Nuclear energy has emerged as a top pick for Big Tech hyperscalers seeking to power artificial intelligence data centers. The result, what some are calling a "nuclear renaissance," has pushed nuclear stocks higher. However, the trend presents several major problems. Among those: The U.S. imports the vast majority of the uranium needed to fuel nuclear power plants.
President Donald Trump wants to change that. He aims to revive U.S. uranium mining after more than 50 years of decline and dependence on non-U.S. sources. Investors seem to be taking note. Nuclear and uranium stocks, led by Centrus Energy, Uranium Energy, Energy Fuels and Cameco, soared in September as the Trump administration doubled down on the need to shore up domestic uranium production.
To that end, Trump on May 23 signed four executive orders to expand domestic nuclear energy and strengthen U.S. uranium production, conversion, and enrichment capabilities to reduce dependence on foreign sources, particularly Russian supplies.
Trump also plans a "total and complete reform" of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, while increasing nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050, a substantial increase from current levels.
Two-Pronged System Expected To Grow Supplies
On Sept. 15, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the press at the annual International Atomic Energy Agency conference "We hope to see rapid growth in uranium consumption in the U.S. from both large reactors and small modular reactors."
He also said the administration aimed to fortify the national strategic uranium reserve.
"The size of that right buffer would grow with time," he said. "We need a lot of domestic uranium and enrichment capacity."
The two-pronged nuclear-energy support system — with major tech companies including Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle making nuclear part of their long-range plans and Trump going all-in on nuclear energy for national security and AI data center growth in the U.S. — is setting up an unprecedented moment for nuclear stocks and uranium, according industry players.
However, despite the Trump administration support and Big Tech interest, the uranium industry is by nature cautious about high-demand cycles. Industry pros say it will take years to materially increase U.S. uranium production.
Uranium Demand, AI And Nuclear Stocks
A recent International Energy Agency report estimates that electricity demand from data centers worldwide will more than double by 2030 to about 945 terawatt-hours. That's just slightly more than the total current electricity used by Japan.
To meet this massive increase, Big Tech and the Trump administration have increasingly looked to nuclear. However, an Energy Information Administration (EIA) report in January showed that imports accounted for 99% of the uranium concentrate, or yellowcake, for U.S. nuclear generators in 2023. Domestic uranium production was nearly zero.
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"If you go back to 1980, the U.S. was the world's largest producer of uranium," said Curtis Moore, SVP of Marketing and Corporate Development at Energy Fuels.
That was kind of at the height of the Cold War. Prior to that transition point, Moore said, the domestic uranium industry "was effectively a government-sponsored weapons program."
That changed when cheap Russian and Chinese uranium came on the market, driving down prices.
In 2023, the U.S. imported uranium concentrate and equivalents primarily from Canada, Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, according to the EIA.
But the source for uranium used in U.S. nuclear reactors could change in the coming years. In May 2024, the U.S. banned imports of uranium products from Russia. The ban allows U.S. companies to apply for waivers through Jan. 1, 2028.
That leaves the U.S. needing to fill around a quarter of its uranium supply. While the EIA shows the U.S. only produced about 1% of the uranium needed to meet demand in 2023, Lightbridge CEO Seth Grae said that overall the U.S. still mines and mills around 5% of its uranium needs with 95% imported.
"So far, the new uranium mining in the U.S. is tiny," Grae said. "If the U.S. wants to significantly increase above 5% it's going to need a sea change."
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle
The nuclear fuel cycle has four steps. The first is uranium mining and milling. The second is conversion, processing uranium into a form in which it can be enriched. Enrichment is step three. The fourth is fabrication, fashioning the enriched uranium into fuel rods and fuel assemblies, according to Grae.
The U.S. mines about 5% of what it uses. It converts around 30% and enriches 40% of the total. However, 100% of the fabrication is done domestically, according to Grae.
But, just like an oil industry unwilling to "drill, baby, drill" before the fundamentals pencil out, uranium miners remain hyper-alert to oversupply.
"The uranium industry is still a bit cautious about ramping up production ahead of that demand showing up," said Cameco President and Chief Operating Officer Grant Isaac.
"There's not a reactor on the planet anywhere that is intending to load a fuel bundle sometime in 2025 or in fact, sometime in the next rolling 12 months, that hasn't already procured that uranium," Isaac said. And most of that pending supply was probably procured several years ago.
