Title: Uranium Market Minute – Episode 216: The Eastern Engine – Russia, China, & India Show: Uranium Market Minute (Uranium Insider YouTube channel) — solo slide-deck episode Guest: Justin Huhn (host; founder & publisher, Uranium Insider) Date: 2026-SEP-12 URL: https://youtu.be/6JIX5tDkYhI Length: 47:29 Note: Public YouTube podcast (unlike the premium PDF issues in this archive, so the text is saved here). Auto-caption transcript; fillers (um/uh/you know) and stutters removed, wording otherwise verbatim. Caption garbles left as-is in the text below — map them when reading: "Justin Hune" = Justin Huhn; "Kamo / Kamico / Kamako" = Cameco; "KazadMrom / Kazatrom / Kazadrom / Kazad Prom / Kazadam Prom / Kazataprom / Kazaden Prom / Kazan Prom / Kazadamrom / Kazatom / Kazataporn / Kazadam Promiran" = Kazatomprom; "nextg / nextgen" = NexGen Energy; "Fision" = Fission Uranium (now Paladin's PLS project); "Bannerman's Eango" = Bannerman Energy's Etango; "Arana / Arono / Arano" = Orano; "Urano" (beside Orano) = Urenco; "10x" = Tenex (Rosatom's enrichment arm); "Ratom / Adam Prom" = Rosatom; "uranium 1" = Uranium One; "Buddho 6 and 7" / "buns" = Budenovskoye 6 & 7; "Catco" = KATCO (Orano/Kazatomprom JV); "Elcon" = Elkon; "mind number six" = Priargunsky Mine No. 6; "Yoshipov" = Meirzhan Yussupov (Kazatomprom CEO); "Ocean Wall" = Ocean Wall (research firm); "Dwayne Arnold" = Duane Arnold; "VC summer" = V.C. Summer; "Vogle" = Vogtle; "swoo / SWOOW / SPO" = SWU (separative work unit); "CASAC" = Kazakh; "Usbekiststan" = Uzbekistan; "Macarthur River" = McArthur River; "grafted" = graphed; "you're at them" = Euratom; "£186 million / £174 million" = 186M / 174M pounds (lb) of uranium; "gawatts" = gigawatts; "Shanti Act" = SHANTI Act (India); "modern parliament" = modern parlance; "you're allin costs or" = your all-in costs are; "care of maintenance" = care and maintenance; "tales" = tails (assay); "$1500 or $200" = $150 or $200. No numbered slide references are spoken, so the clickable transcript carries no slide pills.
00:00 Hello again. Welcome to another episode of the Uranium Market Minute. Today is Saturday, September 12th, and this is episode number 216. My name is Justin Hune. I'm your host. I'm the founder and publisher of the Uranium Insider Investing Newsletter, the only investing newsletter that focuses solely on uranium and publishes on a regular monthly basis.
00:20 As always, nothing that you see or hear in this podcast is intended to be investing advice. I am not your financial adviser. This is not financial advice. Please always do your own due diligence when it comes to investing and always take responsibility for your own choices. All right, very good to be back with you again. It has been some time since I've released an episode.
00:40 It's been I think about 3 months or so. Although we did experience a relatively quiet summer which we were expecting, there is so much to discuss and one of the major themes of the year I'm going to talk about today and that is the significant difference in procurement strategy for uranium and nuclear fuel on behalf of Russia, China, India compared to the rest of the world.
01:03 And you can kind of make an eastern western comparison, but really it's those big three countries compared to pretty much the rest of the entire world when it comes to the nuclear operating countries. So, we're going to dive deep into that today. If you haven't already and you do enjoy this content, please like this video, subscribe to the channel. It does help us out a lot.
01:23 And if you haven't already, you can download our free white paper, The Case for Uranium. Click the link in the description below. It's absolutely free. That'll put you on our email list so you don't miss anything when it comes to market updates that we put out every week or two. We'll send out some information on what's happening in the markets that I believe is relevant.
01:40 Totally free. Doesn't cost you a dime and it'll keep you in the loop even if you do not ever subscribe for our premium product. Click the link in the description, you'll get that free report. All right, why don't we just dive into it because there's a lot to cover. So, I'm titling this episode the Eastern Engine, Russia, China, and India.
02:00 The absolute insane growth rate of the nuclear capacity with respect to China specifically. Russia has an enormous export program. I have a long form tweet thread. So if you don't follow me on Twitter/x, please do so. Uranium Insider. I did a very long form thorough thread on the demand for uranium coming out of Russia simply based on their nuclear export program.
02:25 And India is kind of like taking a China light strategy here. They are wanting to drastically expand their nuclear capacity. And over the previous years, that's been sort of a well that sounds great. Let's wait and see attitude from the industry. But India is stepping up and they are buying a heck of a lot of uranium and there's much more of that to come.
