Uranium
UxC / CME
After a decade in the wilderness following Fukushima, uranium tripled in three years because hedge funds, utilities, and AI data centers all wanted the same pounds.
Top Producers
share of 2024 mine production
Top Consumers
share of 2025 reactor uranium requirements
Main Uses
share of 2024 uranium demand by end use
Top Exporters
share of 2024 uranium production exported; Russia's weight is larger in enrichment services than in raw U3O8
Top Importers
share of uranium import demand; the US runs the largest reactor fleet and imports roughly 99 percent of the uranium concentrate it uses
Global mine production
roughly 60,000 t U
as of 2024
Kazakhstan share of mine supply
roughly 40%
as of 2024
Russia share of global enrichment capacity
roughly 40%
as of 2025
Operating reactors worldwide
roughly 440, with about 60 under construction
as of 2025
2024 spot peak
above $100/lb U3O8 in January 2024
Sprott Physical Uranium Trust holdings
roughly 75 million lb U3O8
as of January 2026
Uranium is the fuel of the world's roughly 440 power reactors and trades unlike any other energy commodity. There is no exchange floor and no pipeline grid; the product, U3O8 yellowcake, moves in drums between a small club of miners, converters, enrichers, traders, and utilities under multi-year term contracts. The visible spot price is an assessment published by UxC and TradeTech from a market that might clear a few hundred thousand pounds in a quiet week. Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom is the dominant producer, mining roughly 40 percent of world supply via low-cost in-situ leaching, with Cameco of Canada second. The fuel cycle adds two more chokepoints: conversion to UF6 and enrichment, where Russia's Rosatom controls roughly 40 percent of global capacity.
The modern price history is a round trip through despair. The 2007 financialization bubble took spot to $136 per pound; the March 2011 Fukushima disaster then shut Japan's fleet, triggered German phase-out, and buried the market for a decade, with spot bottoming under $18 per pound in late 2016 while miners shut even flagship mines like McArthur River. The turn came from finance: the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, launched in 2021, raised billions and bought tens of millions of pounds of physical U3O8, sequestering spot supply just as utilities returned to term contracting. Spot crossed $50 in 2021, then surged past $100 per pound in January 2024 for the first time since 2007.
Two forces sustain the bull case. First, geopolitics: the United States banned imports of Russian enriched uranium in May 2024 (with waivers running to 2027), and Russia restricted exports in response, fracturing the enrichment market into western and eastern circuits and sending SWU prices to records. Second, demand is growing again: at COP28 in December 2023 more than 20 countries pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, and the AI buildout turned hyperscalers into nuclear buyers, with Microsoft underwriting the restart of Three Mile Island in September 2024 and Amazon and Google signing SMR deals weeks later. Prices settled back into the $60s and $70s through 2024 and 2025, but term contracts, where the real market lives, kept rising.
