It was always going to be an uphill task. Building and financing a mine is hard enough, but throw in the politics of nuclear energy and the sensibilities of western Europe and it starts to look like a long shot.
Yet in the early 2000s, when Berkeley Energia arrived near Salamanca, in western Spain, with plans to mine uranium, it hoped to become one of the world’s top-10 producers.
Things started well. the Australian company is a serious player that had forged alliances with French and Spanish state nuclear outfits, and its shares leapt tenfold in the first two years.
Chaired by the well-respected Ian Middlemas, Berkeley had relatively little trouble raising cash, with a $120m (£98.7m) investment from Oman’s sovereign wealth fund arriving in