02:45 So, I want to contrast these big countries that have been much much more active in the nuclear fuels market and in the uranium market than the bulk of the quote unquote western countries. So, we're going to cover who is buying pounds and who is buying time. Let's dive in. Okay, so two systems and two different behaviors.
03:08 So to speak generally and this is something that anybody should do for any type of commodity investment. You're going to want to model out the sector on a global basis because this is a global market. Yes, the market has bifurcated significantly in the past few years due to voluntary avoidance of new business with Russia by multiple countries in the west.
03:30 But it still is a global marketplace for all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle. But there are two significant different behaviors when it comes to procurement strategy. So as to speak generally the east they're buying supply and the west is buying time. And I'll dive into what I mean by that.
03:48 Stateowned in the east, Russia, China, India, these are state-owned nuclear operators. In Russia, we have a massive enrichment and conversion capacity in the fuel cycle and fabricated fuel capacity. All stateowned entities operating across the fuel cycle. The same case in China. They're building out a lot of capacity across the fuel cycle as well with the exception of uranium because they just don't have very much.
04:11 But all of their conversion and enrichment capacity is essentially domestic. It is intended to feed into their own nuclear program. And that is essentially what is happening. Yes, China is buying a lot of Russian enrichment and selling some of their own, but that's essentially in the same volume that they're buying.
04:29 So it's kind of a swap. So what is the east strategy when it comes to buying supply? Fuel security is national policy, not procurement. So they're not really nickel and dimming around price. They're going in and buying because it's a national, in many cases security strategy to make sure that they have sufficient uranium and sufficient nuclear fuel to power their reactors.
04:55 And this is especially the case with China. China has a huge amount of inventory, commercial inventory of uranium, uranium equivalent, but this is not for sale. It never has been. As far as we can tell, it never will be. This isn't material to be traded to profit a few dollars a pound. This is material that has extreme sovereign security importance to the nation of China.
05:17 The same goes for Russia and India. The East signs decade plus contracts above market at scale. So when we're talking about above market right now, we've got like I mentioned already spot at 90 bucks. The official long-term price about right around 97, threeear forward, 5year forward a bit higher. But the contracts that we're seeing that in at especially this year, most of the volume has come out of the east.
05:42 The contracts that we're seeing have terms that are market referenced with very very high ceilings and floors that are just below the present market price. So we're seeing floors in the 60s and 70s, sometimes 80s. Ceilings, however, 140, 150, 160, and they continue to slowly rise as the negotiations are ongoing.
06:05 So the East is securing very long lead time, large contracts, and they're basically doing so at the ask of the producers. This is a sellers market and you can hear that these terms that I just shared with you that are shared with the public on behalf of companies like Kamo, these are terms that private or publicly held nuclear operators, these companies are having a very hard time dealing with.
06:35 They are slowly coming around to accepting. It's well beyond the denial stage. The acceptance stage means okay well we have to have this fuel. We're going to have to sign on the dotted line. But in the meantime, over the past few years, they've been buying time. I'll get to that in a second. The East buys equity in minds, not just pounds in some extent.
06:54 And France kind of sits on the line. They're technically a quote unquote western style democratic country. However, their nuclear operator is state-owned and they do also have shares in mines, right? They own ownership shares in Macarthur River and Cigar Lake. They have joint ventures in Kazakhstan.
07:12 They've got joint ventures in Usbekiststan and they're even looking at a JV in Mongolia. However, it's really the East and especially the case with China and Russia. India is moving in that direction and I'll get to that in a moment because I think this is a big potential catalyst for the sector. But China and Russia, a lot of joint ventures with Kazakhstan.
07:33 China of course has the Rossing mine, a share of the Rossing mine in Namibia. They have 100% ownership of the Husab mine in Namibia. They've got a stake in Fision, which is now Paladin's PLS project in Saskatchewan. They're also taking stakes in projects in addition to buying uranium, primarily large long-term contracts with KazadMrom, their major joint venture partner.
07:56 Russia is now doing the same. Russia has entered into a very large contract, greater than 25% of the book value of Kazatrom. First time ever that they are buying uranium from Kazadrom rather than just their equity stake in these joint venture projects. Huge prices and input supply is the objective.
08:17 So price is something that of course everyone has to contend to but securing supply and the security of supply are paramount for these three major eastern countries and they're thinking in terms of decades right so we're seeing the contracts go out mid 2030s even into the 2040s in some case the west however is primarily buying time these are largely private and public companies and they often buy at each stage separately so fuel is a small share of operating cost, but price still matters. So, while the overall cost of
08:50 fueling a reactor in the United States, for example, is maybe roughly about 15% of the operating budget, uranium is about half of that. And as the price has risen, it's a growing percentage of that overall operating cost. But it's still small enough that the price can go through wild swings as it has historically and that the actual price of the fuel has never caused a reactor to stop operating and is likely to never ever do that.
