‘Nuclear renaissance’ puts spotlight on uranium supplies
- 12 June 2025
The British government’s £14 billion Sizewell C nuclear power plant announcement is “great news for energy security” in the UK, according to prominent law firm Pinsent Masons, and more fuel for “the long-term nuclear thesis” of people such as Yellow Cake CEO Andre Liebenberg.
Liebenberg says that argument – for a sustained surge in global nuclear power generation and uranium demand – is being boosted on a number of fronts. Rolls-Royce SMR’s selection as preferred partner to build the UK’s first small modular reactors (SMRs) is another bright marker, he says, noting recent approval for an initial SMR in Ontario, Canada: North America’s first commercial, grid-scale SMR.
“SMRs will be a game-changing technology,” Liebenberg said on a recent investor webinar. He sees a time when they will be “part of our everyday life”.
Large-scale nuclear reactor investment in China, a return to nuclear in the US and parts of Europe, and what some see as near-term proliferation of SMRs all have uranium bulls excited. The International Energy Agency says capital flows to nuclear power have grown by 50% over the past five years and could reach $75 billion this year. As of October 2024 there were 62 reactors with about 75GW of capacity under construction, according to the IEA. “If [SMRs] can be brought successfully to market at reasonable costs they could provide new opportunities for nuclear power in more markets around the world,” the agency said.
The world’s “nuclear renaissance” will be the focus of a keynote panel at this year’s Resourcing Tomorrow conference in London in a few months’ time. And that is sure to put a spotlight on uranium supply.
Liebenberg will be joined on the panel by Dominic Kieran, managing director of Cameco UK, and CQS Natural Resources Growth and Income portfolio manager, Robert Crayfourd. Crayfourd told Reuters recently: “Even before the AI boom and SMR hype the uranium outlook was strong.”
Another Resourcing Tomorrow 2025 keynote speaker, Gracelin Baskaran, told a recent Council on Foreign Relations forum on the geopolitics of critical minerals, in Washington, DC, USA, uranium should be on the country’s critical minerals list – and probably on quite a few others.
“It is actually not on anybody’s critical list,” she said. Baskaran is director of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies’ critical minerals security program.
“Nuclear power is going to be really important here in the US. It’s got bipartisan support,” she told the forum.
“We signal to the private sector in other countries what’s important to us by the [government critical minerals] list. Uranium is something I worry about because we’re still getting a lot of it from Russia. We’ve never stopped. And I don’t think we have a viable plan, to be honest, to be able to scale up production to meet even our current consumption levels let alone our growth ambition levels.”
UK-based Appian Capital Advisory says driven largely by the growth of AI, “the tech sector is leading the nuclear charge”.
“Microsoft has signed an agreement to have its data centres powered by the Three Mile Island power plant,” the firm says. “Not to be outdone, Amazon and Google are investing billions into SMRs to power their expansion into AI technologies.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency projects that global nuclear power capacity could more than double by 2050, with demand for uranium potentially reaching up to 100,000 tonnes per year by 2040 [also double current global production].”
Yellow Cake, a circa- £1.09 billion (US$1.5 billion) London-listed company, does what it says on the tin. It’s a uranium investment company buying and holding uranium oxide – yellowcake – to “allow investors to express a view on the commodity”, Liebenberg says.
“You can hold gold at home; you can hold copper at home. But you can’t hold uranium oxide,” he says.
Yellow Cake has been buying the product since 2018 and storing it mainly with Cameco in Canada. A contract with Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom allows it to buy up to US$100 million of yellowcake a year at spot prices through to 2027. Liebenberg says it started buying at $21/pound.
“When we entered the market in 2018 the spot market was oversupplied. It’s not today,” he says.
“The era of excess inventory is over.”
None of this is yet spurring spot uranium prices to levels that will incentivise what many see as vital new mine production.
Canada’s Red Cloud Securities said last month spot-market buyers were having trouble finding any product at around $70/lb.
“While term market activity has been moderate lately we expect contracting volume to pick up as utilities scramble to safeguard their supply,” the Toronto investment firm said.
“Utilities have over one billion pounds of uncovered uranium requirements over the next 10 years and contracting volumes are still not up to replacement levels. The winter fears of AI not driving growth in demand aren’t realistic and most demand curves do not reflect those numbers from AI and small modular reactors.
“Supply [now] seems strained. The Russian import ban was legislated into a law [in the US] with no desire to legislate it out; North American producers are missing production targets, and developers are facing permitting delays.
“We … believe [US president] Trump’s critical element, mining and nuclear push may be working. Permitting and licensing may speed up.
“[But] if anything, it’s becoming more obvious that the West won’t have access to Kazakh uranium as China continues to grow its fleet, approving almost 10 reactors per year.
“We believe the fundamentals are ripe for long-term strength in the uranium market.”
Liebenberg thinks that is spot on.
“China is currently building 26 new nuclear plants,” he says. “They’re building reactors in 5-6 years. That’s before they move to SMRs.
“The visibility on the demand side is quite good.
“A lot of people think the spot uranium price is halfway towards where it will get to. Bank of America’s forecast is $135/lb spot for 2027.”
On the supply side, “there is enough uranium – there is enough of everything”.
“But what does it cost to produce it? $80 [a pound] just doesn’t incentivise the building of new mines.”
