The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reorganizing.
On the surface, that sounds bureaucratic. Org charts. Reporting lines. Internal memos.
But don’t be fooled.
This may be one of the most consequential structural signals for nuclear energy — and uranium — in decades.
What’s Actually Happening?
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is restructuring around three core business lines:
New Reactors
Operating Reactors
Nuclear Materials & Waste
Licensing and inspection functions will be integrated. Accountability will be centralized within each line. Decision velocity is the objective.
This is not deregulation.
This is reorganization for efficiency.
And efficiency, in nuclear, has historically been the missing variable.
From Fear to Function
There was a time when America built reactors.
Under the United States Atomic Energy Commission, nuclear power was both regulated and promoted — sometimes imperfectly, but with ambition.
Then came the era of public fear, media amplification, and institutional risk aversion. The China Syndrome premiered. Three Mile Island accident followed.
Permitting paradigms hardened. Timelines stretched. Capital retreated.
The industry didn’t die. It slowed.
This reorganization signals something different:
A regulator aligning itself with national deployment goals — without abandoning safety.
That distinction is everything.
The Elephant in the Room: Uranium
If the NRC becomes faster, clearer, and more accountable in licensing new reactors, the consequences ripple upstream immediately.
Amir Adnani, CEO of UEC, has floated the possibility of $1,000/lb U₃O₈ in a true supply squeeze (at a recent talk given in Vancouver (VRIC 2026)).
Is that the base case? No.
But the direction of travel matters more than the ceiling.
When regulatory friction decreases, capital confidence increases. When capital confidence increases, projects move. When projects move, supply tightens against accelerating demand.
This is how structural bull markets are born.
Unlocking the Upstream
For uranium producers and explorers, a credible acceleration in nuclear deployment does several things:
Unlocks equity financing for restarts and greenfields
Encourages long-term utility contracts
Justifies domestic enrichment and conversion build-out
De-risks jurisdictional narratives
But here’s the deeper layer:
Regulatory reform does not just unlock production.
It unlocks exploration.
And exploration is where the real asymmetry lives.
Humanity’s New Fire
Nuclear energy is not just another commodity cycle.
It is 3,000,000-to-1 energy density. It is grid stability in an AI-powered century. It is geopolitical leverage. It is decarbonization without fragility.
It is Prometheus without smoke.
If the NRC reorganization proves durable — if it translates into measurable timeline compression — then we are not witnessing a bureaucratic shuffle.
We are witnessing the quiet removal of a bottleneck.
And when bottlenecks disappear, abundance flows.
Where I Stand
In a world where regulatory velocity meets capital discipline, the most valuable role is not the driller or the promoter.
It is the translator.
The one who stands between geology, permitting, and capital and asks:
Is this technically real?
Is this jurisdictionally viable?
Is this capital-ready?
Is this timed correctly within the cycle?
That’s the lane I operate in.
Because when humanity reaches again for its new fire, someone must ensure the spark lands where it can actually burn.
This NRC reorganization may seem administrative.
But to those watching the full arc — from regulator to reactor to uranium to discovery —
There are moments in history when humanity stumbles into a discovery so profound that the old world simply cannot continue. We split the atom less than a century ago, and for a long stretch, our species barely knew what to make of it. We feared it, mythologized it, and stuffed it into a box labeled too powerful, too political, too much.
But now—finally—something is shifting. The timing, the physics, the policy winds, and the relentless hunger of the digital age are converging into an unmistakable truth: we are stepping out of the era of chemical fire and into the era of nuclear fire.
This is not a cycle story. It’s a civilizational pivot.
And uranium—quiet, dense, misunderstood uranium—is at the heart of it.
I. The New Fire: Humanity’s Leap Beyond Combustion
For fifty thousand years, every spark that powered our lives came from the same narrow miracle: electrons jumping between bonds. Campfires, coal plants, gas turbines—they’re all variations on the same ancient theme.