09:23 Now, if price goes to $1,000 a pound, and we're not expecting that, but you can do some theoretical exercises where, okay, in that case, we might see an unprofitable reactor and you'd have to shut down at least temporarily until they could buy significantly cheaper fuel. But that is not what we're talking about here.
09:39 We're talking about being at almost triple digits. And the price going to $1500 or $200 a pound, which for us investing in miners, that means multiples higher for the miners to see that kind of move for the commodity. And that type of move for the commodity is coming. In fact, discussion at the WNA conference in London, which just finished, the term $150 uranium is almost become part of the modern parliament of what is expected.
10:05 And that's not because it's a future potential. It's because it's already being included in the contract terms in those ceilings. So price matters to public and private companies much more than it does to stateowned entities. So you might have a completely different objective. We have to secure x amount of uranium and nuclear fuel to achieve a certain level of security of supply for these important sovereign assets.
10:34 Whereas a private or public company might say, "We are going to make sure that we're covered to this level, but we still have to according to our budget committees and our budget oversight, we have to try to procure as cheaply as possible while at the same time making sure that we do remain covered. Additionally, in the west, we see the companies are waiting on supply ramps that keep slipping.
10:57 And I'm not going to pick on any individual companies, but there's two development companies right now that are in the early stages of developing that you can go back and look at their feasibility studies 5, six, seven years ago. And any 2B developer or currently developing green field uranium miner right now, five, six, seven years ago expected to be producing already right now.
11:19 So the timelines are slipping and slipping and the west continues to believe the stated timeframe and volume numbers from feasibility studies that are intended to get investors attention, utility fuel buyers are taking that same information and taking it to heart. So when utility fuel buyers believe that for example nextg will be producing 30 million pounds of uranium per year starting in 2031 that is something that they kind of keep in their back pocket is that is going to come in and flood the market uranium and push the price down. Now
11:54 that isn't going to happen. Why? Multiple reasons. One of the big ones is look at Kamico how do they operate? Look at Kazatrom. How do they operate? Neither of these companies that have a lot of production are dumping material into the spot market. They're signing long-term contracts and they are taking advantage of the rising price environment.
12:16 Dumping pounds into spot suppresses price and no company nextgen included is going to do that in size and push down their own market. So I don't know what exactly utilities are expecting here. But to believe the exact numbers and time frame from a feasibility study in our opinion is an error. However, that will work in our favor in the long term because the kicking the can down the road will slow down the trajectory of the price rise even though the price is still rising, but ultimately will end up in a larger move to the upside.
12:49 What else have they been doing? They've been flexing up legacy contracts instead of signing new ones. I've talked about this multiple times in the past, but this is still playing out. And this will continue to play out to a lesser extent as the years go on, but it's still happening.
13:05 Now, what do I mean by that? If you were a utility that signed a long-term contract, let's just say for example, in 2021 for delivery in 2026, that's one of the delivery years. Back in 2021, you could argue that while it was slowly moving towards a sellers market, I would say that the buyers still had a slight upper hand, a little bit.
13:25 So you had mixed contracts, contracts that were, let's say, 6040, 5050 40 60 market reference at the time of delivery and fixed price contracts. So let's just say it's 50% fixed, 50% reference to the market, and you're supposed to be delivered a million pounds of uranium in 2026 at that 50/50 split. Here we are, $90 a pound market price.
13:51 And usually market reference will be a multi-month average. So let's say the market reference price that that utility will pay if they're receiving delivery right now of uranium 88 bucks. Let's just say that. Okay. The fixed price in 2021 was and just off the top of my head $45 a pound, half the price of the market reference portion of that contract.
14:14 And one element of these contracts that was and still is included to some extent but in much smaller volumes flex provisions quantity flex provisions sometimes up to 30%. So, I'm a utility. I'm taking delivery of a million pounds. And in my contract, I have the option to take in 1.3 million.
14:37 And that is going to be a blend between 88 and 45, right? Because half of it's fixed and half of it's a reference to the market. If I can buy an additional 300,000 right now in doing the math at what high 60s, I'm going to do that all freaking day long. And they are. And so this has done two things. This has squeezed the inventories of the incumbent producers that offered these provisions, but it's also allowed those utilities to top up inventories as they've been able to flex up on those deliveries.
15:10 So they're able to kick the can down the road. If every time I'm receiving a delivery from the legacy contract, I can engage in this quantity flex to get a little bit more uranium at a significantly lower price. They're doing it all day long and they're all doing it. So that's allowing them to bolster their inventories a little bit, kick the can down the road. All right.
15:28 Carry trades shortdated extensions over term coverage. So just if I can avoid signing a massive contract with Kamico, for example, with ceilings at 150 bucks and just engage in a carry trade, maybe get delivery 2, three, four years out at $97 a pound or $100 a pound with an escalator based on inflation. I'm going to do that as well.
