Spot Uranium Pulls Back to $86 but Goldman Sees 17% Demand Upside From SMR Buildout

Spot Uranium Pulls Back to $86 but Goldman Sees 17% Demand Upside From SMR Buildout Citi targets $125 per pound this year as the US plans to quadruple nuclear capacity to 400 GW by 2050. Spot uranium edged down to $85.95 per pound this week, dragging shares of nuclear fuel supplier Centrus Energy down 5.4% in the afternoon session. The decline extends a multi-month pullback from January's highs. Centrus had already dropped 8.8% eleven days earlier after missing first-quarter 2026 earnings expectations.⁵ The pullback is running against a structural demand story that keeps getting bigger. Goldman Sachs has added small modular reactors to its nuclear demand model for the first time, projecting 17% upside to uranium requirements from the SMR buildout alone. The bank's Nuclear Nuggets Global Reactor Tracker shows accelerating construction across multiple geographies. Citi analysts expect spot uranium to rise as high as $125 per pound this year on the back of demand that is outstripping supply.^6,3 The US government wants to quadruple nuclear capacity from roughly 100 GW in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050. Bank of America sees nuclear representing a $10 trillion market opportunity. The IEA projects global nuclear capacity could increase by more than 50% over the next 25 years. These are not fringe forecasts. They come from institutions that spent the post-Fukushima decade treating nuclear as a sunset technology.^4,3 The World Nuclear Association expects uranium demand to climb about 28% by 2030 and more than 100% by 2040. The supply side cannot respond at anything close to that pace. Three producers dominate global output: Kazatomprom at 21%, Cameco at 17%, and Orano at 11%. Between them, half the world's uranium comes from three companies. The concentration is extreme even by commodity standards.⁴ Cameco is the clearest play on the supply constraint. The Canadian miner operates the Cigar Lake facility, which produces the world's highest-grade uranium and has yielded more than 155 million pounds since 2015. Its McArthur River operations have produced 567.9 million pounds from the largest high-grade mine and mill globally. Cameco mined roughly 15% of the world's uranium in 2025, retaining its position as the second-largest producer behind Kazatomprom.^2,3 The company also holds a 49% stake in Westinghouse, the engineering firm designing a small modular reactor. That vertical integration puts Cameco across the entire nuclear value chain at a moment when every link is tightening. Analysts expect revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at compound annual rates of 8% and 12% respectively from 2025 to 2028.^4,3 At an enterprise value of $61.5 billion and 33 times this year's adjusted EBITDA, Cameco is not cheap. The stock pays a forward yield of 0.2%, though a payout ratio of just 16% leaves room for increases. The valuation prices in sustained demand growth and supply discipline. If either assumption breaks, the multiple has a long way to fall.³ Uranium Energy Corp represents the smaller end of the production spectrum. The company operates across the United States, Canada and Paraguay, with interests in the Palangana mine, Burke Hollow, Goliad and other projects. CEO Amir Adnani has argued this uranium bull market is structurally different from the 2005-2007 cycle, pointing to a historic shift in how reactors are being built and fuelled.^1,7 The data centre load story has turbocharged the demand case. AI and cloud infrastructure require the kind of baseload power that intermittent renewables cannot provide. Nuclear offers 24/7 output without carbon emissions. The combination of decarbonisation mandates and data centre construction has turned nuclear from a legacy technology into a growth sector within five years.^3,4 The thing to watch is whether SMR permitting timelines hold. Goldman's inclusion of small modular reactors in its demand model is a forward bet on a technology that has not yet been deployed at commercial scale. If permitting slips or construction costs escalate as they have historically for large reactors, the 17% demand uplift reverts to zero and spot uranium rebalances lower. If even a fraction of announced projects proceed, the supply side is not configured to respond.