Then came nuclear fission. A new fire. A different fire. A fire born not from electrons, but from the nucleus itself—where the strong force holds court as the most powerful force nature has ever revealed to us.
One pound of uranium equals the energy of three million pounds of coal. Energy density so extreme it defies intuition. So compact it reshapes civilization the moment we accept its implications.
We’ve spent decades treating this fuel as though it were just another commodity. But uranium is not the next step in the combustion story—it is the first step beyond it.
II. Three Industrial Revolutions at Once
In October, JPMorgan dropped a quiet thunderbolt: a $1.5 trillion Security & Resiliency Initiative, aimed at reinforcing the strategic backbone of the U.S. economy. The pillars were unmistakable:
AI and frontier technologies
Energy independence and grid resiliency
Critical minerals and advanced manufacturing
And there, placed unapologetically among the must-have infrastructure of the 21st century, was nuclear energy.
When institutions of this scale shift their worldview, they aren’t betting on a fad. They’re acknowledging an inevitability.
Artificial intelligence, automation, domestic supply chains, data… these things are not trends. They are the architecture of a new industrial order. And that order requires a stable, abundant, high-density energy substrate.
It requires the new fire.
III. The Market Awakens
For years, uranium wandered in the desert—underpriced, misunderstood, dismissed as yesterday’s fuel. Yet even in the lean decade, the physics remained unchanged. And eventually, reality comes calling.
Today, every part of the fuel cycle is tightening:
Spot and term prices rising
Enrichment swinging from underfeeding to overfeeding
Inventories thinning
Utilities returning to long-term contracts after a decade asleep
And what was once a niche corner of commodity finance now has a shadow giant: the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, pulling pounds off the market with the force of pure price signal.
This is not speculative froth. This is structural tightening.
We burned through our cushion. We failed to invest in new supply. We forgot that no reactor, no matter how modern, can run on sentiment.
And now the market is rediscovering what the physics always told us: uranium has been undervalued for an entire generation.
IV. Policy Tailwinds: Fast-41 and Federal Momentum
For decades, permitting has been the slow-turning wheel that discouraged developers and exhausted investors. But the federal landscape is changing—quietly, steadily, and now unmistakably.
Fast-41, once a framework reserved for highways and pipelines, now explicitly includes: ISR uranium, Mills, Conversion, Enrichment, & HALEU production
In parallel, the 2025 Budget Bill and executive directives have recognized nuclear as essential to national security, supply-chain strength, and decarbonization. Washington isn’t simply approving nuclear. It is prioritizing it.
The bureaucracy is beginning to match the physics. And that alone is enough to shift the trajectory of an industry.
V. The World Starts Building Again
While the West spent years debating nuclear’s identity crisis, the rest of the world kept building: China. India. South Korea. The UAE. Eastern Europe.
Dozens of reactors under construction. More in planning. And the U.S., once stagnant, is quietly transforming its own fleet with 80-year life extensions—the kind of decision that locks in long-term uranium demand for generations.
Meanwhile, SMRs and microreactors are not science projects anymore. Their first deployments aim where the grid falters: Remote towns, Industrial loads, Military installations, Microgrids, & Data centers
The next generation of reactors will not look like the last. Their scale will be smaller, their roles more varied, and their potential enormous.
VI. AI and the Electrification Surge
Artificial intelligence is no longer just a computational discipline—it is an energy consumer of mythic proportions. Model training. Inference. Hyperscale data centers. 24/7 loads with zero tolerance for downtime.
We are building digital cathedrals that run day and night, learning, predicting, dreaming, building. They demand electricity not in peaking cycles, but in ceaseless baseload.
Intermittency cannot carry this burden. Batteries cannot shoulder it. Gas cannot scale cleanly enough for it.
Only nuclear operates with the quiet consistency that AI requires: 90%+ capacity factors. Multi-year refueling cycles. Carbon-free baseload.