"The uranium industry has learned that there's no reward for front-running the demand," he said.
The Scope Of The Uranium Deficit
Ocean Wall analysts, in a July 2025 report, noted that with "AI-driven data infrastructure expanding at hyperscale velocity, the West's ability to secure baseload electricity will depend on more than grand plans for next-generation reactors."
"It will hinge on tons of mined uranium, delivered on time and in volume. And right now, that supply chain is under pressure," the analysts wrote.
In 2024, U.S. nuclear reactors consumed around 47 million pounds of uranium concentrate but U.S. domestic production only accounted for 850,000 pounds, or less than 2% of demand, according to the Ocean Wall report.
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"Since the Ukraine war, there's been a big effort, both by the government but also by the commercial industry, to shift away from Russian uranium supply and so that has improved pricing for non-Russian and non-Chinese supply," Moore added.
"That has been beneficial to companies like us and has enabled us to get back into production," he said.
According to Moore, Energy Fuels is going to produce about 1 million pounds of uranium concentrate in 2025, and is expecting to produce 1.5 million pounds in 2026 and 2 million pounds in 2027.
"Other companies are also ramping up production," Moore said.
The Ocean Wall report paints a stark picture of the current U.S. situation.
"This isn't a temporary shortfall; it's a structural deficit," the report says. "Even if all current U.S. brownfield restarts ramp up successfully and reach their collective steady-state output of 6 million pounds per year, the domestic uranium supply will still fall dramatically short of the needs of the existing fleet — let alone future builds. The imbalance isn't narrowing. It's widening."
"We're going to remain heavily dependent on imports for a long, long time, if not forever," Moore said.
The AI Market Bottleneck No One Talks About
With domestic uranium supply constrained, the "nuclear renaissance" faces a critical stumbling block.
"The ability to mass manufacture reactors can't occur until the U.S. can mass manufacture fuel," Nano Nuclear Energy CEO James Walker said.
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Walker and Nano Nuclear are among the few publicly traded companies working to bring commercial small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, to market. Big Tech players have taken a keen interest in the advanced nuclear technology.
Nano Nuclear plans to have a reactor producing power by 2030, at which point, Walker said, the company would be ready to start mass-producing reactors.
However, there's a problem.
"The bottleneck for us and everybody in the industry is the fuel supply chain," Walker said. "Things like centrifuge plants, laser-enrichment facilities, gas handling systems, those things are really going to push you out to 2031-2032 at the earliest."
"The mass rollout of our reactors will have to wait for the build-back of a lot of that nuclear fuel supply chain," he added. "I would say early 2030s is decently obscure enough to give an indication of when to expect these reactors."
Nuclear Stocks: The Uranium Recycling Question
Oklo, Nano Nuclear and Lightbridge are all looking into nuclear fuel recycling. This process uses spent nuclear fuel, or waste, to fuel the new advanced nuclear reactors.
Currently, the U.S. stores more than 94,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. That material, if recycled, could yield energy equivalent to 1.3 trillion barrels of oil, nearly five times Saudi Arabia's reserves, according to William Blair.
Nano Nuclear Energy's Walker told IBD that the U.S. currently does not allow private companies to reprocess uranium fuel. But the current supply has enough spent nuclear fuel to power the whole U.S. for the next few centuries, he said.
"It would certainly change the landscape and it would drive down the cost of nuclear enormously," Walker said.
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However, Grae said, "If we're going to triple or quadruple our nuclear power, then we'll still need to mine more."
Isaac added that even with SMRs, which use less fuel, the uranium "thesis remains the same."
"Demand is durable. Supply has more question marks around it as fuel buyers better start buying en masse or somebody's going to have to buy that last marginal pound at a really high price," Isaac said.
Trump Fuels These Nuclear Stocks
Despite the long-term issues in nuclear fuel infrastructure, the Trump administration's recent focus on nuclear power and uranium production has resulted in many stocks in the current market taking off.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives on Sept. 21 wrote that the attention to nuclear energy following the Trump Administration Executive Order is "'just the start' of the nuclear focus for energy in the U.S."
BWX Technologies, the U.S. Navy's main nuclear-reactor supplier, announced on Sept. 17 it was awarded a $1.5 billion contract by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to support the Trump administration's goal of increasing U.S. domestic uranium enrichment capabilities.
