“More Pounds Please”: Nuclear fuel buyers call up uranium miners as shortages loom

• Uranium miners have enjoyed catalysts in recent weeks, led by Donald Trump’s exec orders
• But the real story could be contracting as AI demand grows and China looks to become world’s top nuclear nation
• Aura Energy boss Andrew Grove says Mauritania developer is well placed to meet the market

There have been catalysts aplenty for the uranium and nuclear markets in recent weeks.

On May 23, US President Donald Trump signed four executive orders around nuclear energy, with the main aim being to “expedite and promote the production and operation of nuclear energy”.

Other objectives of the orders were around the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies to support national security objectives, including powering artificial intelligence computing infrastructure and national security installations, the streamlining of nuclear reactor technology, and the reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The executive orders have been described as the most aggressive US policy on nuclear energy in decades.

Another interesting recent development has been the continued emergence of big technology companies as serious nuclear customers.

Last week, Facebook owner Meta announced it had signed a 20-year agreement to buy nuclear power from US-based Constellation Energy from 2027.

“This transaction also follows similar nuclear-based power purchase agreements struck by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc,” Canaccord Genuity analyst James Bullen said.

“While potentially some way off, the larger miners did indicate that big tech was showing interest in direct offtake agreements to secure their nuclear future.”

Nuclear gabfest wraps

Last week, the World Nuclear Fuel Market conference was held in Sydney, the first time in its 51-year history it had been held in Australia.

Aura Energy (ASX:AEE) managing director Andrew Grove was there and told Stockhead the company had a good spread of meetings with utilities.

Both Grove and Bullen said the Chinese were increasingly active, with Canaccord forecasting Chinese nuclear capacity to overtake the US by 2030.

“While Western utilities and producers referred, with tongue in cheek, to a game of contracting ‘chicken’ in one of the more entertaining panels, CNNC was clearly batting its eyelids to the producers and seeking ‘more pounds please’,” Bullen said.

Bullen noted that China’s CGN Mining last week entered into a supply contract with its controlling shareholder CGNPC with a 30% fixed-price component of US$94 per pound with the remainder to be purchased at spot.

“While this is a related party transaction, it sets, in our view, a clear benchmark in a Chinese market where electricity prices are set by the National Development and Reform Commission.”

On the flipside, Grove said US utilities weren’t as aggressive – yet.

“You get the feeling that they’ve got enough near-term inventory, that they’re not too panicked,” he said.

“Plus, they’ve spent the last 15 or 20 years where they can go and buy uranium whenever they feel like it so there hasn’t been a lot of pressure on them to go and buy it.

“China’s very aggressive in terms of running around the world trying to lock up supply, so I guess the US market has to counter that somehow.”

Grove said Aura was getting close to signing a contract with a major US utility.

Diversity becoming important

Grove said utilities, particularly US utilities, recognised that they needed diversity of supply.

“There was a pretty strong message from the utilities that they want to support new supply, because there’s some risk around stuff coming into Russia and some risk around stuff coming out of Kazakhstan,” he said.

“And for the big ones, they’re starting to engage with greenfields like us and then probably one of them will give us a smaller contract that doesn’t put their fuel supply at risk but helps facilitate new production coming on board.”

Bullen echoed those comments, saying that utilities and traders indicated a willingness to not only contract, but also pre-pay.

“In short, they increasingly recognise the challenges associated with financing developments and, for the right projects, will use their balance sheet and credit rating to support them,” he said.

Bullen noted that the term price of US$80/lb had incentivised restarts but not the greenfield developments which are required to meet the projected 1.3 billion pounds of demand between now and 2045.

“With a busy contracting period expected in the 2H, we remain highly constructive on medium-term uranium pricing,” he said.

Tiris progressing

Aura is fortunate in that it doesn’t need to rely on a higher uranium price to push the button on its Tiris project in Mauritania.

The project is expected to produce 1.8Mlb per annum of uranium over 25 years at forecast all-in sustaining costs of US$35.70/lb.

“It’s got quite strong cashflows to support any level of debt at much lower prices than the spot prices today,” Grove said.

Aura has been working hard on locking in the funding for the US$230 million development, with the help of advisors Orimco and Macquarie.

“We’re working towards a debt funding of 50-60%, which is about US$260 million, from a sovereign Western development bank,” Grove said.

“There’s also an indicative term sheet from a private equity group, which could supply something around the same sort of quantum and then we’re looking at a number of strategic investors which could buy a small portion of the asset and help augment the debt funding, plus some other strategic investors that could fund the whole project.”

Grove said the development bank could make a board approval in September.

“Everyone else has to meet that timeline, otherwise they’re going to miss out,” he said.

“We’re looking at pulling it all together around the September mark at this stage … so in the background, we’re getting everything technically ready to be able to pull the trigger on execution.

“We’re trying to position ourselves for 2027 production, so we’re not deferring because of the price – we’re working hard to deliver the funding and then we’ll commit to the development.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Aura Energy is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.