15:51 Smaller volumes. You can't get millions of pounds of delivery through carry trades, but you can get 200,000 pounds at that slightly lower price and that's what they're doing. Security of supply, of course, is important for every nuclear operator, but the budget has to be honored. The East is converting future supply into signed commitments.
16:12 The West is largely average forward covered despite supply concerns. And based on the inventory reports that just came out a couple months back from the EIA in the US and you're at them, you can see that both European utilities and US utilities to speak very generally when you go out and look 5 6 7 8 years forward, they are covered basically at the same level they've been covered on average for the past 25 years.
16:39 And our friends at Ocean Wall did really really solid work on this. They dug up that old data, grafted it out. Pretty striking to see these western operators hold inventories as far as their forward coverage goes essentially at the mean of the last 25 years and so much has changed over the last 25 years. Let's look at the scoreboard this year.
16:59 What has the east actually bought? Greater than 4 billion. This is the India contract with Kazadrom long-term contract. This was back in January and they signed with them and Kamako huge contracts. So this was Kazad Prom greater than 50% of Kazadam Prom's book value. Kamako we actually saw the numbers from that somewhere in the mid20 million pounds.
17:21 We estimate around 22 million pounds. So we believe that India locked in somewhere between 45 and 50 million pounds between Kamico and Kazataprom in Q1. Now those numbers have not been included yet in the reported long-term volumes but they did happen and they will ultimately get reported. Reported or not, this is happening because Adam Prom also signed large contracts with China.
17:42 These were announced last month in their H1 reporting and uranium 1. And again, this is the first time that uranium 1/Ratom state-owned nuclear company in Russia has signed a long-term contract with Kazaden Prom for uranium delivery. They are the biggest joint venture partner with Kazaden Prom. They have the biggest joint venture project which is the Buddho 6 and 7 which is ultimately going to be about 15 million pounds a year.
18:12 If they do get sufficient sulfuric acid they're ramping that now we estimate I think 7 or 8 million this year but in addition to their joint venture equity stakes they are buying uranium. Russia is the number three producer of uranium in the world. They are the biggest provider of enrichment in the world. They have a massive export program.
18:32 They have 23 reactors currently under construction in other countries and they finance these. They build the reactors. They train the workforce and they fuel them for the life of the reactor. So there's a massive amount of fuel needs for their exports in addition to those 22 23 under construction. Now there's like an additional 20 that are in advanced talks and planned Russian exports.
18:57 For them to be out buying uranium says a lot about where Russia is at. They have huge amount of fuel needs from these exports, they have insufficient uranium feed. So, not only does that mean that they are likely not running their enrichment centrifuges at low tails, which means less feed, they probably have to be pumping out the stuff and they're probably operating at similar tales to the western enrichers, maybe slightly lower, but they are buying feed as the number three producer of uranium in the world.
19:30 In my opinion, this is a very big development for the nuclear fuel world and any Western utilities that have insufficient coverage for uranium should damn well be paying attention right now because India, Russia, and China are mopping it up. 5.8 billion in nuclear fuel imports in 2025 for China. Not only are they buying additional stakes in projects, right? It was just approved that they are going to have an equity stake in Bannerman's Eango project in Namibia.
19:58 In addition to the equity stake, they're going to have an offtake where they can buy, if I recall correctly, up to 60% of the production from that project at market prices. China has the biggest inventory and they have something like almost half of the world's commercial nuclear fuel inventories are in China.
20:15 And what are they doing? More contracts with Kazan Prom. More projects, equity stakes. They're getting everything they possibly can right now. They're not selling that inventory because they're continuing to buy and procure in multiple means around the world. Kamico recently described an emerging trend of sovereign buyers locking up large volumes from multiple suppliers.
20:37 Kamico is noticing this. Kazatom is noticing this. Kazatom is actually messaging to the west, hey, we're not going to turn down the offers that we're getting from China, from Russia, from India. Simply because you guys have these lofty goals for building nuclear, you've got to call us up.
20:57 You've got to sign at the terms that the East is willing to pay. And that's where we're at. Drill into Russia a little bit more here. Build, own, operate, export the reactor, own the fuel, sell the fuel for the life of the reactor. And that's how it works for this. Again, 21 under construction outside Russia.
21:14 206 billion foreign order book. 206 billion. And we're not talking about 25 $30 billion to build Vogle 1 and 2. They're building these things for four, five, six, 7 billion. And so this is a lot of reactors in that foreign order book. Each export bundles decades of fuel cycle services into one sovereign package. Brilliant package.
21:39 And they have a lot of interested customers. The domestic uranium reality mind number six. This is one that the timeline continues to slip and we have heard about this mine getting ready to produce since I've been covering this sector. So, we're talking about, I've been following the sector since 2017. It's almost a decade at this point.
