uranium. That is what is feeding this supply deficit that I just mentioned. Where the world consumes 200 million, produces 160 million per year. That 40 million has been the accessing civil stockpiles and decommissioned nuclear warheads and that sort of thing. However, all that stuff has run out. So

00:10:00

Thomas Lamb: now we've seen the price of uranium rise on a per pound basis from $30 a pound up to $75 a pound on the spot. Market price of uranium is going up. Utilities have to keep buying uranium in order to fuel their nuclear power plants. And that is kind of a general outline of uranium production consumption. And it's these large scale nuclear reactors that consume it in terms of producing uranium. Australia has a mine called Olympic Dam. Uranium is a byproduct, but it's the world's largest uranium deposit. Kazakhstan produces 43% of the world's uranium, roughly annual uranium production. Canada is a big producer and some African countries. Canada has the world's highest Grade uranium by far. In Saskatchewan in central Canada. The United States consumes 50 million pounds of uranium per year and produces just under 1 million pounds per year. So those are some parameters for your audience to understand. The United States again has just under 100 nuclear reactors, large scale, active for historic reasons. I think it's 1/4 to 1/3 of those use. A fuel bundle that is made by the Russians, comes out of St. Petersburg. What generally happens is the uranium goes from Kazakhstan into Russia. And this process is universal around the world. It gets turned into something called uranium hexafluoride. That gas. It's a gas. It gets spun in a centrifuge, just like under the mountains in Iran. The U.S. bond and then gets concentrated up from 0.7% uranium 235, which is the, the unstable isotope, 0.7%, up to 3.5 to 5% uranium 235 put into fuel pellets and then from Russia or wherever this is made, sent around the world. The US relies on this Russian fuel manufacturing because it's quite customized. That's the landscape as it sits. Interesting situation. Russia, Ukraine, war, Kazakhstan sitting between China and Russia, getting squeezed. Kind of a bear hug, panda bear hug. And making everybody's lives very interesting in the uranium sector. And of course, I can go on about anything else that you like.

Phil Muscatello: No, no, it's interesting. Uh, there is a lot that comes out of that. But is it also produced anywhere else or do these centrifuges exist in other countries to supply the uranium market?

Thomas Lamb: Absolutely. The French have a company called Orano and they are a big producer of nuclear fuel. It's called the fuel cycle. Taking uranium, upgrading it, turning it into the fuel ultimately. And these exist in other places. Europe, Canada and the US have fuel manufacturing and the upgrading systems, but Russia has a very, very good business going for that. Chinese too, and some others.

Phil Muscatello: Ditch the spreadsheets. Sharesite is Investopedia's top tracker for DIY investors. Invest smarter, not harder. Grab four months free on an annual premium plan at sharesite.com sharesforbeginners Are there any unique challenges in mining for uranium? I mean, obviously I guess there'd be a lot of safety issues involved, you.

Thomas Lamb: Would think, but actually you can actually go on YouTube and watch scientists eat uranium.

Phil Muscatello: I'll put a link to that.

Thomas Lamb: Yep, I think you can. Now you'll see it actually uranium itself. If you have a urinary, especially if you're on a uranium mine, inside is different. Uranium is not that dangerous. What's dangerous is radon gas that is formed inside a uranium mine, it gets created and that is what's dangerous. So if you're in an underground uranium mine, you need a lot of ventilation. And in Saskatchewan the grades of uranium are so high that actually it is dangerous. Whereas a US mine or an Australian mine or an African mine will have grades of 0.2% uranium. You know, whatever rock is 0.2% made up of point 2% uranium. In Saskatchewan it can be 15, 20, 25% uranium, which is enormous multiple of that. That gets dangerous. So those mines are often mined by robots, uh, and remote control. But it's not too bad actually. Uranium mining is not particularly dangerous otherwise.

How safe is nuclear power as a source of energy

Phil Muscatello: Yeah, just leading on from that, I think we should address the elephant in the room is how safe is nuclear power as a source of energy?

Thomas Lamb: Now the line from the World Nuclear association and then also, you know, everybody in the business these days is that it's very, very safe. They keep iterating and updating safety. But you know, they thought Fukushima was very safe. And then there was something unexpected, you know, something unexpected happened there. Earthquake, tidal waves, et cetera. So the unexpected can still happen. But uh, as far as I recall, nobody died from Fukushima

00:15:00

Thomas Lamb: and it's actually was not that serious. I mean serious accident. Don't mean to minimize it, but you know, there are lots of reasons why it's uh, not as bad as people think. A lot has been learned from that and they've been upgrading so it's thought of as extremely safe. Now you can hit these reactors with a, with a missile and generally nothing serious happens. They're designed that way so, or an airplane. So that's, that's what they say, quite safe.

