Name: How AI’s Need For Nuclear Energy Is Fueling A Rise In U.S. Uranium Mining
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T03:31:38.000Z
Duration: 12 min 46 s
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This is the ore being shipped in from the Pinyon Plain mine.

This ore is some of the highest grade uranium ore that's ever come out of the United States mine.

Well, the largest uranium mine comes out of Saskatchewan, comes over to Ontario and then gets enriched down in the U.S.

Uranium prices soaring more than 75 percent over the past year.

While uranium prices have gone down since a high in early 2024, many experts remain confident that demand for uranium, which is mainly used as a fuel for nuclear reactors, is only going to grow.

We see that there's so much demand on nuclear power right now because of its carbon-free attributes, because there's big demand for A.I.

We don't see any of those factors going away.

Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are all betting on nuclear energy to power their A.I. data centers.

The industry is also getting a boost from the Trump administration.

Uranium stocks lighting up as President Trump signs a suite of executive orders aimed at expanding the nation's nuclear power infrastructure.

Trump's executive orders ease the regulatory process around and accelerate the construction of new nuclear power plants in the U.S.

The administration wants to quadruple the nation's nuclear energy capacity from 100 gigawatts in 2024 to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

U.S. uranium requirements are expected to increase from 47 million pounds to approximately 190 million pounds per year, according to one uranium miner.

Once a leading producer of uranium in the world, U.S. production of the mineral has since fallen off a cliff.

But as the U.S. looks to become more energy independent and the demand for energy skyrockets, that's changing.

CNBC spoke to two uranium miners working to restart and ramp up domestic production of the mineral.

We currently are operating three uranium mines here in the United States, but we have several other mines that are at various stages of development.

But the domestic uranium market faces a number of challenges, from finding a qualified workforce to market instability and opposition from people worried about the impact uranium mining will have on the environment and the health of those living close to its mines.

The United States was actually the world's leading uranium producer in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

And a lot of this was because it was a government priority and we strategically used government funding and subsidies to support it.

However, what kind of started happening during the 90s is we saw a deprioritization away from uranium.

Several high-profile nuclear accidents, including the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, also negatively affected public perception around nuclear energy and tanked uranium prices, leading many domestic uranium producers to shutter their mines.

The latest available government data shows that the U.S. government now imports over 95 percent of the uranium feedstock needed to power its 94 nuclear power reactors.

We are the world's biggest nuclear power producer, using about 20 percent of our energy mix comes from nuclear.

The difficulty is we've prioritized nuclear but deprioritized uranium, which we need to fuel our nuclear power and is creating an incongruence in our policy.

In order to grasp just how deep U.S. dependence on foreign uranium runs, it's important to understand how the raw mineral is turned into fuel for nuclear reactors.

The process is made up of five main steps.

First, uranium is extracted from the ground either through conventional open pit or underground mining or by pumping oxygenated groundwater through the ore body to dissolve the uranium oxide before it's pumped to the surface.

From there, the substance goes to a mill where it's processed into a concentrate known as yellow cake powder, though the finished product is often black or brown in color.

Next, the yellow cake powder goes to a conversion facility where it's churned into a gas.

That gas is then sent to an enrichment facility.

The vast majority of nuclear power reactors use the isotope uranium-235 as fuel.

But because naturally occurring uranium contains only a low concentration of this isotope, its concentration must be increased in a process known as enrichment.

Finally, the enriched uranium is sent to a fuel fabrication facility where it's chemically processed into uranium dioxide powder and compressed into fuel pellets for use in nuclear reactors.

The United States is highly dependent on other countries for many of these steps.

We'll take a look at uranium mining first.

Certainly years ago in the U.S., we produced on the order of 30, 40 million pounds per year.

Right now, the demand in the U.S. is around 48 million pounds per year.

Right now, there is only one conversion plant in the U.S.

After that, the product goes to enrichment.

This is actually where we lose a lot of our leverage.

Together, China and Russia hold about 60 percent of the world's enrichment capabilities.

The enrichment of uranium has always been a national security issue.

As highly enriched uranium is also used for nuclear weapons.

Domestic uranium production is making a comeback.

U.S. production of uranium concentrate in 2024 totaled 676,939 pounds, the highest it's been since 2018.