22:00 Mine number six has been expected to produce in the next year or two for the past 8 years. We actually think it's going to be 2030 plus at the point that this starts producing and it's a couple million pounds a year. So, it's really not a saving grace. Elcon is a big gold mine that is going to ultimately produce likely somewhere to 45 to 5 million pounds a year by the mid 2030s.
22:21 It is slowly ramping. So that's going to help eventually at which point we're going to have 250 million pounds of annual demand globally for uranium. So kind of a drop in the ocean. Russia is a net buyer of both uranium and UF6. The UF6 part is important as well. They are the second largest converter in the world behind China.
22:43 China's conversion of course is feeding their domestic reactor. So as far as the global marketplace is concerned they're the largest converter net buyer of the product of conversion and again they're now buying from Kazataporn China build first then stockpile and that has sort of been the case however they are certainly stockpiling very aggressively as their buildout is being undertaken.
23:07 Approvals have run at 10 or more units a year since 2022. And those are approvals. Actual construction starts has been a bit less. They've been somewhere around six or seven or eight per year. But they are on pace to reach that goal. And if you remember that goal by 2035, they aim to have 150 gawatts of nuclear capacity right now.
23:25 Right now they have about 64 gawatts of operating capacity and they just surpassed France as the number two operator in the world in terms of total capacity. 59 units are operating now, 35 under construction in China alone. Eight more recently approved just a couple months back. 49 units have been sanctioned to be constructed since 2022.
23:48 So they are on pace to hit 150 gawatts of nuclear by 2035. That is approximately 70 million pounds of uranium demand per year just in China. Greater than 50% of the uranium sold from Kazadamrom in 2025 went to China. So not only are they the second largest joint venture partner with Kazatom, they're the biggest customer and buying more than half of that production and that trend I don't actually think is going to slow down.
24:15 I think as the reporting continues to come in, they're not competing for pounds on price, they're removing them from the pool and that's just the reality. India from buyer to owner. So two supply contracts signed this year and now they are hunting for mines. 24 operating reactors today and these are pretty small reactors just being generally only 8 gawatt.
24:35 They have a target of 100 gigawatts by 2047. And again, the industry has generally kind of looked at India in the past decades as big talk, not a lot of action. To summarize that, and that's honestly been sort of the feeling and the commentary from the industry, even in the past few years, India's been talking big with these nuclear goals, but they are actually acting on those goals now.
24:59 And the volume of the contracts that they've signed is over the period of the delivery for those contracts is greater than the burn rate of their operating reactors. So they are starting to actually procure uranium with the intention of growing this fleet and it does look like they are going to make it happen.
25:19 NTPC which is the state-owned operator of nuclear power plants in India that operate the majority of their power plants. They alone are targeting 30 gawatt in 2025. The Shanti Act in India. This removed supplier liability. So prior to this was signed last year, western vendors of materials for nuclear power plants or power plant themselves theoretically were still on the hook with a lot of liability in the operation of those nuclear power plants which made doing business with India more complicated than doing business elsewhere. This was
25:52 reversed fully opening the Indian market to outside vendors and private companies and that's a big shift in India which means they are changing this law that made it so much more difficult to do business there to the point where now we're seeing foreign entities interested in participating in the nuclear buildout in India which is very good.
26:14 Just a couple months ago NTPC has tendered consultants to build a global RFP for uranium mine acquisition. So this is something that in addition to these large contracts, they are hiring consultants to build a global RFP for uranium mind acquisition. And what we understand is they have been knocking on the doors globally saying what have you got? We want a stake in it.
26:36 We'll buy as much as you can sell us. So some of these target jurisdictions that they've named Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, South Africa, the scope is Greenfield, brownfield or operating mines. So, we don't know what this RFP is going to look like. It has not been issued yet, but we are expecting it to be issued.
26:56 And we do think this is somewhat of a catalyst when it does hit and we actually see the terms. Hopefully, it will be a fully public RFP, so we'll be able to see that. If it's not fully public, we will likely catch wind of this and Uranium Insider members will get those details. But either way, they're contracting in size and they're looking at taking mine stakes just like Russia in Kazakhstan, just like China in multiple different countries.
27:22 Okay, so the United States, we're going to put some focus here because this is still the largest market in the world and it will be for the next 3 or 4 years, maybe five, depending on the pace of those Chinese buildouts. They're going to surpass us soon because we have not yet pulled the trigger on a solid plan for building large reactors here.
27:40 There was a development just this week that South Korea is interested in investing in building multiple large reactors in the country. They want to include their own APR-1400 in addition to Westinghouse's AP-1000s. That seems like a good deal. I hope that it goes through. The South Koreans are excellent builders of nuclear power plants.