20% of US power is nuclear, just under 20%.

Phil Muscatello: So we're hearing a lot now about data centers being built, immense amounts of power that's required. How much of that has been fueling the surge in demand?

Thomas Lamb: Now it hasn't fueled the surge in demand too much yet, but everybody knows it's coming because you can predict it, you can model it. So it's going to be enormous. The US produce 20% of US power is nuclear, just under 20%. And Microsoft, Google, everybody and other data and AI, ChatGPT or OpenAI, they are building their data centers next to nuclear power plants now and planned, uh, nuclear power plants or nuclear power plants that are going to sort of be refreshed and reopened and that sort of thing. So that is all happening. There's no question. And so what you can do is you can model existing supply demand. This is based on large scale nuclear reactors that are either planned in China. China is building 30 and then has 100 plant massive build out there, which is going to give them very cheap access to electrons to power their data and AI. The US has to catch up. I don't know how it will. But you can model all this and the model is very, very exciting for the industry, even disregarding data and AI. But you add data and uh, AI and the curve is just like this in terms of demand. So it's coming next year and the year after. It's going to really start to bite. Big centers in Texas being planned, uh, eastern US and all over China.

Phil Muscatello: What are the discussions you've had in the industry? Because, um, there's a lot of people in Australia who, you know, they're behind the ban on nuclear. We've had a ban on nuclear for I think 40 years or something. What's the view in the industry of Australia's position in all of this?

Thomas Lamb: Well, somebody mentioned the other day reminded me that Greta Thunberg is uh, you know, the young woman who's a, she's Swedish environmentalist. She is now, I was going to say pro nuclear, but she's, I think it's more accurate to say she's not anti nuclear. So even, you know, the environmental campaigners in Europe are not against nuclear. Now the, the green parties throughout Europe, Germany aside, that's a legacy of the link between the green, some people say link to the Soviet and East German and then the Green Party in Germany to get Germany to rely on Russian gas. It's a whole other interesting story. But the rest of the green parties all throughout Europe are now pro nuclear as being green, zero carbon, very safe, as we talked about. So that is Europe. And so we, you know, in North America we've always been fairly pro nuclear except for uh, our province of Quebec. So we plus the Europeans, because things have changed. We look at Australia and we wonder if you leaving yourselves way behind. Nuclear is considered very safe, very clean. These reactors are going to last for, we now think 60 years, but really it's going to be 100 years very long term once they're built and it provides you with cheap electricity and very clean. So we think that frankly, Australia is behind the times. Your states, I guess, that have the ban in place and uh, you know, these, this is antiquated thinking. It made sense maybe 30, 40 years ago. Chernobyl was politically useful for some politicians to be anti nuclear, but there's no reason to be anymore. That's the, that's what everybody, how people view Australia we hope that your states that have the bans in place will, will drop them.

Phil Muscatello: There is a movement behind it, believe me there is because we've got such uh, huge resources of it anyway.

Thomas Lamb: Amazing.

Myriad is developing two uranium projects in Wyoming and New Mexico

Phil Muscatello: So let's talk about Myriad, the company itself. Where are you operating, where's the company listed and what would you like to share with listeners?

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, great. So we're listed In Canada, the U.S. and Frankfurt, various German exchanges. As happens, we're a Canadian public company. Our projects are in Wyoming and New Mexico. The Wyoming project is called Copper Mountain. Even though it's uranium, it has the potential to be one of America's biggest uranium projects. Union Pacific Railway, big US Railway and the utility Southern California Edison invested a large amount of money, 85 million US in today's dollars, advancing the project. In the late 1970s they drilled

00:20:00

Thomas Lamb: drilled 2,000 boreholes and they planned a large scale conventional uranium mine for our project. The Three Mile island nuclear incident 1979 shut down the US uranium sector. That's in fact why you have 1 million pounds of production but 50 million pounds of demand. It's because the US used to produce enough uranium to meet that demand. Our project was going to be part of that production story to feed these planned reactors in California. It's a wonderful project. It could have several hundred million pounds of uranium in it, making it one of America's largest. There are assessments that give it that number. U.S. department of Energy. So we are advancing it and we think it's going to be one of America's big projects at this stage.

Phil Muscatello: You're an explorer, is that correct?

