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Uranium’s Quiet Squeeze: A Chemical Rule in Moscow and the Fuel the West Still Can’t Make
On September 12, Russia’s government revised the approval process for sulfuric acid exports, a change that will run through the end of the year. It sounds like a narrow chemicals story, and on paper it isn’t even a ban, just a new approval layer. But sulfuric acid is what Kazakhstan uses to leach uranium out of the ground, and Kazakhstan produces roughly 40% of the world’s supply.
Kazatomprom, the Kazakh national uranium company, said on September 21 that its Russian suppliers have confirmed they can still meet 2026 delivery obligations, and that the company doesn’t expect the new rule to affect this year’s production guidance. Next year is a different question. Negotiations over 2027 acid supply are still open, and Kazatomprom has yet to issue formal 2027 production guidance, which normally doesn’t arrive until February. For now, the uranium market is pricing in uncertainty rather than a confirmed shortfall, and that distinction matters more than the headlines suggest.
The Price That Won’t Sit Still
Uranium is trading near $89 to $90 a pound, with long-term contract prices at roughly $96.50, a nominal all-time high that has now pushed past the 2007 record of $95. Spot and long-term prices don’t move together the way they do in most commodities. Around 87% of the uranium utilities buy each year comes under long-term contracts rather than spot purchases, so the long-term number is the one that tells you what buyers are actually willing to commit to years out, and it has been climbing steadily even while spot has bounced around.
A Producer That Can’t Keep Up With Its Own Customers
Global reactor demand for uranium was about 68,920 tonnes in 2025, and the World Nuclear Association’s reference scenario has that climbing past 150,000 tonnes by 2040. The world currently mines only around 60,000 tonnes a year. That gap isn’t new, but it’s compounding, because one country supplies the plurality of the world’s uranium and that country just had a reminder of how exposed its supply chain is.
Kazatomprom had already trimmed its own 2026 nominal production target by roughly 10%, from about 32,800 tonnes to 29,700 tonnes, citing a supply-demand balance it didn’t see as justifying a return to full output. The company also picked up a new six-year exploration license at the Kyzyltu block in Kazakhstan this month, with early estimates suggesting around 10,000 tonnes of uranium resources there, a reminder that new supply is still years away from actually mattering.
The Fuel Nobody Can Buy Yet
Most of the next generation of reactors, including the small modular designs now clearing U.S. regulatory review, need a more highly enriched fuel called HALEU. Right now, only Russia and China can produce it at commercial scale. The United States banned imports of Russian uranium products in 2024, which cut off the one working commercial supply line the West had.
Washington is trying to build one of its own. The Department of Energy committed $2.7 billion over ten years in January 2026 to rebuild domestic enrichment capacity for both ordinary reactor fuel and HALEU, and awarded a $900 million task order to expand the only NRC-licensed HALEU producer currently operating in the United States, at a facility in Piketon, Ohio. That plant is aiming for commercial-scale HALEU output by the end of the decade. Until then, the fuel a growing number of American reactors will eventually need doesn’t really exist domestically in the volumes required.
Utilities Are Buying Less, Reactors Are Multiplying Anyway
Here’s the part that looks contradictory until you separate the two timelines. U.S. utilities actually bought 16% less uranium in 2025 than in 2024, about 46.9 million pounds versus 55.9 million, even as the price they paid rose 11% to $58.46 a pound on average. That’s not a market losing interest. It’s utilities sitting on healthy near-term inventories and declining to chase a rising spot price they don’t have to chase yet.
Meanwhile the longer-dated demand story keeps adding names. TerraPower’s Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming received the first NRC construction permit issued for a commercial non-light-water reactor in more than 40 years, back in March, and construction is now underway. Kairos Power’s Hermes test reactor already holds a construction permit. NuScale has NRC-approved small modular reactor designs, including an uprated version cleared earlier this year. And in a sign of how tight HALEU supply already is, Oklo signed an agreement with the Piketon plant’s operator to supply fuel for its planned reactors, with deliveries not scheduled to begin until 2029. None of these projects move the near-term uranium number. All of them are why the long-term contract price keeps climbing anyway.
The Backlog Nobody’s Filled Yet
This is the number that doesn’t get much airtime outside government data. The U.S. Energy Information Administration tracks how much of utilities’ future uranium needs are actually covered by signed contracts, and how much isn’t. As of the end of 2025, the uncovered portion was a modest 952,000 pounds for 2026. By 2035, on the same measurement, it grows to 36.4 million pounds in that single year alone, and the cumulative uncovered total across 2025 through 2035 comes to 186 million pounds. Utilities aren’t required to fill that gap today. Eventually, though, someone has to sell them uranium they haven’t yet agreed to buy, at whatever price the market is offering when they finally do.
