China Drives the 2025 Nuclear Output Record as AI Load Bets Fuel Western ETF Gains
The Statistical Review of World Energy shows China supplied all of nuclear's 2025 net growth, while ETF buyers bet on US, Japanese and Korean capacity to close the gap.
Global nuclear plants generated 2,845 terawatt-hours in 2025, an all-time high, with China accounting for the entire 30-terawatt-hour net gain on the year, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy published Saturday (2026-08-01). The Global X Uranium ETF stood at $42.89 as of Thursday morning (2026-08-06), up 0.34%, a move suggesting investors are pricing continued demand growth despite a production base still dominated by a single country.5
China produced 485 terawatt-hours last year, 17.1% of worldwide generation. Its output has nearly tripled over the past decade at an average annual rate of almost 11%. The global total grew roughly 1% annually over the same period. It now sits only 1.5% above the 2,803 terawatt-hours the world generated in 2006, across 19 years that were supposed to represent a nuclear renaissance.5
The United States produced 826 terawatt-hours in 2025, 29% of global output, retaining its position as the world's largest nuclear generator and nearly 70% ahead of China in absolute terms. US growth has been incremental. The investment case in North America rests less on recent output data than on the argument that AI data centre load will force a step-change in baseload procurement.5
The Department of Energy projects data centres will account for up to 12% of US electrical demand by 2028. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated the range at 6.7% to 12% of total annual consumption, according to analysis published June 1 (2026-06-01). Four AI hyperscalers collectively planned more than $710 billion in 2026 capital expenditure as of mid-June (2026-06-12), with firm power contracting seen as a direct beneficiary.3,4
Uranium and reactor-linked equity products tracked that narrative higher. The Global X Uranium ETF gained 62% over the 12 months through early June (2026-06-01), reflecting tighter upstream fuel markets, while the Range Nuclear Renaissance Index ETF returned 42% over the same period by targeting reactor operators and small modular reactor developers. The VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF blended utilities with miners in a lower-volatility variant.3
The rally hit a speed bump in mid-June. Constellation Energy and Cameco had both fallen roughly 20% in the month to mid-June (2026-06-12), suggesting the hyperscaler contracting story had been priced aggressively. The EIA separately flagged that US residential electricity prices are expected to rise 5% in 2026, a signal regulators are using to favour dispatchable capacity — useful context for the long-term nuclear thesis but not a catalyst for a near-term move.4,3
Japan's output is recovering, if slowly. Reactor restarts pushed Japanese generation up 11.1% in 2025, adding 9.2 terawatt-hours to reach 94 terawatt-hours, according to the Statistical Review. The Uranium & Nuclear ETF carries specific exposure to Japanese and South Korean reactor builders at lower cost than competing products, analysis published May 28 (2026-05-28) showed, making it the most targeted vehicle for investors seeking to play East Asian reactor construction capacity.5,2
South Korea and Japan are both navigating tariff headwinds that complicate any expansion timeline. Trump suspended so-called reciprocal tariffs of 25% on Korean goods and 24% on Japanese products for 90 days without removing them, while sectoral tariffs of 25% on steel, aluminium and automobiles came into force in March and April, The Economist reported in May (2026-05-19). The IMF cut South Korea's 2026 growth forecast to 1% from 2% in January on April 22 (2026-04-22), trimming Japan's by 0.5 percentage points on the same date.1
The calculus for uranium ETF positioning comes down to timing. China's decadelong acceleration set the pace for global nuclear fuel demand; US licence extensions, Japanese restarts and a small number of SMR programmes represent a potential second demand column for both uranium and the reactor equipment that Korean and Japanese builders supply. Whether those programmes deliver on the schedule that hyperscaler power contracting implies is what the current premium in uranium-linked products is pricing.5,3,4