Thomas Lamb: We consider ourselves an explorer and developer where a developer, which is the, you know, the middle stage and then there's producer, as many in your audience will probably understand. But we already know the uranium is there. Now we get to, we know that a huge amount is in the center of the project. We now get to do work to expand and see what is in the surrounding area. We are already very confident that there's a lot of uranium in the surrounding area. There has been work done to preliminarily establish that. And so we're also a developer because this was going to be a mine. We have the mine plans, so we're kind of in between and uh, this is fairly advanced in its own way, this project.

A high proportion of uranium projects fail at the development phase

Phil Muscatello: What's involved in going between the development phase to the production phase, what has to take place?

Thomas Lamb: It's a very important complex phase. A lot of projects fail. If you have investors, whoever in your audience has invested in a company that's about to Transition to production. Make sure you remember that a high proportion of these projects, they fail at that stage. So what you often see is that the value of the company goes up, up, up, it's about to make a switch to production and then something goes wrong and it, and it collapses. That happens in uranium. There are two ways to produce uranium. You can conventionally mine it, that's probably what we'll do for the most part in Wyoming. Or you can pump acid into the ground and it picks up the uranium and then you suck it back up kind of. And then you separate the uranium from the acid, you reuse the acid. That's a different way of mine. It's called in situ leaching or in situ recovery. Either way you can get a lot wrong. Chemistry of that process is easy to get wrong. You can be about to start producing a huge amount of uranium. You get the chemistry not quite right. Maybe there's a lot of basic rock in the under underground and it'll absorb the acid and you can't pick up the uranium. That happened to a company, a well known company called Peninsula, which ah, it may even be Australia listed, I'm not sure. But it has a project up the, up the road from us in Wyoming. It was going to start mining and it raised $65 million, then $70 million and it could never quite get the chemistry right. And all that money that was invested by investors around the world was destroyed. So you need to get the engineering right and then mother nature has to cooperate. No matter how many boreholes you drill, you don't really know till you get down there either exactly. Uranium has, the way uranium moves, uh, and forms, um, can be unpredictable. So you have to do a lot of work and measure a lot of expertise involved, engineering to plan.

You love the unpredictability of mining and the joy of discovery

Phil Muscatello: Is that what you love about the, or one of the things you love about the industry, the unpredictability of it or the um, joy of discovery.

Thomas Lamb: It's like the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. It's times 100. I think it's the most wonderful business in the world. I have been lucky. I've built some companies with my colleagues that have been quite successful. But I've had a lot of failures. And you are left shattered. Not only has it not worked out, you've invested years of your life and it turns out the geology in the undersurface is not what you expected. You spent five years of your life, a lot of your own money. You've raised tens and tens and beyond, millions, uh, of dollars and then it doesn't Work out. But, you know, if you've studied psychology, humans, we love that feeling too. We're hooked on that too. And I love it, even though I hate it. And then the delight in something working out and you create value for your investors. So it's fun to make money for yourself. But if you've ever been able to make a lot of money for other people, that is, you can do it in mining. It's the best feeling. And you really don't know until you get to the end. So, yeah, I love it. Interesting, right? Wonderful.

Phil Muscatello: It is, yeah. It's a fascinating industry. I mean, I've had other guests from the mining sector

00:25:00

Phil Muscatello: on, and they talk about, about, you know, there's a sniff of some mineral or, uh, element. Yeah. And they come into town, they raise a bit of money. You know, sometimes they it works out, other times it doesn't work out. But they have a lot of fun along the way.

Thomas Lamb: Oh, fabulous. The industry is full of fellow travelers. And we hear that there's something down the road, you know, antimony or silver or uranium, and we go check it out. We have geologists, they're like us, but different. You know, they're a little different than the entrepreneurs, but sometimes they can be. There's a lot of overlap. You send them down there to go check it out, they come back with a report. You go to your circle of friends and network, let's raise $2 million and figure this out. Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn't work out, but when it does, it's something you raise $10 million to drill. Turns out it's really something. You keep going, you sell the whole company to another company and you've more fellow travelers, you know, doing it together on a bigger scale. It's wonderful.

Phil Muscatello: Yeah. Multifaceted industry.

Thomas Lamb: Um, the science is fabulous. The science is so complex. I love it.

Phil Muscatello: Uranium is very energy dense. Does that mean you actually need to mine a lot less of it than you would any other particular element or mineral?

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, I think that's true in a way. You know, these uranium mines can still be quite vast, but certainly if you're comparing coal. Geez, I used to know the multiple.

