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Leave aside for a few minutes crashed out stock markets - the MSCI Barra dollar world equities index is now 50% off its highs - and consider how uranium stocks are performing like something of a bear market darling. Where the world's top 100 mining stocks have surrendered an average of 73% in market value, uranium stocks are down 68%.

But where the top 100 have moved up 30% from recent lows, uranium stocks have gained an average of 51%, led by the likes of Uranium One (up 102%), which last month put on care-and-maintenance its loss making Dominion mine in South Africa, but is making good money from its growing operations in Kazakhstan. Junior stocks have also been rising, led by Hathor Exploration, which has risen more than 400% from its lows, on successes at its properties in the Athabasca region of Saskatchewan.

At this juncture, gold stocks offer the best competition for uranium stocks; at 25% off its highs, dollar gold bullion has fallen the least among major commodities. Pricing of uranium oxide, or yellowcake, the underlying commodity for listed uranium stocks, has been a very different story. Where gold and silver prices peaked in March this year, and crude oil in July, uranium oxide peaked, and popped, in June 2007.

There were several reasons for the construction of the uranium price bubble: the end of Russian dumping and lots of liquidity, provided mainly by hedge funds. Uranium prices moved up from record lows of USD 7/lb in 2001 to a peak of USD 136/lb in late June 2007, and fell to recent lows of USD 44/lb, but have moved up in recent weeks to around USD 55/lb.

Much like "gold bugs" that follow gold bullion (and sometimes gold stocks) wherever it goes, uranium is showing increasing indications of a growing fan club. Uranium, with the highest atomic weight among naturally occurring elements, is some 70% more dense than lead and weakly radioactive. Its key use in the civilian sector is to fuel commercial nuclear power stations. By the time it is fully fissioned, one kilogram of uranium-235 can (with the help of a power station) theoretically produce as much electricity as 1,500 tons of coal.

Uranium is defined as a silver-gray metallic chemical element, and is found in the actinide series of the periodic table, with the symbol of U and the atomic number 91.

Given the longer-term robust increase in power demands across the globe, nuclear power stations, seen as clean compared to coal-powered stations, remain a high priority for an increasing number of countries.

There have been other bubbles in uranium prices, such as the one driven by the Cold War, where the imperative was military rather than civilian. The US Congress passed the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946, creating the Atomic Energy Commission, with the power to withdraw prospective uranium mining land from public purchase, and also manipulate the price of uranium to meet "national needs".

By setting high prices, the AEC created a bubble in the early 1950s, attracting prospectors to every nook and cranny in the US. Moab, Utah was soon known as the uranium "capital" of the world. In due course, the bubble burst, but not before significant amounts of uranium had been upgraded to highly enriched uranium (HEU), mainly destined for military purposes.

In the modern era, uranium bulls have also pointed to the major downblending undertaking called the Megatons to Megawatts Program, which transforms ex-Soviet military-grade HEU to fuel for US commercial power stations. The goal has been to transform around 500 tons of HEU between 1995 and 2013. The downgraded material has so far been supplying at least 10% of annual commercial grade uranium. Global mining capacity for uranium oxide (yellowcake) is currently around 40,000 tons a year.