"We do not expect any capacity to come online before 2030, and any enrichment is strictly for defense purposes, with no commercial nuclear fuel applications. What this demonstrates is the government's willingness to allocate significant dollars to enrichment," William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer wrote following the announcement.
BWX Technologies stock was on pace for a sixth consecutive monthly advance in September, running 66% higher in 2025. The stock is currently in a cup-base pattern, with a buy point at 189.25, according to MarketSurge charts.
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Meanwhile, nuclear power startup Oklo, a top SMR developer, hit a record high of 144.49 on Sept. 24. It has soared more than 500% this year.
Dorsheimer also noted on Sept. 22 that Oklo, which has had backing from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, "has strong support" from the Trump administration and Big Tech.
Dorsheimer wrote that along with Altman, Energy Secretary Wright is a former Oklo board member. Founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte was present in the Oval Office for Trump's executive orders on nuclear energy.
Fellow SMR developers NuScale Power and Nano Nuclear Energy have galloped 97% and 65% higher, respectively, in the 2025 stock market.
"There has been huge interest due to the fact that analysts at banking institutions have realized that the tech industry is stuck with nuclear so, effectively, that almost de-risks the investment," Walker said. "But the money has nowhere to go. So effectively, it's gone into ourselves, NuScale and Oklo."
Walker added that he expects SMR deals with hyperscalers are likely to continue over the next five years and that Nano Nuclear is currently in discussions with a "number of them at the moment."
S&P 500 stock Constellation Energy, a utility that operates the largest U.S. fleet of traditional nuclear power plants, is in a buy zone from a cup-with-handle base. Meanwhile, Vistra — also an S&P 500 stock — trades below a 216.85 buy point in a cup base. The nuclear stock has rallied 47% in 2025 and 73% since the end of March.
Uranium Stocks At Highest Levels In A Decade
Uranium plays are also moving higher. Miner Centrus Energy trades at its highest levels in more than a decade, after surging 422% this year. Centrus Energy broke out above a cup base 264.90 buy point on Sept. 19.
Centrus Energy stock surged on Sept. 25 after detailing plans for a multibillion-dollar expansion of its uranium enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio.
Meanwhile, Canada-based uranium refiner Cameco surged 65% this year. Cameco owns a 49% stake in nuclear reactor builder Westinghouse, giving it SMR (sales + profit margin + return on equity) exposure. It recently announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings, with quarterly profit soaring 410%.
Uranium Energy has advanced 25% in September, putting it ahead more than 100% this year. Fellow uranium stock Energy Fuels is trading at its highest levels since 2011, after rallying 215% in 2025.
Among uranium ETFs, the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF has jumped 51% this year. The Global X Uranium ETF has risen 87%. The VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF has run 74% higher in this year's stock market.
What It Would Take For Miners To Increase Production
Uranium futures in the U.S. surged to above $82 per pound in September, the highest in nearly one year, on fresh interest from physical uranium funds and long bets on nuclear fuel.
Meanwhile, a report in September from the World Nuclear Association forecasts that uranium demand for nuclear power is due to rise 28% by 2030, reflecting global preference of nuclear power to reach energy security goals and increasing AI data-center demand.
Miners including Canada's Cameco, the second-largest uranium miner in the world, and Kazatomprom, the Republic of Kazakhstan's national operator and one of the world's top uranium producers, have recently trimmed production guidance.
Energy Fuel's Moore said despite Trump's executive orders, increasing U.S. uranium production will be based "purely on economics" and the price of uranium. Moore said that with futures around $80 per pound, the U.S. industry could get up to between 3 million to 4 million pounds of production per year. To reach 10 to 15 million pounds of production, the price per pound would have to be well over $100.
"Probably closer to $150 per pound," Moore said.
But, primarily what it comes down to for uranium production is long-term purchasing agreements with utilities and, now, with hyperscalers.
"There have been some really fundamentally distinct differences in the nuclear revival that we're seeing this time around," Cameco's Isaac said.
"What we're seeing is there have been previous periods where folks have talked about a nuclear renaissance and in those periods it was really just a recognition that nuclear power is an 80-year asset," Isaac said. "This time, it's very different."
Please follow Kit Norton on X @KitNorton for more coverage.
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