Phil Muscatello: There was a ratio. Was it the coal uranium ratio for energy density?

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, absolutely.

Phil Muscatello: You could imagine just thinking about it as. Yeah. That it would be quite big.

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, you've got it. I mean, it's tens of thousands of times more energy dense and is my recollection. So. Yeah. So you can have a small uranium mine that can power cities for decades.

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Let's talk about the regulatory framework between Canada and the U.S

Phil Muscatello: Let's talk about the regulatory framework. What's the difference between Canada and the U.S. regulation and how do they impact the operations in Wyoming and New Mexico?

Thomas Lamb: Okay, Canada has a layer which is our first nations or aboriginal people, and they have rights across a lot of Canada. So that's a third layer of, you know, another layer of government, maybe, uh, even a fourth layer depending on where you are. So you end up partnering with them oftentimes or they're your kind of local partner, that is adds another layer of complexity in Canada. In the United States, they've had a different system historically. And most of the areas that isn't another layer and you just deal with, uh, federal, pardon me, federal and state regulators. Inside the US There's a patchwork of good states and bad states. In the US There are states where historically it's been very tough to get any mine built. And then there's just, um, a bunch of good states down the west middle. Wyoming, Utah, Nevada. Used to be New Mexico, now it's New Mexico's back and then a bunch of others and maybe a few out east. And that's sort of been it. Otherwise you're not really building any mines. Canada, you've historically. And then Alaska of course is a big mining state. Canada's been a bit different. Canada is very resource rich and you've been able to build mines across Canada. Historically, the regulators have been open to it across Canada. US You've wanted to be in these, in these states you interact with the local regulators. This is the state regulators, and they often lead the process, even though sitting behind them is a federal regulator, uh, often the blm, the Bureau of Land Management, that you also have to interact with. But in both cases, both countries, Canada and the U.S. you have to do environmental studies, water studies, wildlife studies, cultural studies, understand the impacts and mitigate them. That usually takes for drill permitting can take three months to six months, depending on what's going on. And then for bigger permits, like mine permits, it can take a few years. Some states are a lot faster. And now with, you know, the new push inside the United States and Canada now to accelerate the permitting of resource projects, things are actually picking up steam. So instead of, you know, four years to permit a mine, for example, maybe we are now looking at two in some cases. I think Canada is a bit slower in most provinces. Those are some differences. But fundamentally, around the world, unless you're going to try something tricky, you have to do the same steps. You have to figure out if you're going to contaminate the water and not do that. You have to engineer around issues, uh, in the subsurface. You have to watch out for wildlife and local people and preserve history and culture.

00:30:00

Thomas Lamb: And there are no shortcuts. If you're going to do it right, it should be the same, very similar process around the world.

As a mining guy, you understand risk as a general concept

Phil Muscatello: As a mining guy, you understand risk as a general concept and you know, there's a lot of people who hear stories like a few years ago, lithium was a very fashionable element to invest in as uranium is becoming that. Now people can invest directly with miners, they can invest in ETFs. There's many ways of gaining exposure to the sector. But what do you see as the key risks for the sector and you know, so that the audience can be made aware of this before rushing off into another trend.

Thomas Lamb: That's a great question. Humans now, what was that line? I think it was even Shakespeare or something like, you know, he was a man or a human. But even, but just more so. And in mining everything goes to extreme. The extremes, greed, fear. You know, people in mining, especially the junior mining, are. You have to have huge risk tolerance, but it's very emotional. So, uh, what I would say is that there are a lot of stocks that are wildly undervalued and there are a lot of stocks that are wildly overvalued and that is a risk. You, you know, you be very difficult. It's very difficult for, for people to understand from the outside what's going on with these companies. That's a risk. There are promoters and marketers who are very effective. Actually, you want to invest with, uh, management teams that are effective marketers because they will reduce the cost of capital, the cost of the money that is required to advance their projects. On the other hand, you don't want to invest with management teams that exaggerate too much because eventually the truth always comes out about things. All these factors are to the extreme in mining and especially in junior mining. These are all important risks. So, yeah, what it's like to be a human is all these foibles and.

Phil Muscatello: You know, it's magnified in mining, isn't it?

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, yeah, it is.

Phil Muscatello: And the stories that, uh, come out. Yeah, it's interesting because I was just did an episode recently about biotech and there seems to be a lot of Similarities between the biochemics. Yeah, that you get to go through the stages of approval process, you know, the same way that a mine has to go through the various stages from exploration to development to production.

