By Anthony Harrup

The surge in demand for data centers and nuclear power to keep them running is stressing the global uranium supply, raising concerns about a potential shortage of fuel for reactors.

World uranium production has been lower than demand for several decades, and utilities are making up the difference mostly by drawing on stockpiles.

"Nuclear demand is rising and there needs to be, ultimately, more uranium purchased," said Jacob White, ETF products director at global asset management firm Sprott, which runs the world's biggest physical uranium trust.

The U.S. has the world's largest fleet of nuclear reactors, followed by China and France, and China is leading the way in new plants under construction, according to the World Nuclear Association.

There are enough uranium resources globally to cover projected growth in nuclear power, but large quantities of investment are needed in exploration and production to meet future reactor requirements, the association said in its 2025 World Nuclear Fuel Report.

"The market is already structurally in deficit, just to fuel the current fleet of active reactors," said Ben Elvidge, product head at Uranium.io, a blockchain-based platform for buying and trading physical uranium. "By the time you build in reopenings and extensions of the life of reactors, the demand side is going to continue to grow exponentially."

Uranium is the primary fuel used in nuclear reactors, but it needs to be enriched by separating the more radioactive particles that create a chain reaction to release energy. That is done by converting it into a gas and spinning it at high speeds in a centrifuge.

With the two largest economies driving nuclear energy demand, more uranium needs to be mined, converted and enriched, analysts say.

"I think that for miners to bring up production they need assurances that long-term prices will not only rise but rise sustainably over time," said Kenny Zhu, an energy and commodities research analyst at ETF firm Global X.

The U.S. has little uranium production, and relies heavily on imports from Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia and Russia.

The reliance on foreign countries for uranium "is a bit worrisome when you look at nuclear buildup that China, Russia, and India are doing," said Mark Mukhija, chief executive of Eagle Energy Metals.

The U.S. has only about 1% of the world's uranium deposits, but around 30% of its nuclear power generation. "The United States will never be able to produce all the uranium that is needed, so we will always need Canadian and Australian imports. You would want to produce every pound of domestic uranium you can get," Mukhija said.

Eagle Energy Metals, which is in the process of going public through a proposed business combination, is developing the Aurora uranium mining project in southeastern Oregon, with first production expected in 2032.

Some see recycling of spent nuclear fuel eventually contributing to supply, and the Energy Department has made grants to companies developing recycling technologies, among them Curio and Oklo.

"I see a strong market demand for recycling as a key missing piece of the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle that has deteriorated over the years," said Curio chief executive Ed McGinnis.

The U.S. imports about two-thirds of its enriched uranium, much of it from Russia, which faces a total ban starting in 2028.

"The question now before us is whether there is sufficient capacity that's going to come online from Western sources in 2028 to offset the Russian gap," said Amir Vexler, chief executive of U.S. enrichment company Centrus Energy.

"I think we can safely say that the market is going to be more strained in terms of supply than it's been before, at least in recent history. Whether it's going to create an issue or not remains to be seen," he added.

Centrus Energy is expanding a manufacturing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., investing more than $560 million to produce thousands of advanced centrifuges for its uranium enrichment plant in Ohio, which it's also expanding.

Urenco, which supplies around a third of the U.S.'s enriched uranium from its plant in New Mexico, last year added centrifuges as part of a three-year expansion plan.

Orano USA, a unit of France's Orano Group, is developing a $5 billion nuclear fuel enrichment plant, also in Oak Ridge, Tenn., with first deliveries expected at the start of the 2030s.

If the U.S. were to meet its goal of quadrupling nuclear power generation by 2050, it would imply increasing uranium enrichment twelvefold if all the fuel is to be domestically sourced, said Jean-Luc Palayer, chief executive of Orano USA.

"There's no time to lose. The U.S. needs more domestic and more diversified enrichment capacity," Palayer said.

Write to Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 18, 2026 10:34 ET (15:34 GMT)

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