Perhaps it’s too soon to mark nuclear power’s revival in the U.S. but there is a burst of activity that should ultimately yield a new generation of advanced nuclear plants and small modular reactors.
This is especially true for major industrial energy consumers – which now also includes data centers – where there is a strong economic incentive to use more nuclear power instead of natural gas and intermittent renewables.
In Illinois, Meta recently signed a long-term agreement to buy nuclear power from Constellation’s Clinton nuclear plant, the latest in a slew of deals between big tech and the nuclear industry. Constellation also said it would restart Three Mile Island Unit One in Pennsylvania and sell the power to Microsoft under a 20-year agreement. Google, too, has agreed to fund the development of small modular reactors, or SMRs, at three new nuclear sites in Oregon. TVA plans to build SMRs at its Clinch River site and Kairos Power has a blueprint for an advanced molten salt reactor. Moreover, Amazon, Google and Meta signed a pledge in March calling for nuclear energy worldwide to triple by 2050.
Elevating nuclear power on our list of energy options makes sense because it is the only way to generate large amounts of emission-free electricity reliably for AI-powered data centers, electric vehicles and industries. But surging demand for electricity and nuclear power underscores a serious issue: Who will provide the huge amounts of uranium needed to fuel nuclear plants?
Currently, 95% of the uranium used at US nuclear plants is imported from other countries, with Russia and former Soviet States flooding the global market and driving free-market companies out of business. China is also rapidly expanding its influence in the global uranium supply chain. But our dependence on uranium imports is not for lack of domestic resources.
In fact, in the mid-1970s the U.S. was the sole supplier of enriched uranium in the West, and business boomed. Since then, artificially low prices – and policy antagonism to domestic production – have forced U.S. customers into the hands of foreign competitors. Currently, there are only five uranium mines operating in the U.S. in contrast to several dozen in the 1970s and 20 as recently as 2009.
A uranium crisis may not be imminent, but the long-term implications of buying cheap foreign uranium instead of from US mining companies are ominous, particularly for national defense, including the Navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Our nation’s fleet of 94 nuclear power plants also requires a dependable supply of uranium.
American industries, including our defense industrial base, are currently under immense pressure from China’s export restrictions on mineral exports – including rare earth metals. We know too well that the era of overreliance on mineral imports must come to an end. This is an economic, energy and national security vulnerability that has become untenable.
Given the risk of a cutoff of uranium imports or a huge spike in the price of uranium, we need a government policy to counter the threat to our national security and economy. President Trump recently said the Administration will draw up recommendations for reviving and expanding U.S. uranium production. That’s a good first step but we must match intent with action.
Our dependence on imported minerals, particularly from adversaries, poses a grave threat to national security. And it will cause serious trouble for key sectors of our economy if something isn’t done soon to boost domestic production. For these reasons, the U.S. now faces a monumental challenge: scaling up production of uranium, diversifying supply chains to protect national security and doing so in ways that are sustainable.
Dr. G. Ivan Maldonado, Professor, Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Our [UK] dependence on imported…
Food
Gas
Oil
Uranium
Ad nauseam
Can only be cured by wind and Sun…
[Miliband] announced last week in the ‘Onshore Wind Taskforce Strategy’ – to ‘unlock’ 27GW to 29GW of wind capacity by 2030. And how does he hope to do this? By holding a consultation over whether to relax planning rules governing the construction of turbines on commercial and residential properties, in particular semi-detached homes
…
Even by Miliband’s standards, this attempt to spread the fight for Net Zero to millions of middle-class householders is ludicrous.
…
it will require ferrying and craning wind turbines into the gardens of roughly a quarter of Britain’s homes. They will then have to be wired up to the grid, which will only be able to draw power from the turbines when the wind is blowing. Each installed turbine could cost between £10,000 and £20,000 in upfront costs and involve three to four days of installation. And afterwards, expect a lot of complaints from neighbours about the view and the noise once operations begin.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/09/a-wind-turbine-in-every-garden-ed-miliband-has-lost-the-plot/
Miliband probably played with these a lot as a child…
The only steady and copious import, without any danger of running out of supply, is immigrants, legal or not.
I think it’s safe to say that on that front we have a genuine surplus…
I would say he ate a LOT of lead paint chips, probably still does to be this stupid.
Get rid of ad nauseam … (Milliband)?
So be good to Canada. 😉
Lots of uranium in Canada, pipelines from western Canada to Atlantic seaboard being promoted again.
Actually, Britain has oil in the North Sea and gas if it allowed fracing extraction method.
Before starting a mining operation, there’s hundreds of thousands of tons of non-recycled atomic
waste that could be used to produce energy for thousands of years with recent advances in nuclear reactor technology. The first thing to do would be to restart a retreatment facility. Retreatment was shut down during the Carter administration I think … Fast neutron reactors would even allow using
atomic waste directly to generate energy.