28:02 So we're looking at the maximum contracted coverage of US utilities. These numbers assume the full flex is exercised under those existing contracts. Going back to those flex provisions that I mentioned earlier, the quantity flex, this is really attractive to a utility when you have some portion of the contract at a fixed price. Once we start to get into these market reference contracts, when those are delivered and they're almost entirely or entirely referenced to the market, the quantity flex might help you from a security of supply standpoint, but it's
28:31 not going to allow you to top up inventories at a cheaper price. So, this is including flex options and the maximum flex. Here's how the utilities are covered. 2026, they're covered. All utilities globally are covered in the near term. So, you don't really see panic buying on behalf of utilities.
28:50 The panic buying, if we see something like that, it will exist in the future. That is to say, we believe we're going to see a moment in the next 24 to 36 months where utility is going to show up into the long-term contracting market. They're going to call up Kamico or Arana. We're going to say, "Hey, I need half a million pounds for delivery 2032 to 2036."
29:09 And Kamo will say, "Sorry, we're sold out." And they're going to have to buy that via multiple carry trades or trying to buy in this spot market and that's going to push the price much much higher. We believe that will come to pass in the next couple of years. So the US utilities biggest market in the world only 60% covered in 2030 that's 3 and a half years away 9% covered in 2033.
29:35 So the US utilities alone that will have a burn rate in 2033, which by the way will have probably the VC summer unit that was halted back in the 2018s restarted and critical. Three Mile Island or the Crane Clean Energy Center will be operational. Dwayne Arnold will be operational by then in addition to the existing fleet and any upgrades that have taken place between now and then.
29:58 What I'm trying to say is the gigawatt capacity in 2026 is lower than it's going to be in 2033 and probably by about five gawatts and possibly even more depending on if we can actually get our act together and build some SMRs which I think that we will. That is all to say 91% uncovered for 2033 looks like 40 45 million pounds of uranium and possibly more just on behalf of the United States.
30:25 According to the 2025 EIA data, utilities are forward covered essentially at the mean. I've already mentioned that which is wild considering the supply outlook and everything that has happened over the past few years. £186 million unfilled US market requirements for the next 10 years against £174 million in maximum contracted delivery.
30:46 So they actually have to buy more over that 10-year period than they currently have in inventories. Europe is in a similar position. They're always better covered. That's just how they operate. Some of that has to do with more state-owned operators in Europe than obviously none of them are stateowned in the United States.
31:03 So they're 100% covered for the next few years. But you go out to 2034, it really really drops off. And I know that this sounds like it's a long ways away, but this is the period that is being covered in long-term contracts right now. Utilities, and you can see this, you can look at the Korean tender. We're going to cover this in the next couple of slides.
31:23 The nuclear operators while they're fully covered with two or three years of inventory in the US and EU and in some cases more in the EU the period of time that they're covering is the period of time where we see very large supply deficits according to our modeling with assumptions of the projects that are being built now operating and producing during that period of time and this is the period this 2032 33 34 35 period this is the cupboard that is going to run dry in the next couple of years and our numbers are pretty clear on that. 20% EU conversion
31:57 coverage so they're going to have to buy that soon. Buying conversion means you got to fill that with uranium. Russia's retained share of the EU market in 2025. Uranium conversion and enrichment respectively. So still a major player in Europe and of course the French have been buying hand over fist from Russia.
32:12 So they don't really care. They could talk a big game but they're still highly reliant on Russian material just like the US. And Russian deliveries into the EU utilities rose in 2025. 14 straight years of buying time. This is simply a reflection of we haven't seen replacement rate contracting.
32:28 This industry has been awash in inventory. It's been awash in an over supply and it's only been a couple of years since we've worked through that abundant above ground mobile inventory. Now looking forward, the supply that the industry is counting on in the forward years has to come out of the ground because it doesn't exist in inventories that are just mobile and floating around and for sale.
32:50 Inventories exist in strategic places. There are commercial inventories held by utilities. There are sovereign inventories held by countries. So contracted year-to-date in 2026 42.2. That's not including India. So if you include India, we're probably about pushing 90 million 85 to 90 million pounds contracted compared to 200 million pounds roughly in actual burnup in those reactors.
33:19 Now of course you take a snapshot in any individual year because that's sort of what you have to do in order to model the sector. But what they're burning in their reactors this year was purchased 3 4 5 6 10 years ago. That's why you can have these supply deficits and continue to have an operating global fleet. But when you look out and you model to that period of time where they're covering now, that's when we see those deficits in significant numbers, even including very large projects to be built.
33:52 Everything in the fuel cycle is pointing to higher prices and even the price reporters that the industry let's say listens to are telling us it's going to be a very very long time of high prices because there is insufficient supply response on one side and the demand is so derisked and that goes back to this picture US coverage not only is it still the biggest nuclear market in the The demand is so derisked in the United States because of the enormous amount of data centers and electricity demand in
34:29 this country. Every single nuclear operator in the US has either already received a license to operate out to 60 years or has an application into the NRC and will receive that license. The whole fleet will go to 60 years and the average age is about 47 years right now. Some are already applying to the NRC for an 80year operating license.
