I. The Central Fact: A 45 Percent Equity Surge in Three Months
For eighteen months the uranium market had the look of a party after midnight: the music still playing, the dancers drifting away. Hedge funds, the most enthusiastic guests of 2023, had quietly reversed and built large short positions on the theory that the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust would run out of cash and be forced to liquidate its hoard. The theory died in the second quarter, and it did not die quietly. Sprott sidestepped the squeeze by issuing new shares. The spot uranium price jumped 15 percent. The URNM equity ETF surged 45 percent in three months. The market, which had felt half-asleep, suddenly sat bolt upright.
What followed was less a recovery than a revelation. A string of announcements — political, multilateral, industrial — made clear that the nuclear build-out had ceased being a talking point. It had begun.
II. Analysis: A Demand Curve the Models Have Not Yet Caught
On May 23, the White House signed four executive orders compelling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license reactors on an eighteen-month clock, with the explicit target of quadrupling U.S. nuclear capacity to 300 gigawatts by 2050 and ten large reactors under construction by 2030. On June 12, the World Bank tore up a sixty-year-old ban on financing nuclear power; its previous and only loan to the sector had been 40 million dollars to Italy in 1959, when Eisenhower still sat in the White House. On May 8, Ontario confirmed four GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactors at Darlington to meet electricity demand projected to grow 75 percent by mid-century, with first power due in 2030.
Westinghouse responded on July 18 with plans for ten AP1000 reactors in the United States, construction starts by 2030. Japan's Kansai Electric reopened its Mihama site survey, the first serious step toward new construction in the country since Fukushima. Several hyperscale technology firms have now committed to nuclear-powered data centers — AI demand explicitly named in the executive orders. None of these projects, nor the AI build-out we have flagged in earlier letters, is yet built into the standard uranium demand models. Add them, and the deficit beyond 2030 widens meaningfully.
III. Implications: Four Marquee Projects in Trouble
If the demand story is by now widely appreciated, the supply story is not — and that is where the real leverage lies. Several of the projects on which the consensus 2030 balance sheet depends are wobbling. Saskatchewan's Arrow may face delays. Paladin's flagship Namibian mine is producing below expectations. Australia's Honeymoon in-situ leach project has run into technical problems. In Kazakhstan, Kazatomprom — the world's largest producer — is wrestling with development issues at its massive Budenovskoye 5 and 6 deposits, and the company has openly traded volume for value.
These are not fringe assets. They are the four projects meant to bridge the gap between today's supply and tomorrow's demand. Their slippage compounds the deficit the market is already running, and it does so before a single SMR ordered in May 2025 needs its first kilogram of fuel.
IV. The Position: Early in a Cycle the Mid-2000s Already Rehearsed
The setup is tightening from both ends: a visible swell in long-term demand and a quiet erosion of expected supply. The last time uranium combined a similar demand swell with a similar supply disappointment, in the mid-2000s, the spot price rose ten-fold. We are still early in this cycle. The first leg — Q2 2025 — has lifted spot 15 percent and equities 45 percent. That is a small fraction of what the structural arithmetic suggests is coming.
For Africa, the second-order matter is the World Bank decision. Power-starved grids from Senegal to South Africa now have, for the first time in two generations, access to multilateral capital for nuclear projects. Niger, which supplied a fifth of French enriched uranium for decades, sits at the other end of the trade. The fuel cycle is reorganizing around a build-out the market has barely begun to price. A bull market in uranium is underway, and the structural pressures beneath it are only getting stronger.