Uranium prices jumped to a nearly 15-year high on January 12, 2024, after the world’s largest producer, Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, warned that it would likely miss its production targets in the next two years.
The miner cited a shortage of sulfuric acid and delays in building new mines as the main factors in the current production problems, which it said could persist until 2025. Sulfuric acid is a favorite among producers to extract uranium ore because it is cheap and effective for a variety of ores.
The spot price of the radioactive metal has more than doubled in 2023 and is currently trading at $97.45 a pound, still far from the triple-digit levels reached in 2007 and after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
The price increase comes as 24 countries, including the United States,
Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, pledged last month in Dubai at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP28, to triple their nuclear power capacity by 2050.
A new bill in the United States could also affect uranium prices, even before other factors. In an effort to reduce its reliance on Russia, which supplies more than a fifth of its uranium, Congress passed a bill in December that would require the United States to buy some of its nuclear
fuel domestically. The bill would require 20 tons of HALEU, the high-grade low-enriched uranium fuel needed to power the country’s most advanced reactors, to be domestically sourced by the end of 2027.
Bank of America and Berenberg Bank said in separate research notes this week that continued tensions in the uranium market could push prices above $100 in the coming days.