MW Trump and Meta's nuclear deals address the AI-fueled energy crisis. But can U.S. uranium supply meet demand?

By Myra P. Saefong

Nuclear-power demand is set to grow with Meta-Constellation deal

The four executive orders recently signed by President Donald Trump help to address the importance and growth of the U.S. nuclear-energy sector in domestic power generation, but it'll be quite a challenge for the nation to provide the uranium it requires to quadruple nuclear-energy capacity in 25 years.

"The overall message from these orders is very positive for the overall nuclear sector," said Jonathan Hinze, president at UxC, a nuclear-fuel market information and analysis firm. "There is clearly significant growing demand for baseload energy supplies in the U.S.," especially from hyperscalers, including large-scale data centers, and other industrial users such as manufacturers.

The Trump administration has said it wants to quadruple the nation's nuclear-energy capacity to 400 gigawatts from 100 GW by 2050.

However, nation produces very little uranium, noted Hinze. That's the fuel used in those nuclear power plants to generate electricity.

In order to meet the U.S. government's nuclear-energy-capacity goal, it would need to quadruple the nation's current demand of around 45 million pounds of U3O8 - uranium concentrate - to roughly 180 million pounds each year, said Hinze.

That would be quite a feat, even as the government aims to boost domestic production of the fuel. Last year, the U.S. produced just around 800,000 pounds, and the nation imports an average of 40 million to 50 million pounds each year, Hinze said. The world as a whole today only mines about 165 million pounds a year, he added.

Still, the executive orders have been well received in the market, contributing to gains in shares of uranium miners, including Energy Fuels Inc. (UUUU), and related exchange-traded funds, such as the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF URNM, for the month of May.

Read: Nuclear-power stocks rise as Trump signs orders to aid sector. Progress may be slow, analyst warns.

And it's clear that nuclear-power demand will grow. On Monday, technology firm Meta Platforms Inc. $(META)$ agreed to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois for 20 years under a deal with Constellation Energy Corp. $(CEG.UK)$.

Read: 10 nuclear stocks expected to rise as much as 94% after Meta-Constellation deal

Overall, the executive orders announced on May 23 address different aspects of ensuring that robust growth can occur quickly to support the goals of American Energy Dominance and National Security, said Scott Melbye, executive vice president at uranium-mining company Uranium Energy Corp. (UEC), which also saw its shares climb in May.

He summed up the executive orders by saying they will "streamline and fast-track regulatory and permitting processes" of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, maximize the deployment of small modular and advanced reactors at federal sites to support national security and artificial-intelligence competitiveness goals, revitalize the American industrial base including the nuclear-fuel cycle, and spur breakthroughs in new reactor technologies and testing.

'Looming energy crisis'

All of that is particularly important as the U.S. faces a "looming energy crisis," wrote Maxwell Shulman, research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors, in a recent note, driven in part by new investments in AI data centers and manufacturing.

Read: AI and crypto use lots of energy. Nuclear power and uranium look like the perfect fix.

A study on grid reliability from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association published in April forecasts that U.S. energy demand will grow by more than 50% over the next 25 years. Separately, a study released by the Electric Power Research Institute last year said data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030, which would be more than double the amount currently used, it said.

The power industry's "dream solution" is having dedicated small modular nuclear reactors on site for large data centers, said Shulman. "Rather than rely on the grid, they aim to build their own personal facilities for consistent prices and energy supply," he said. He noted that unlike solar or wind power, nuclear power is "reliably constant at all times of day - a necessity for servers that can't go down."

Challenges

The problem with all of that is the U.S. "isn't building nuclear power anymore," said Shulman.

The nation has hardly built any new reactors in the last few decades. Two U.S. nuclear reactors went into commercial operation in Georgia in 2023 and 2024. Before that, that nation hadn't seen the start of a new nuclear reactor since 2016, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Permitting and regulatory functions for the industry also need to be reformed, said Uranium Energy's Melbye. "If we do things the same way we have done them for decades, we are doomed to failure."

While the U.S. still needs "regulatory independence to ensure world-class American nuclear safety culture," modern, advanced reactors should be licensed and permitted in under two years, not eight or 10, he said. The U.S. also needs to "rapidly reverse the atrophy which set in regarding our domestic fuel cycle," he added, noting that the U.S. was not dependent on Russian uranium before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and that it can achieve that again with "focused" Trump administration policy priorities.

Uranium imports

For now, the U.S. is heavily reliant on imports of not only uranium, but also for the conversion and enrichment of that uranium to process it into the usable fuel for nuclear power plants, said UxC's Hinze. "It is very hard to see how the U.S. will shift to a more domestically focused nuclear-fuel supply chain anytime in the near future."

'It is very hard to see how the U.S. will shift to a more domestically focused nuclear-fuel supply chain anytime in the near future.'Jonathan Hinze, UxC

U.S. nuclear generators imported 99% of the uranium concentrate they used in 2023 to make nuclear fuel, primarily from countries such as Canada, Australia and Russia, according to the EIA.

While the Trump administration's executive orders acknowledge the dependency on imported uranium, it will be "challenging to expand domestic production without higher uranium prices, faster permitting and financial incentives," said John Ciampaglia, chief executive officer of Sprott Asset Management.

Spot uranium prices were at $70.90 a pound on Monday, according to UxC.

It's hard to estimate a price that would incentivize production, but a $150- to $200-a-pound price range "would not be unrealistic," said Ciampaglia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is seeing progress toward expansion of domestic enrichment capacity, he said.

Urenco, an international supplier of uranium-enrichment services headquartered in the U.K., announced the expansion of an enrichment site in New Mexico, while French-owned nuclear-fuel-cycle firm Orano said it plans to build a uranium-enrichment facility in Tennessee.

But other challenges to growth in the nuclear-power sector remain.

Financial incentives for renewable energy have been scaled back or eliminated altogether, said Ciampaglia, as the Trump administration has shifted its focus away from "intermittent or variable power forms" such as solar and wind power.

Nuclear power had benefitted strongly under the previous Biden administration because of its emphasis on climate-change mitigation, said UxC's Hinze. The reversal of these climate policies under Trump could mean that some utilities or energy users will now be "less interested in nuclear as they gravitate more towards fossil fuels," he said.

Read: Steel, not energy, is key to coal's future growth. Here's why.

At the same time, as the GOP-led Congress pushes forward with various cuts to programs as part of its new tax bill, some programs that supported nuclear in previous years may see cuts, Hinze added.

-Myra P. Saefong

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June 03, 2025 12:54 ET (16:54 GMT)

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