34:52 And we believe that most of them actually will operate out to 80 years. So the demand is so unbelievably derisked and this is an electricity market that these utilities couldn't dream of 5 years ago. So we look at this forward coverage falling off a cliff. We know they're going to need to buy. We know the price is going higher.
35:12 They have to buy and fuel the reactors and they will. Whether it's a hundred bucks a pound, 150 a pound, 200 a pound, they don't have a choice because this is the environment and it's basically a national imperative for these reactors to continue to operate. So everybody's looking for the same pounds and we're going to find a moment in the coming years where there's going to be a fight over limited supply.
35:32 Kazakhstan is the swing supply for both blocks, Eastern and Western, and it's being spoken for by the East. 40% of the total global production comes out of Kazakhstan, and we know who those buyers are. 28% is the share of uranium delivered to US utilities in 2025 that came from Kazakhstan 20% EU very important uranium producing jurisdiction and modeling for that jurisdiction shows that their production is going to peak in the next 3 or 4 years and it's going to decline from there.
36:02 Now if they invest sufficiently in exploration and development of new projects they will be able to find some level of sustained production that is less than what they are producing today. That's simply the nature of their deposits. The best stuff has been mined. Everything else is either smaller or more expensive.
36:24 So, we are modeling for them to continue to grow their production. So, that is included in our assumptions. However, it remains to be seen how they're going to be able to achieve steadystate production even at 80% of what they're producing right now by 2035 because their decline rates of their existing projects is so steep.
36:43 Some of them are declining right now. Another one or two start to decline in the next 3 or 4 years. And then about half of their producing mines are in steep decline rates by the early and mid 2030s. That's just how it is. And their big production ramps at the buns project and to some extent the Catco project are contingent on more sulfuric acid.
37:02 And their current acid plant which they just announced in their reporting for the first half of 2026 in August is now slipping at least a 6 or 12 month delay. So pushing those larger production numbers back another 6 to 12 months. Every single pound we produce will have a clear committed and waiting buyer. These are the words coming from the CEO of Kazadam Promiran Yoshipov and Kazakhstan like I said Kazadam prom specifically is telling the west you guys need to act soon our productions being spoken for and we don't have an
37:34 obligation to carve out any of our production for any particular jurisdictions we just don't we're going to sell it to the highest bidder period the end public tender was just issued by Korea hydro nuclear power last week this is an open tender 800,000 swoo 28 to33 3 400,000 SWOOW 2034 to 2039. I said 2037 earlier. I was wrong.
37:56 This is about 25 million pounds of total uranium demand equivalent assuming a 0.25 tales assay. Korean swoo demand excludes Russia. So historically they've been pretty reliant on 10x which is Russia's enrichment company. They're excluding Russia. So that basically leaves Orano and Urano as the only options to respond to this tender.
38:17 They have the option in this tender for it to be bundled with uranium. So what they're saying is we want this end product which is enriched uranium. That's obviously the end product of the fuel cycle with the exception of fab fuel. The actual last step we need this enriched uranium. We're open to having a response from someone saying we're going to sell you the uranium and the enrichment.
38:40 And obviously that would include the conversion as well. So uranium in the form of UF6 or converted uranium. So, it's possible that Arono could respond to this in a bundle. You're going to get your EUP, but that's going to include uranium and conversion or just UF6. Either way, whether it's a bundled response or just enrichment, and then KHNP will have to come out with an additional tender for uranium.
39:06 One of those two ways, this is a big pull on actual uranium with this very large tender. Everything is stacking up here. Good to see them stepping up. And this also is a pretty big vote of confidence that they're going to remain pro-nuclear in terms of at least the de-risking of their operating fleet. There's been multiple articles released recently discussing the fact that electricity demand is growing very very quickly in South Korea as well.
39:37 So big de-risking for their fleet and very very positive for the impending higher price move for uranium with this size of this tender. Lastly, it's worth noting that both Urano and Orano have limited capacity going out into the late 2020s. So Korea is going to have to pay up for that SWOO with that first delivery of EUP in 2028.
40:00 They're going to have to pay up for it. And SWOO is at all-time high prices right now. SPO by the way stands for separative work unit. It essentially is the cost of enrichment and represents the amount of effort and electricity that goes into these centrifuges for enriching uranium. All of this is pointing to significantly more demand on the front end.
40:20 So what's the setup here? Eastern state enterprises are converting future supply into signed sovereign decade long commitments today. And I'm not saying that there aren't US operators, EU operators, and other quote unquote Western countries who aren't signing long-term contracts and aren't significantly better covered than the average.
40:40 There are a few outliers, but Western utilities are preserving flexibility with only average forward coverage. They're doing what they can to avoid signing these big highpriced contracts. And that has worked for a while. And maybe it'll work for a little bit longer, but it obviously hasn't worked that great because it's clear that sufficient supply was not incentivized early enough for that supply to be in the market right now, keeping prices from continuing to rise.