It’s far cheaper to mine uranium and process it into fuel than to recycle used nuclear fuel. There is no lack of uranium reserves in the world. Reprocessing will only become a thing when uranium reserves get depleted. It’s economics.
It’s far cheaper to mine uranium and process it into fuel than to recycle used nuclear fuel
We tried it with The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield (formerly Windscale). It is claimed that:
“Thorp reprocessed 9,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel from around the world, generating an estimated £9 billion in revenue for the UK over 2 decades.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/what-is-thorp
The plant cost £1.8 billion to build.
Your claimed sold price of 9 billion UK pounds sold price simply cannot be true – it is vastly far above current or any recent uranium fuel market prices.
Those 9,000 tonnes of spent fuel (your words) can at the very most, theoretically produce 270 tonnes of usable reactor fuel (only 3% of spent fuel mass is uranium or plutonium). Almost certainly significantly less.
In any event 270 tonnes is only 484,000 pounds of reactor fuel. Your claim of 9 billion UK pounds of sales says the sold price per US pound mass was more than $25 thousand USD!!!!!! That is about 8 times the current market price of gold!!!
Even if you just misstated the mass of waste when you really meant the mass of recovered uranium fuel, that still results in a sold price of more than $600 USD per pound of fuel.
The current world market price of unenriched yellow cake is still only about $40-80/pound (as a commodity its price varies widely). At the upper end of today’s market.
Earlier this year the market price of finished enriched uranium reactor fuel was about $180/pound. This was a relatively high price … more than triple what it was two years ago. It is a current market bubble though prices have retreated some since January.
The numbers just don’t work for spent fuel reprocessing.
You have to add the cost of storing the spent fuel to the cost of mining and processing new fuel.
There is relatively little cost involved with spent fuel. In the US standard practice is to place it in pools usually located onsite at the reactor plant site until the uranium daughter products have decayed sufficiently to be stored in dry casks.
What is expensive is the cost of reprocessing. Reprocessing involves chemical separation unit operations dealing of course with extremely dangerous and long lived radioactive materials. The uranium that is separated from the waste products is considerably safer and cheaper to handle. But it is no more useful as reactor fuel than “virgin” uranium fuel.
Which is why only about 30% of commercial spent reactor fuel is reprocessed, most of that in France, which has minimal uranium ore reserves compared with the US, Canada, Russia, etc.
Reprocessing is driven by economics.
Reprocessing the “spent” fuel has benefits beyond acquiring clean uranium isotopes for new fuel modules/HALEU/TRISO/etc. Getting the volume of “spent” fuel down by 90% is a huge benefit by itself, as it cuts costs for storing it or putting it into Yucca Mtn.
Storing spent fuel is not a problem at all at US reactor plants. Notwithstanding all the hysterical and mythical anti-nuke propaganda to the contrary.
Besides, separating the uranium and plutonium from the other extremely radioactive and long lived waste isotopes only reduces the volume of high level rad waste by a mere 3%. The other 97% is still waste. The only reason to reprocess is to obtain usable fuel.
Time to revive the Phenix breeder program? Or full speed development of the Thorium cycle?
Uranium is here and now, cheaply produced and processed into reactor fuel. At some point well into the future, uranium reserves may become depleted enough that other methods of fuel production become economically feasible, but we’re not there yet. Maybe not for hundreds of years to come.
While President of a Uranium Exploration Company, we were forced (by TSX rules and rising Argentina Risk Index) to diversify into a more secure (for shareholders money) environment. Off we go to Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Bingo, new insitu-leach target in Wyoming, just NE of Casper (target shown by natural gamma log with strike-overs in three adjacent oil wells). The amount of uranium potential was amazing, especially for the roll front style. Eliminate the environmentalists blockade, while maintaining safe conduct, and the uranium yellowcake business can boom again.
Much of the opposition to uranium mining is based upon the bad old days when mining of all kinds was done with no consideration of environmental impacts or how mine wastes might be used. Back in the 50s through 70s, for instance, uranium mine tailings were sold or even given away to be used as construction fill, with no consideration that such tailings are sources of radon gas and need to be properly stabilized and not used like plain dirt. Poorly stabilized tailings dams gave way and released large quantities of tailings downstream.
Those days are done, and any new mines will need to properly and reasonably manage their environmental risks, and treat the tailings with all due care. End of issues.
Duane,
Instead of reliance on hearsay and gossip, why not supply a few links that show, to a high scientific standard, that these waste rocks have ever been, or are now, a real and demonstrable harm to people. Opinions quoted by others are insufficient, I am asking for measured data and simple analysis.