How It Trades
| Venue | Over-the-counter physical market assessed by UxC and TradeTech; CME Group lists cash-settled futures, launched on NYMEX and moved to COMEX in 2020; the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust acts as a quasi-ETF channel for financial demand |
| Benchmark contract | UxC Uranium U3O8 futures (UX), listed on NYMEX in 2007 and transferred to COMEX in 2020, settling against UxC spot U3O8 price indicators |
| Contract size | 250 pounds of U3O8 per contract |
| Price terms | USD per pound of U3O8 (yellowcake) |
| Settlement | Cash-settled against the arithmetic average of the weekly UxC spot U3O8 prices published during the contract month (before the October 2024 contract month, the month-end print alone); no delivery. Physical trades settle by book transfer at the Cameco, Orano, or ConverDyn conversion facilities. |
| Typical curve | Listed several years out but quoted more than traded at the back; term-contract prices (the true long-dated market) have run above spot since 2023, an upward-sloping structure reflecting future scarcity |
| Liquidity | Thin and episodic: futures open interest is a few thousand contracts, and the physical spot market can be moved by a single utility RFP or a Sprott buying day. Most risk transfer happens in bilateral term contracts, not on screen. |
Where It Trades
approximate split of financial and physical volume, 2025; most volume is OTC term contracts rather than futures, and the market is far less liquid than oil or base metals
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- Kazakhstan: roughly 23,000 t uranium in 2024, about 40 percent of world output, led by Kazatomprom joint ventures
- Canada: roughly 7,000 t, dominated by Cameco's Cigar Lake and the restarted McArthur River
- Namibia: roughly 5,600 t (Rossing, Husab, both Chinese-controlled)
- Australia: roughly 4,500 t, including BHP's Olympic Dam
- Uzbekistan: roughly 3,500 t
- Russia and Niger: roughly 2,000 to 3,000 t each, both entangled in sanctions or coup politics
Global mine output of roughly 60,000 t U covers only part of reactor requirements; the gap is filled by inventories, recycled material, and secondary supplies, which have shrunk steadily since the 2013 end of the US-Russia "Megatons to Megawatts" downblending program. Enrichment and conversion capacity, not ore, are the binding western constraints.
Top consumers
- United States: the largest reactor fleet, roughly 94 reactors
- China: roughly 58 reactors operating and about 30 under construction, the demand growth engine
- France: roughly 56 reactors supplying about two thirds of its power
- Russia, South Korea, Japan (restarting), India: the rest of the major fleets
Major uses
- Nuclear power generation: effectively 100 percent of commercial demand
- Medical isotopes, research reactors, and defense: small volumes outside the commercial market
Utilities buy roughly 80 percent of their uranium under multi-year term contracts; spot is a residual market. Fuel cost is a small share of nuclear generation cost, so reactor demand is almost completely price-inelastic, which is why small supply shocks produce large price moves.
What Moves the Price
- Reactor restarts (Japan), life extensions, and new builds, especially China's construction pipeline
- AI data center power deals: hyperscaler PPAs and SMR commitments that pulled forward demand expectations from 2023 onward
- Russian sanctions and the US enriched-uranium import ban, which split the fuel cycle into two circuits
- Enrichment and conversion capacity: SWU and UF6 bottlenecks feed back into U3O8 demand via underfeeding and overfeeding
- Kazatomprom production guidance, sulfuric acid availability, and Kazakh tax changes
- Financial buying: Sprott Physical Uranium Trust inflows sequester spot pounds when its units trade at a premium
- Utility contracting cycles: term RFP waves mark the market's true demand pulse
- Government stockpiling, including the US strategic uranium reserve and Chinese state inventory building
Moments That Made the Market
2007
Spot spikes to $136/lb in a financialization bubble; NYMEX lists cash-settled futures near the top
2011
Fukushima disaster in March shuts Japan's fleet and starts a decade-long bear market
2016
Spot bottoms under $18/lb; Cameco later suspends McArthur River, the richest mine on earth
2021
Sprott Physical Uranium Trust launches and hoovers up spot pounds; price crosses $50/lb
2023
COP28 pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050; spot runs through $80/lb
2024
Spot tops $100/lb in January, first time since 2007; US bans Russian enriched uranium imports in May; Microsoft signs the Three Mile Island restart deal in September
2025
AI-driven nuclear deals multiply; spot consolidates in the $60s to $80s while term prices grind higher
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- In 2010 uranium was a sleepy utility procurement market recovering from the 2007 bubble; the NYMEX future existed but barely traded, and there was no physical fund
- Fukushima removed a decade of demand, then the market rebuilt around scarcity: secondary supplies ran down and the 2024 Russian import ban split the fuel cycle in two
- Sprott's physical trust created a permanent financial bid on the spot market, a mechanism that simply did not exist in 2010
- AI data centers made technology companies direct buyers of nuclear power for the first time, re-rating long-term demand
- Western governments moved from benign neglect to active support: strategic reserves, enrichment subsidies, and tripling pledges