One year ago, in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world was in a panic about energy security.
Russia was a huge exporter of gas and oil, and many European nations were dependent on it to heat their homes over freezing winters.
As economic sanctions against Russia kicked in, those countries were forced to look elsewhere to meet their energy needs.
Oil and gas prices, accordingly, skyrocketed.
Why was everyone so interested in uranium last year?
But another consequence of this energy crisis was that it compelled many governments to seek alternate sources of fuel.
One of those is nuclear power, which had gone out of fashion after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
All of a sudden, countries like Germany that had mothballed their fission power plants were interested in reviving them.
Of course, that led to tremendous investor interest in uranium producers like Paladin Energy Ltd (ASX: PDN).
The Paladin share price rocketed 37% from January to April last year as the war started. Then it again soared a phenomenal 66% from July to September as Europe worried about how it would endure a bitter northern winter.
Why is no one interested in uranium this year?
However, Paladin stocks have been pretty quiet the last few months.
In fact, the share price has actually dropped 17.1% over the past six months.
So what's going on?
The first driver is that the oil price fell significantly in the second half of 2022, and has continued to dip lower this year.
This is because rising interest rates around the Western world are slowing down economic activity.
So with energy prices cheaper, the incentive to revive nuclear power, with all the cost that entails, is much lower than it was a year ago.
The second factor is that Europe did not experience the deep freeze that many feared.
Those countries managed to stockpile sufficient gas, at considerable expense, over the course of 2022 to heat homes during the northern winter.
Is Paladin still worth adding to the portfolio?
This short-term halt in Paladin's rise hasn't stopped some experts thinking that nuclear power generation has a bullish long-term future.
After all, many Western nations are now determined to not be so reliant on Russia and fossil fuels on a permanent basis.
Last month, Shaw and Partners portfolio manager James Gerrish mentioned that Paladin is a stock to consider buying in dips, if one was willing to tolerate the short-term uncertainties.
"A lot of moving parts are involved when it comes to the uranium price but appetite is building as other energy costs rise as the world strives to move away from fossil fuels," Gerrish said in a Market Matters Q&A.
"We are bullish [on] uranium moving forward, although when [it] starts to really gain traction is hard to forecast due to the uncertain geo-political backdrop."
