No commodity has disappointed more than uranium. But don’t let that put you off. Now is the perfect time to become a uranium buyer (I’m assuming that you’re not the head of state of either North Korea or Iran!).

Prices hit $136 in 2007 and then began a long pullback to around $40. They bottomed in April and have since rebounded to where they are right now – at the $50 per pound level.

Can they go up from here? Take another look at the chart. You can see that the highs are still getting lower, and the lows are also dropping. In other words, the downward trend is still intact.

Based on market fundamentals, the price of uranium should be going up soon. Nuclear power contributes 16 percent of world energy demand. In the US, it contributes 20 percent. And with 30 nuclear plants under construction and another 38 in the pre-construction stages with dozens more planned, nuclear’s contribution is sure to rise.

And there won’t be enough uranium to go around. The Atomic Energy Agency recently said that Russia and the U.S.  may cover only five percent of world demand by 2015.

The current shortage in uranium production is covered by the uranium from dismantled weapons the U.S. gets from Russia. The government-created company, USEC, down-blends this uranium for use in nuclear power plants. But that agreement goes away in 2013.

But the global nuclear power plant construction program isn’t going anywhere. With China and India leading the way, nuclear’s resurrection shouldn’t be ignored by investors.

The entire nuclear industry is revving up, including uranium exploration and mining. It takes 8-12 years to build a mine and get the stuff out of the ground.

One of the bigger companies which has been mining uranium for a long time is Cameco (CCJ). Its stock should grow right along with the sector itself.