DAVID HESS | OPINION
Being a non-VIP customer means having to deal with more of the
volatility in a market where demand is growing. It is unreasonable to assume that supply will always seamlessly match demand, and while the uranium market experiences less day-to-day volatility than oil and gas, it is known to suffer multi-year structural shocks.
turn to international uranium suppliers apart from Kazakhstan to secure deals and maybe help them to expand capacity. Yet a third option is, of course, to pursue uranium production at home. On this third option at least, the US appears to have
acted decisively in recent years and there are several domestic uranium projects advancing—supported by the now famous executive orders and legislative mandates. An example is the Burke Hollow project, which started production in April 2026. It is the first new US in-situ uranium recovery operation to start in over a decade. New mines are also being developed in Canada. Generating headlines, NexGen’s Rook 1 uranium project in Saskatchewan apparently aims to supply 20% of the world’s uranium—a lofty target. Perhaps these North American projects will be enough to offset the reduced availability from Kazakhstan in the future, but one shouldn’t count uranium chickens before they have hatched. The path from resource identification to ore production is an arduous one. However, on the second option, there may be an opportunity for other uranium producers to step up. Behind Kazakhstan (39% of total production in 2024) and Canada (24%) comes Namibia (12%), Australia (8%) and Uzbekistan (7%). It makes for interesting speculation whether we could see a major change in these rankings one day. The other front-end comment that grabbed attention at the World Nuclear Association Symposium was made by Urenco. It relates to the Capenhurst enrichment facility in the UK, where the company is building what it describes as a first-of-its-kind commercial HALEU enrichment plant in the Western world, with an estimated start of operations in 2031. In an industry that increasingly seems to be fragmenting into national and regional blocs, it is
genuinely refreshing to see a facility that has clearly been set up to serve an export market. Most of the demand for HALEU will come from the US, where most of the advanced reactor companies are based—and where several demonstration facilities are now up and running because of the reactor pilot programme. It is clear these developers intend to initially deploy in the US. Microreactor company Antares has been proactively signing agreements with enrichers, first Urenco and more recently Centrus, trying to secure sources for this vital product. While the Trump administration may prefer these companies to be buying from US sources, it seems that the UK and Urenco is marching into a commanding position here. This seems like a bold move from Urenco, and it is not the only one the company has pulled. In June 2026, the company announced that it is also going ahead with expanding low-enriched uranium (LEU) enrichment capacity by 50% at its facility in Eunice, New Mexico. The site is currently the only operating civil enrichment facility in the US. This decision comes in apparent defiance of a US Government announcement in January that it would award $2.7bn to strengthen domestic enrichment capability to a list of companies that very pointedly did not include Urenco. The signs are good that Europe will become the dominant enrichment provider for US nuclear power plants in the future. Particularly if Russian supplies are to remain restricted for the long term. This includes both the location of facilities but also the ultimate ownership of the enrichment companies. It is unclear whether the current US market interventions will ultimately affect that, and even less clear whether they should try to do so. Quite clearly interesting developments are afoot in the nuclear fuel cycle – just don’t expect to read too much about them in this column. ■
In an industry which increasingly seems to be fragmenting into national and regional blocs, it is genuinely refreshing to see a facility that has
clearly been set up to serve an export market. Most of the demand for HALEU will come from the US, where the majority of the advanced reactor companies are based—and where several now have demonstration
facilities up and running as a result of the reactor pilot programme. It is clear these developers intend to initially deploy in the US.
www.neimagazine.com | October 2026 | 17
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