It is not adequate to respond that I need to do my own research. I have been a player for decades in major uranium discoveries and the energy industry in general and I have searched diligently for such links. I have been unable to find any. OTOH, there is voluminous literature about anti-science topics like the discredited, but still used LNT theory on the dose/harm relationship.
You simply have to separate propaganda from hard scientific research. Geoff S
I have no experience with uranium or uranium mining, but I did major in geology back in the last century. I live in Virginia and there is a uranium deposit in southwestern Virginia that has had and still has a moratorium on development. We visited the area on a field trip way back when. The outcrop was exposed at the surface and I used to have a chunk in my bedroom until I thought better of it and put it outside.
Just did a little looking to refresh my memory and found a fairly recent reference from 2022. it says,
Too bad they can’t develop it.
Phil R, uranium mining, extraction, and production of yellowcake (U3O8) is not dangerous, as long as safety rules are followed. Rules like personal exposure meters, dust masks, and radon gas monitoring. Uranium only gets dangerous when the U235 isotope is enriched and some crazy dictator tries to use it (or the Russians turn off the alarms and try something really stupid) .
Thanks for the response. I think the issue in Virginia was (and is) the environmental scare, groundwater and surface water contamination, etc., from both the uranium and mining operations in general. Not so much handling and processing of the uranium ore (wish I still had my chunk). There have been companies since at least the 1980’s that want to develop it, but so far it’s a no-go in VA.
Story tip – Faith, revolving doors and cool remuneration
Former National Grid CEO Nick Winser – who describes his role as “providing independent advice to DESNZ Ministers on electricity network issues” – has been thinking aloud. The energy industry is struggling to adapt to Britain’s changing politics…
At a recent sector conference, Guido hears the big wig lamented a “worrying” political move away from “climate change denial, to climate change “don’t care”’. According to trade journal Utility Week, he reportedly pointed to the rise of the Reform Party and that infamous Tony Blair Institute report…
He said: “we need to be very careful not to be too distracted by noises“. Reform is certainly more than just noise…
Winser is estimated to have earned around £11 million during his time as CEO of National Grid. He also told a Lords committee back in February he is a “huge fan” of the clean power by 2030 objective and dismissed bill hikes for consumers as a result of going down the ‘renewable path’ as “really very low”. An independent adviser in step with Labour…
https://order-order.com/2025/07/11/milibands-independent-energy-adviser-tells-sector-dont-be-distracted-by-reform/
Jimmy Carter … “The benefits of nuclear power are thus very real and practical. But a serious risk accompanies worldwide use of nuclear power — the risk that components of the nuclear power process will be turned to providing nuclear weapons.”
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120960615.pdf
Risk/Reward. And so it has ever been.
“Elevating nuclear power on our list of energy options makes sense because it is the only way to generate large amounts of emission-free electricity reliably for AI-powered data centers, electric vehicles and industries.”
Good point.
However, it also makes sense to ask, do emissions (of CO2) do anything harmful to begin with? No. There is no good scientific reason to expect the incremental radiative effect to exert more than a negligible influence on the climate system results, considering the well-known dynamics of the general circulation.
Yes, pursue domestic supply chains for nuclear power and drive its cost down, but not because it is “emission-free.”
Thank you for listening.
“do emissions (of CO2) do anything harmful to begin with?” Of course they don’t, but…
For the alarmists it has provided no end of funding; manna from heaven.
“That’s a good first step but we must match intent with action.”
Unfortunately some of that action will be waging war on lawfare.
Don’t forget the enrichment and fabrication side of the uranium fuel cycle.
Orano is building a centrifuge plant in oak ridge, and Centrus is fabricating ACP centrifuges for the former GCEP plant in Ohio. Fill that one building up with machines and there will be a glut of enriched uranium, both the 3.5 percent variety and the 19.75 stuff.
X-Energy is building a what looks to be a very forward looking TRISO fuel fabrication plant for their gas cooled reactor design.
Some of these proposals are so obvious I wonder why they aren’t already policy.
Trade with China has not and will not change their policies. The CCP plans to globally dominate. China believes its destiny is to be the supreme global super power. Trade just helps grow their economy.
BTW, Xi started a policy for China to produce everything needed domestically. China doesn’t want to depend on imports and Xi is doing everything possible to make this happen.
Let me add that educating Chinese students in STEM fields is foolish policy. We need the same restrictions on Chinese students as we had on Soviet bloc students during the Cold War with the USSR.
Well, we can’t speak about uranium and the United States without mentioning Hillary Clinton:
AI Overview
Hillary Clinton and the Uranium One controversy
The Uranium One controversy involves the 2010 sale of a majority stake in Uranium One, a Canadian mining company with uranium assets in the United States, to Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned atomic energy agency. This deal required approval from multiple US government agencies, including the State Department, which was headed by Hillary Clinton at the time.