AI is the new industrial furnace. And the only fuel that can support it at scale is uranium.
VII. The Price Is Wrong — and Physics Says So
The greatest misunderstanding in the entire uranium market is a simple one: we price uranium like a commodity, but it behaves like a physical miracle.
Whether uranium is $70/lb or $300/lb barely moves the cost of nuclear power. Fuel is a single-digit portion of reactor economics. Meanwhile, the energy density of U-235—nuclear strong-force energy—puts it in a cost-equivalence range orders of magnitude above today’s pricing.
A physics-based valuation framework places uranium somewhere between:
$300/lb (conservative cost parity)
$1000–3000/lb (pure energy-density equivalence)
This is not a price forecast. It is a statement of mismatch—between what uranium is and what the market pretends it is.
This gap is the opportunity of a generation.
VIII. When Prices Move, Entire Districts Wake Up
A true price breakout doesn’t just lift a few producers. It resurrects forgotten districts, reopens dormant mines, and redraws the map of viable exploration.
At higher uranium prices:
ISR isn’t the only game in town
Open pits and underground operations return
Marginal belts transform into real contenders
Drilling accelerates
Staking wars reopen
The exploration pipeline finally breathes again
Meanwhile, modern tools—AI, machine learning, 3D geologic modeling—unlock layers of subsurface intelligence never before accessible. Roll-front discovery becomes a data-driven pursuit rather than a needle-in-a-basin exercise.
The work becomes smarter. Faster. More predictive. More efficient.
We’re not just inheriting new fire. We’re learning how to aim it.
IX. Waste: The Myth, the Reality, and the Future Fuel
Nuclear waste is one of the great optical illusions of modern society. The entire spent-fuel footprint of the United States fits on a single football field stacked 30 feet high. It is solid. Contained. Tracked. Managed with a flawless safety record spanning seven decades.
And—this is the part almost no one realizes—95% of its energy remains unused.
Tomorrow’s reactors and recycling technologies will turn much of what we now store into multi-century fuel. Even the isotopes considered “waste” today are becoming strategic assets—powering nuclear batteries, satellites, sensors, and remote systems for centuries.
In a world obsessed with circularity, nuclear is quietly revealing the most circular energy cycle of all.
X. What This Means for Us
The horizon in front of us is not abstract. It is real, rising, and demanding talent, courage, stewardship, and scientific clarity.
As uranium prices rise and the world’s appetite for electrons becomes insatiable, opportunity expands across every corner of the sector:
Geologists
Engineers
Hydrologists
Nuclear fuel specialists
Data scientists
Permitting professionals
AI-driven subsurface modelers
This is not a renaissance to watch. It is a renaissance to shape.
We have inherited a fire more powerful than any our species has ever wielded—and with it, a responsibility to use it wisely, transparently, ethically, and with a long memory for the land and communities that support our work.
We are building the energy architecture of 2050, 2080, 2100 and beyond. The choices we make now echo into a century that will run on electrons drawn from the nucleus.
Every so often, a question settles into the back of a geologist’s mind like a pebble in a boot. No matter how far you walk, you feel it.
For me, that pebble was this:
If one pound of uranium holds roughly three million times more energy than a pound of coal… why do they trade at the same order of magnitude in price?
Why is uranium an $80/lb commodity when, energetically, it behaves like bottled lightning?
I expected the answer to be complicated. The truth was deeper — and far more astonishing — than I imagined.
This essay is the story of following that question all the way down to the bedrock… and discovering a fault line in the global economy waiting to slip.
I. Uranium vs. Coal: A Tale of Two Fuels
Let’s start with the raw physics — no jargon, no reactor-speak, just simple energy content.
Coal:
About 10,000 BTU per pound.
Uranium (real-world reactor fuel):
About 1.6 billion BTU per pound.
Uranium (full-U235 fission theoretical):
About 37 billion BTU per pound.