$85 or $130? Take Your Pick
Bank of America is the most bullish of the major forecasters, putting 2027’s average price at $130 a pound. Citi sits in the middle with a wide scenario range for 2026, a bull case averaging $99 and a bear case averaging $85, though its near-term call is for spot to clear $100 within three months. Goldman Sachs is the most conservative of the three, expecting spot to reach roughly $91 by the end of 2026.
The disagreement comes down to timing more than direction. Nobody in this group is calling for lower prices long-term. The question is whether the supply-side pressure, Kazakh production constraints, the HALEU bottleneck, a decade of underinvestment in new mines, forces prices up sharply in the next year, or whether utilities’ comfortable inventories mean the reckoning happens more gradually, on the 2027-to-2030 timeline the EIA’s own backlog data points to.
Five Things to Watch
FAQ
Not exactly, and not yet. Russia revised its approval procedure for sulfuric acid exports on September 12, running through the end of 2026. Kazatomprom has confirmed 2026 deliveries aren’t affected. The real question is what happens to 2027 supply, which is still being negotiated.
Utilities bought 16% less uranium in 2025 than in 2024, but that’s a function of comfortable existing inventories, not weak demand. They’re covered for now. The unfilled market requirements the EIA tracks show that comfort fading steadily after 2027.
It’s a more highly enriched uranium fuel that most next-generation reactor designs need to operate. Only Russia and China can currently produce it commercially, and the U.S. banned Russian uranium imports in 2024, which is why Washington is now spending billions to build a domestic supply chain from close to scratch.
They agree on direction and disagree on speed. All three forecasters here see prices going higher; the spread mostly reflects how fast they think Kazakh supply constraints and the enrichment bottleneck will actually bite versus how long utilities can keep drawing down existing inventories first.
No, but it’s a newly visible one. Kazakhstan has supplied roughly 40% of world uranium for years. What changed is that a single foreign policy decision in Moscow, over a chemical most people have never thought about, was enough to put that concentration on investors’ radar.
Sources
- World Nuclear Association: World Nuclear Fuel Report – Global Scenarios for Demand and Supply Availability 2025-2040, September 2025
- World Nuclear Association: High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU)
- IAEA: Adequate Uranium Resources Available, But Sustained Investment Essential to Support Global Nuclear Capacity Growth, September 2026
- U.S. Energy Information Administration: 2025 Uranium Marketing Annual Report, August 2026
- U.S. Department of Energy: U.S. Department of Energy Awards $2.7 Billion to Restore American Uranium Enrichment, January 2026
- U.S. Department of Energy: NRC Issues Construction Permit for TerraPower’s Natrium Advanced Reactor, March 2026
- World Nuclear News: Kazatomprom to Lower Uranium Production in 2026, August 2025
- Kazatomprom: Kazatomprom Obtains Exploration Rights for the Kyzyltu Block and Updates on Sulphuric Acid Supplies from Russia, September 21, 2026
- Interfax: Russia Bans Sulfuric Acid Exports Until End of Year to Ensure Sufficient Supplies for Mineral Fertilizer Producers, Industry, September 2026
- Investing.com: Citi Shares Its 3-Month Uranium Outlook. Here Are the Price Targets, September 6, 2026
- NAI 500: Supply Gap Signals Sustained Rise in Uranium Prices, Goldman Sachs Bullish Until 2026, December 2025
- The Oregon Group: Why Bank of America Still Sees $130/lb Uranium: Cameco Is the Warning, August 2026
- SEC EDGAR: Centrus Energy Corp Form 8-K, Oklo Letter of Intent for HALEU Supply, 2026
Full Disclosure
AktieGo has a separate, paid relationship with Radiant Uranium Corp. (CSE: RUC), disclosed in full in AktieGo’s paid coverage of the company. That relationship didn’t fund this article, and Radiant Uranium isn’t mentioned anywhere above.
This standing disclosure runs on all AktieGo uranium-sector coverage, whether or not a piece names Radiant Uranium, for as long as the relationship stays active. The compensation is cash for content creation and distribution, separate from independent editorial work, and has no bearing on what gets published here.
Sources: World Nuclear Association, IAEA, U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Kazatomprom, and financial press as cited. AktieGo doesn’t independently verify third-party data, so figures should be checked at the time you’re reading this.
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