By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com
American and European companies in the nuclear energy supply chain have become increasingly vulnerable to a possible supply shock in the uranium market amid fierce resource competition from China and Russia and the planned surge in nuclear power generation to meet electricity demand.
As many countries are now looking to nuclear power to cut emissions and reliance on imports of oil and gas, and meet the growing power demand from AI and data centers, they would need more uranium supply.
But China and Russia have moved to secure supply from African countries and are buying the key nuclear fuel from Kazakhstan, which is the biggest producer of uranium in the world and prefers to keep its sales diversified.
Not all in the nuclear power industry and the energy companies in the West have realized that competition for uranium supply is leading to a supply crunch, industry executives have told the Financial Times.
“We’re on a depletion curve that I don’t think many customers have realised,” Cory Kos, vice-president of investor relations at Cameco, the biggest western supplier based in Canada, told FT.
Amid plans for expansion of nuclear power generation in many countries, including in the United States, uranium demand is set to surge in the coming years and decades, while Western companies are seeing increased competition from China and Russia for supply.
“Russia and China are rapidly expanding their offtake of mined uranium from international partners, uranium enrichment capabilities, and nuclear infrastructure,” Gracelin Baskaran and Meredith Schwartz with the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote in a report earlier this month.
“To strengthen uranium and nuclear fuel supply chains, the United States must work with allies, implement conducive trade and tariff policies, and invest in both domestic enrichment capacity and uranium ore production abroad,” they noted.
