Prices are information - no, really, price changes tell us things about reality

That prices are information is obvious. Yet all too many don’t quite grasp how important this point is. So, a little story from the past pointing out that changes in prices allow prediction. There might be the slight echo or tarantara of an own trumpet being blown here but the story still stands as an example.

Back in 2013 one of us said, elsewhere:

The most cheering thing I've heard recently on this subject is that the price of thorium is now positive. That might not mean much without explanation, so here goes: There's thorium in all sorts of minerals from which we already extract interesting metals. The tantalite and columbite that we make our capacitors from for example: there's enough in the wastes from their processing that old factories that used to do this are now Super Fund sites in the US.

Vast sums of money being spent carting off the lightly radioactive wastes into secure storage (actually, just to piles by uranium mills). And if you actually happen to have any thorium around, as I do, getting rid of it is a very expensive proposition.

The usual solution to this sort of problem is that you refine whatever it is up to a useful commercial purity then sell it. But there's almost no one out there still using thorium: thus the price of thorium, given the disposal costs, is actually negative. Until just recently, that is.

Lynas, which has built a new rare earths refinery in Malaysia, will have thorium as a byproduct (there's always Th in your rare earth ores). They've announced that they're getting offers to actually buy it from them: the price has turned positive.

Now, OK, that's possibly only a matter of interest to metals geeks like myself: but what it actually means is that someone, somewhere, is being serious about starting up test runs of thorium reactors. It's the only possible use for the material these days in any quantity.

If someone's buying then someone is at least considering filling up a test reactor. My best guess is that this is the Indian research programme: although it could, possibly, be the Russian one and there are rumours of a Chinese as well.

From Nature, Sept 2021:

China prepares to test thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor

That prediction turned out pretty well actually. It was also driven by absolutely nothing other than that the price of a particular metal has changed. From negative - an expensive waste that must be managed - to positive, something that folk actually desire.

Prices are information. The trick is to work out what they’re telling us, not attempt to either change or ignore them.