41:10 US coverage falls to 60% by 2030 and 9% by 2033. We've already covered this. CASAC supply is being spoken for at an accelerated rate. The constraint producers will not commit unmined pounds without very high ceilings. So we're looking at Greenfield is going to want ceilings above 120 in floors in the 70s 80s easily. Greenfield needs sustained term prices of 120 to 150 to trigger final investment decisions.
41:39 This is simply a different world. You can't compare feasibility studies from 2020 to the reality of operating and developing a mine right now. Costs have ballooned. Diesel costs are going through the roof. Labor costs have probably doubled. Everything is more expensive. Even in Kazakhstan, the taxes implemented in 2026 are making it much more expensive for operators there.
42:05 And last point I would make, and I've made this point in the past, but I think this is something that nuclear utilities just tend to forget about. They're looking at these feasibility studies and saying, "Camo, you guys are telling us that you're allin costs or 50 bucks a pound, whatever it might be, and you're wanting me to sign a contract with the ceiling at 150.
42:26 What the heck?" Well, Kamo hopefully is and should turn around and say, "Where were you when we had to pay $10 million a month to put Macarthur River on care of maintenance?" You wouldn't sign a contract when I was begging you to sign a contract. You said, "Hey, I can't. My budget department won't let me because I can go buy uranium in the spot market for cheaper than what you're asking me.
42:48 I can buy carry trades all day long. Why am I going to sign this and voluntarily pay 5, 10, $15, $20 more per pound? I can't do that. I would be fired if I did that." Well, what else should Kamico say? Cigar Lake is done in 2035. MacArthur's done in 2042. What do you think it's going to cost for us to build new mines to replace 36 million pounds a year? 5 billion, 10 billion? Where's that money coming from? I have to stack when times are good because I have to replace this production if I want to maintain a stake in the uranium sales universe. And
43:29 they do. And I'm not just talking about Kamo. Arano is in an even trickier position as far as their uranium pipeline goes. And they also have to produce fuel to run into the state-owned nuclear operators of a very very large fleet in France. And France is building new reactors as well. And they're approving life extensions for the bulk of their fleet. Pipelines matter.
43:50 We're talking billions and billions of dollars to develop the mines of the future that aren't even under consideration right now. But I guarantee you that Kamako and Arono and Uranium One and all of these guys are thinking about this right now and that is influencing the terms that they are requiring.
44:10 So I'm going to end with a couple of supply and demand graphics. One is from our own internal modeling. This is not only from our own estimates but also numbers from company reports in the WNA. And we believe that our modeling is relatively conservative. Look at 2031. We actually see the market before secondary demand or SMR demand actually balancing out and I'm comparing this to Stifel's report and I don't have access to their assumptions but we do see this graphic they see the market slightly oversupplied by what 6 or 7 million
44:40 pounds in 2032 in a point in time and the point in time is practically irrelevant because look at what happens in a couple of years past that it just drops off an absolute cliff and it does in our model as. And we don't know what's going to fill that supply gap. Now, if we go out 20 years, maybe we'll have uranium from seawater, uranium from phosphates, significantly more spent fuel recycling.
45:06 All of these things are potential in the long run. But the final point I want to make here, the supply deficit in the early and mid 2030s is affecting today's pricing. So when we're looking at that long-term price that continues to inch higher, that is happening because of where the utilities are covering now.
45:28 So this big deficit that you see out in the future, that's today and 2035 that looks extremely concerning in our model and in Stifel's model. That reality comes home to roost in the next 24 to 36 months. And nothing on the supply side is going to change that over that time period. Nothing.
45:55 So we don't know what's going to happen between 2035 and 2040. And that's why we leave this at 2035 for now. We're going to stretch this out with some assumptions. But the period of time that we can very highly confidently model, which is the next 5 to seven years, that's the period where the price is reflecting right now and will be reflected in the next two to three years.
46:18 The future exists in the present in the nuclear world and this is a very unique commodity in that the demand is extremely derisked and stable. We can see what's operating. We can make assumptions with a very high level of conviction of what will be life extended. We can make assumptions of what will be shut down. And we can look at what's under construction right now and make pretty highly confident bets on when those will be first critical.
46:43 And all of that together gives us this picture. And this is something we update on a weekly basis. So this is not a stale assumption from six months ago. Numbers come in from suppliers. Life extensions are announced. New construction is announced. It's a constant work in progress. I don't know what fixes this supply problem.
47:03 And from an investment standpoint in the commodity and the miners that are going to be extracting the commodity, that's extremely bullish. We're very, very constructive here. Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking with me through this long episode. Appreciate you following me here. If you haven't already, please subscribe, like the video, and like I said, if you're not on our email list or haven't gone over our white paper, download it for free below.
47:25 We'd love to have you on there. Take care. See you again soon. Cheers.