To keep the math anchored:
👉 1 pound of uranium ≈ 3,000,000 pounds of coal 👉 or roughly 1,500 short tons
This is not a rounding error. It is the largest energy-density spread in the history of civilization.
Yet…
Coal trades at $50–$100 per ton. Uranium trades at ~$80 per pound.
The more I turned the numbers over, the more absurd the comparison became.
II. The First Shock: Uranium’s “Heat Parity” Price Isn’t $100 — It’s Thousands
To calculate uranium’s “true value,” let’s ask a simple, childlike question:
“If you priced uranium the same way you price coal — purely by heat content — what would it be worth?”
Answer:
In today’s reactors, uranium should be worth $3,000–$8,000 per pound.
In theoretical full-fission terms, it reaches $100,000–$500,000 per pound.
Those are not typos. Those aren’t dreams. Those are physics.
So how on Earth is uranium $80/lb?
Because markets don’t trade physics — they trade logistics, regulation, and psychology.
That realization led me to the second, even deeper shock.
III. The Second Shock: Even at $300–$1,000/lb, Nuclear Power Costs Stay Flat
This was the moment the ground shifted under my feet.
You can triple or quadruple the price of uranium…
…and the cost of nuclear electricity barely moves.
Why?
Because nuclear plants use so little fuel.
A single fuel pellet the size of your fingertip holds the same energy as a ton of coal. A single pound of uranium powers thousands of homes for a year. Fuel is a tiny slice of a reactor’s operating cost.
Raising uranium from $80 to $300 or even $1,000 moves the needle only from ½ cent per kWh to maybe 2 cents per kWh in fuel cost.
Let that sink in:
Nuclear energy is so potent that even a 10× or 20× rise in uranium price barely budges the electric bill.
This is not just an economic curiosity — it is a macroeconomic revelation.
IV. The Third Shock: A World Built on Cheap Nuclear Energy Floats, Not Sinks
If uranium rises to its real value — $300 fuel-parity or even $3,000 physics-parity — something extraordinary happens:
Energy becomes inexpensive, predictable, and abundant.
Imagine:
No volatility from gas pipelines.
No coal supply crunches.
No weather-dependent intermittency.
No geopolitical chokeholds.
No fragile grids.
No spiraling power costs.
Nuclear offers:
Ultra-cheap fuel
Ultra-long asset life
Ultra-stable output
When energy becomes cheap and constant, everything else in the economy becomes lighter:
Manufacturing costs drop
Mining costs drop
Transportation costs drop
Food production costs drop
Inflation pressure eases
Economic growth accelerates
It is the closest thing to a “cheat code” for civilization we have ever found.
Sometimes you have to read the tea leaves to see the deeper reality: Cheap uranium → cheap nuclear → cheap everything.
This isn’t geology anymore — this is political economy.
V. And Here’s the Punchline: The Mining World Isn’t Ready
This is where my geologist’s boots hit the dirt.
Because if uranium is this undervalued… if its true energy value is in the thousands per pound… if the world is going nuclear out of necessity… then we are standing on the threshold of a mining revolution.
At $300/lb:
Roll-fronts once considered “marginal” become prime targets.
At $500–$1,000/lb:
Low-grade sandstone horizons become company-makers. Old ISR fields get second and third lives.
At $1,000–$3,000/lb:
Lignites, shales, metasomatic systems, and granites — today written off as waste — become the Athabasca Basins of 2075.
What we call “low grade” today will be considered “bonanza” tomorrow.
We are in the early-early-early oil age of uranium. Rockefeller-level early. “Horse-drawn rigs in Pennsylvania” early.
The only reason the world isn’t acting like it is early? Because we are pricing uranium as if it is coal.
And it is not coal. It is energy compressed into a mineral soul.
VI. The New Frontier: Energy Abundance and Geologic Renaissance
What happens when:
reactors get smaller
regulations get smarter
fuel cycles get closed
enrichment expands
nations seek energy independence
grids bend under AI and electrification…
…and uranium prices finally catch up?
