The United States is going all in on finding domestic uranium.
What’s happening:
- The United States Department of Energy has announced a new commitment to purchase $2.7B USD of low enriched uranium from domestic sources
Why it matters:
- The United States recently passed new policies that ban the importing of uranium from Russia, which is one of the single largest exporters of uranium globally
- With nuclear power infrastructure being built out rapidly across the globe, the need for uranium supply has grown significantly which has led to soaring prices of uranium and American nuclear energy companies restarting major production facilities
By the numbers:
- The United States Department of Energy has officially announced a request for proposals for $2.7B USD of low enriched uranium supply, which will be funded over the course of 10 year contracts
- It is estimated that Russian uranium represented 24% of all the uranium imported into the United States prior to the new policies which have banned any uranium being supplied by Russia
Going deeper:
- Bill Gates founded nuclear energy company TerraPower recently began construction in Wyoming for their next generation nuclear power facility, known as the Natrium plant
- Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) also recently acquired a data centre campus in Pennsylvania which is powered entirely by carbon free electricity generated from nuclear power
The intrigue:
- The rapid acceleration of nuclear power to help usher in an era of net zero emissions has even led Wall Street titan and Citadel founder Ken Griffin to be publicly outspoken about the need for the United States to become a leader in nuclear energy infrastructure