The controversy centers on allegations that Clinton, as Secretary of State, approved the sale in exchange for donations made to the Clinton Foundation by individuals connected to Uranium One.
And this:
https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/109694/documents/HHRG-116-II06-20190625-SD004.pdf
Feb 8, 2018 — Former President Bill Clinton also received a $500,000 speaking fee in Russia and reportedly met with Vladimir Putin around the time of the deal …”
It’s anything for a buck with the Clintons.
And if it is being offered up on the cheap, the US should buy a bunch and store it so that any “interruptions” of the import supply chains will be “covered” by resources “in hand” until domestic production can be ramped up.
Thorium is more abundant than uranium and thorium reactors produce less radioactive byproducts and there is already enough thorium stored in Nevada to supply all power for the USA for a year.
While true, there are no operational thorium reactors outside of reports from China (unverifiable). I’m willing to be re-calibrated on that if you can point to example(s).
Why is it that only the “Western” countries are held accountable for ‘pollution’ … including CO2? Broach the subject and stand accused of being a conspiracy theorist. Is it because the only way to defeat the Capitalists is to deny them the ability to compete? It is said the Marxists know they can’t defeat the West militarily, they would if they could, so they play the “long game” of slowly strangling us with shame and guilt into defeating ourselves.
The IEA recently noted that spending on AI worldwide grew to $84bn in 2024, three times more than the level of energy related venture capital. Largely because of AI growth they expect spending on new nuclear and refurbishments to exceed $70bn in coming years with further growth of SMRs.
IEA ‘World Energy Investment 2025’ (June 2025)
The notion that uranium can be strategically controlled by any country is simply absurd. Even modest increases in the price of uranium permits large additional reserves to be economic. These are all indicated in the Red Book of global uranium reserves produced by the Nuclear Energy Agency. Any attempt to create a uranium cartel as was attempted in the late 1970s will simply lead to failure.
If uranium from surface mining ever becomes short, it can be extracted from seawater as has been demonstrated.
The notion that government somehow has to ‘force’ more uranium supply into the market is simply ridiculous. All that artificially creating more uranium supply will do is depress uranium prices and create a glut.
The US has a whole lot of mineral resource yet to be tapped. But will that large mineral resource ever be tapped to its full potential? Not likely.
Foreign competition in the production of mineral commodities is fierce. Offshore mineral properties can be developed and operated at significantly less cost.
The other problem the mining industry has in the US is that it takes years to develop a mineral property into a producing operation, and the whole investment can be quickly lost depending upon the winds of political change in Washington DC.
Sooner or later, the Democrats and their environmental activist allies will regain full control of the federal government. When that happens, federal environmental approvals of all new mineral properties then undergoing development will be cancelled.
In addition, when the Democrats return to power, whenever that happens either sooner or later, extreme regulatory pressure will be brought against any mineral properties which somehow managed to reach operational status before the Democrats regained control.
If you are a mining executive, and you are aware of how the winds of political change ebb and flow in the US, you invest money in a US mineral property at great financial risk. In short, the US has made its mineral dependency bed and must lie in that dependency bed for decades into the future.
I America is unhappy about ‘foreign adversaries’ it shouldn’t have pissed off all its friends and turned them into strangers…
Why should we use up our natural mineral resources when we can buy from other countries, using up their resources while we conserve ours?
Canada exports about 85% of its uranium production to other countries. Trumps tariff on it has been apparently set at 10% which is an insignificant adder to US consumers power bill….but still the U.S. makes as much money off the uranium in tariffs as the mining companies do in profits….so it is a clever way to save the expense of developing Uranium reserves while having consumers pay the cost.
I do not see future uranium supply as a problem for the US. There are massive resources sitting idle in Australia, a nation with the friendliest of ties to the US. I could take you tomorrow to just one location that could fill total US raw uranium needs for 10 years. It is a fully developed mine on mothballs that should take only months to restart. There are other less ready locations in the lineup, all delayed by political policies.
As many know, there is no argument that the history of global uranium supply/demand has been dominated by politics. Globally we have known for decades where to look for new mines, we have effective exploration methods to find more uranium, we are aware of the power of the free market, but players have little control over politics interfering in the market.
Don’t cry about the technical problems of uranium’s future, they are trivial, but do spend time and money on reduction of the many massive political problems. Geoff S
“For National Security, We Need Uranium Mined in America”Which is why it’s a good thing that ~25% of US uranium fuel is mined in Canada.
If Donald Trump would behave the US could continue to get uranium from where it got some in the first days of nuclear fission and bomb making plus some testing: Canada.
Lots in the ground in Canada, active processing industry as Canada has several nuclear power reactors and at least one research reactor.
And there’s the possibility of re-using spent fuel.
I understand that:
But at the same time, ridiculous tariffs are imposed on Canadian products. I guess Canada is deemed to be an enemy state.