A lot of people in Australia still oppose nuclear industry saying renewables are cheaper

Now I remembered the question before I was going to ask and it's just getting a little bit back into the nuclear industry. And a lot of people in Australia who still oppose nuclear industry say that it's too expensive to build and that renewables are cheaper. Uh, do you have any thoughts about that?

Thomas Lamb: I don't know a lot about the difference in cost. What I do know about is building one off nuclear reactors, large scale nuclear reactors and then you know, the infrastructure around them that is expensive, you know, could be $20 billion. Then it doesn't really pay, it doesn't really work. If you instead do what the Chinese are doing, which is you have a team and maybe uh, the first one costs you 20 billion because you're just learning the next one cost you 19 by the time you're at your 30th one, it's costing you $4 billion per nuclear reactor to build a large scale reactor. If you do it that way, these teams just move from reactor to reactor site. It gets cheap. Their electricity is going to be 3 or 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Whereas if you build a one off nuclear reactor, you know, that's going to be really depending on how you do the math and discount it, 15, 20, 30, 40 cents per kilowatt. Now I don't know how that compares with other renewables, but I don't know if you're supposed to call uranium renewable. But anyway clean. So that's the key. You need to build a bunch of them to get the cost down. Then it can be very cheap.

Small modular reactors and microreactors are definitely coming on

Phil Muscatello: What about small modular nuclear reactors? Do you know much about them? I know I'm sort of, I know you're a mining guy, but you know, just interesting that you must have some sort of views on that.

Thomas Lamb: Well, actually normally I wouldn't in other commodities, but in uranium you end up learning a lot about everything top to bottom because you kind of have to. We often go to these conferences, for example the World Nuclear association conference every September in London. And it is everybody from China, juniors all the way up to the utilities and everything in between, fuel manufacturers, et cetera. So I know a little bit they are coming on. You have exciting companies like oklo, OKLO and a number of others. Small modular reactors and microreactors are definitely coming on. You've got number that have been selected in the United States for kind of further support, government support. And they passed regulatory hurdles how much uranium they're going to consume relative to large scale reactors. You know to be seen, they inject, this is back to emotions. They inject so much excitement

00:35:00

Thomas Lamb: excitement into this sector and attention. So this used to be a dusty nichy sector, uranium and nuclear power plants and bit stale and stagnant. But small modular microreactors have just injected so much excitement into this because they brought with them the tech groups from San Francisco and elsewhere. Uranium and nuclear is a small sector. Globally tech is enormous. So where we need a billion dollars to build something, we think that is an incredible amount of money. A tech company comes in and says well we have 3 or 400 billion in cash. We're trying to figure out how to deploy and this is nothing. And we can really create a lot of leverage with it. And they're doing that with small modular and microreactors, um, which they can, you know.

Phil Muscatello: Yeah, much more of a startup mentality with plenty uh, of dosh behind it.

Thomas Lamb: Absolutely. So small modular microreactors have brought that excitement and the tech sector with them and that is that, that's spilling over into our business more conventional uranium junior market.

Myriad Uranium is a Canadian junior uranium company. We trade in Canada on the symbol m m

Phil Muscatello: So Thomas, tell us about where the audience, listeners, viewers can find out more about Myriad Uranium.

Thomas Lamb: We have a website, myriaduranium.com and if you Google us, just Myriad, uh, the name is a legacy of a former, previous iteration of the company. So it's a bit funny call it Myriad Uranium. We trade in Canada on the symbol m m, uh us under the symbol my r u f frankfurt. Also uh, c3q and yeah, go to our website and we're all over social media. We think we're going to be an example of one of these junior uranium companies that has this exciting growth. I'll leave you with one thing about Myriad. A prominent US Uranium analyst calls Myriad the call option in the uranium space. In the United States we are the call option on uranium. And that's very exciting. And if you know you're doing shares for beginners, your audience may be interested in learning. If you don't already know what a call option is, you can Google that and see that it's something that could generate enormous torque, big leverage and that means a big return for the investor.

Thomas Lamb: Shares for Beginners has helped me tremendously

So that's Myriad.

Phil Muscatello: Thomas Lamb, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure meeting and chatting with you.

Thomas Lamb: Yeah, it really has. Hope to talk to you again before too long. All the best.

Phil Musatello: Thanks for listening to Shares for Beginners. You can find more@sharesforbeginners.com if you enjoy listening, please take a moment to rate or review in your podcast player or tell a friend who might want to learn more about investing for their future.

00:37:35

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