U.S. action to try to reduce our dependence on foreign uranium has been bipartisan.

President Trump requested $1.5 billion from Congress to revitalize the uranium industry and create a uranium stockpile, arguing that propping up U.S. uranium production in the face of cheaper imports was of critical importance to our energy and national security.

In 2024, the Biden administration banned the import of Russian uranium.

The law also unlocked $2.7 billion in federal funding to expand domestic uranium enrichment and conversion capacity.

But that hasn't stopped the U.S. from using Russian uranium.

We restricted many exports going from Russia to the United States following the invasion of Ukraine.

The United States actually never stopped buying uranium.

There is a little asterisk next to it that says that if the Department of Energy deems it to be necessary to operate our nuclear power, there's a provision to continue buying it.

That provision expires at the beginning of 2028.

The fact that uranium was exempt from the wide-ranging tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on April 2nd further demonstrates just how dependent the U.S. is on other countries for this material.

Mark Chalmers is hoping his company, Energy Fuels, can help.

Energy Fuels currently operates three uranium mines across Arizona and Utah, as well as the only conventional uranium mill in the United States.

Ore stockpiles, when we're processing, are fed into the mill and then the mill crush and grinds it.

And then we actually put it into a lead circuit where we go ahead and we solubilize uranium, put it in the solution, and we run it through a number of steps after that and recover the uranium.

Energy Fuels sells its final product, known as uranium oxide powder or yellow cake, to utility companies.

Energy Fuels has four long-term contracts that run out to the 2030 time period.

Right now, though, I want to point out that the long-term price of uranium is $80 a pound and it is greater than the swap price, which I think bodes well for the fact that the utilities are betting on the fact that the price of uranium has to go up.

Energy Fuels expects to produce up to 1.4 million pounds of uranium concentrate this year, but hopes to eventually ramp up production to as much as 6 million pounds per year.

To get up to 5 or 6 million pounds of uranium per year, you're probably looking at least 5 or 10 years because it takes time to get these projects fully permitted, constructed and operating.

An executive order from President Trump has boosted the ability for the United States to produce some of the critical minerals like uranium, copper and gold to help reduce reliance on imports from other countries.

In May, the Trump administration greenlit the restart of operations at a southern Utah uranium mine under a new accelerated 14-day environmental review process.

I can say honestly that we have never seen this level of support from the federal government than we have in the last few years.

Cash is the CEO of UR Energy, which operates the Lost Creek In-Situ Uranium Mine in Wyoming.

The company began mining at Lost Creek in 2013, but paused operations for a few years because of low uranium prices.

Last year, Lost Creek made UR Energy the biggest domestic producer of uranium concentrate.

In 2022, we began to see the market improve.

So the board made the decision, OK, it's time, bring the drill rigs back out, let's start hiring again and let's start moving to production at Lost Creek.

We also made the decision to build out our Shirley Basin project.

Cash estimates that when the Shirley Basin project is up and running, UR Energy will be able to increase its production of uranium concentrate from 1.2 million pounds to 2.2 million pounds per year.

Like energy fuels, Cash says UR Energy focuses on long-term contracts rather than selling on the spot uranium market.

Right now, we've got six long-term contracts in place.

Our contract book is pretty full until after 2029, 2030.

Global demand for uranium is expected to nearly double by 2040 as governments ramp up nuclear power capacity.

With such a high need, experts say keeping up with this demand will prove challenging.

Right now, the uranium miners globally are not keeping up with demand.

It takes years from discovery to the time you produce.

So it's going to take years for that gap to be closed.

And all the while, we see tremendous growing demand for nuclear power.

It takes about 500,000 pounds of uranium per large-scale reactor, one gigawatt reactor.

So if we get up to 5 or 6 million pounds per year, that's effectively 10 or 12 nuclear reactors in the United States of America.

Small modular reactors, which can be built much quicker and cost much less than conventional reactors, can further increase uranium demand.

The U.S. has a lot of room to increase its uranium production, but the difficulty is we have less than 1 percent of the world's reserves.

And when you draw down on uranium, it doesn't replenish.

So in the long term, we're really going to need uranium from other countries.

Another challenge facing the U.S. uranium mining industry is finding a trained workforce needed to ramp up production.

The industry has been on its heels for a number of years.