A renaissance.
A rebirth.
A new era where exploration geologists walk onto projects long dismissed as “uneconomic” — and suddenly see opportunity glowing like desert varnish at sunset.
We will re-drill old deposits. We will re-map old roll fronts. We will re-model old sandstone basins. We will re-evaluate “waste” with wiser eyes.
Because the future doesn’t belong to high-grade deposits.
The future belongs to scale.
VII. Conclusion: The Rock Is Mighty — The Market Just Forgot
Uranium is not an $80 commodity pretending to be a fuel.
It is a world-changing energy metal priced as if it were an afterthought.
Physics says it should be thousands per pound. Economics says it can easily support hundreds per pound. Civilization says we desperately need it. Geology says we are barely scratching the surface.
And the exploration frontier — the one that I and many others walk every day — is on the cusp of rediscovery.
The rock is mighty.
The world just hasn’t remembered it yet.
But it will.
And when it does, the next century of energy, mining, geopolitics, and human flourishing may well be written in the quiet glow of uranium’s still-untapped power.
Civilization runs on minerals. Gold may glitter, but copper carries our current, uranium powers our grids, and rare earths anchor the very magnets that spin the world. Without them, the skyscrapers don’t rise, the phones don’t ring, and the servers that feed the cloud go dark. Mining is not just an industry; it is the bedrock upon which every other modern enterprise rests.
And yet, here we stand in 2025, after more than a decade of neglect. The global mining industry has starved its own “R&D department”—exploration. Budgets have been slashed, geologists retired without replacement, and entire districts left unmapped since the 1980s. Instead of planting seeds for the future, the sector has lived off old harvests, leaning on deposits discovered by the last great exploration wave of the 1960s–1990s.
It’s the equivalent of eating the seed corn to make it through winter. Yes, you may survive the lean season, but when spring arrives the fields are bare. The industry now faces a generational dilemma: demand is rising with electrification, AI-driven power consumption, and defense needs, but the pipeline of new discoveries is running dry.
The warning signs are already here. Grades are falling, permitting timelines stretch a decade or more, and the very talent pool of geologists—the human capital that finds ore before machines can mine it—is shrinking. The exploration torch is passing out, just as the world needs it most.
This is the seed corn problem: an industry that mistook austerity for efficiency, cost-cutting for strategy, and in doing so mortgaged its future.
Why Exploration Matters
Exploration is the ghost in the machine—the unseen force that keeps the gears of civilization turning. Mines are not infinite. Ore bodies deplete, grades decline, and production costs inevitably climb. Without a steady stream of new discoveries, the reserves that underpin our supply chains wither away.
When exploration falters, the ripple effects are immediate and profound:
Depletion at the source: Mature mines close or shift to lower-grade zones, requiring more energy, more water, and more waste rock for every ton of metal produced.
Fragile supply chains: Scarcity tightens the noose. Nations grow dependent on single suppliers or unstable jurisdictions, inviting shortages and geopolitical choke points.
Economic exposure: Industries that appear cutting-edge—AI, data centers, quantum computing, crypto, electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels—become castles built on sand, unsupported by the very raw materials that make them possible.
History proves the point. The U.S. uranium boom of the 1950s, the global porphyry copper discoveries of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Carlin Trend gold rush in Nevada all reshaped economies and societies. But each relied on bold, boots-on-the-ground exploration—and each took decades to bring from discovery to production. Without planting new seeds today, there will be no harvest tomorrow.
Exploration is not optional. It is the bedrock of resilience, the insurance policy against scarcity, and the quiet act of faith that there will still be metal in the mill when the world comes calling.
What Happened to the Juniors?
Once, junior explorers were the daring prospectors of capital markets. They were scrappy, nimble, and driven by geologists with calloused hands and big dreams—funded by retail investors and risk-tolerant funds who saw the outsized upside of a drill-bit discovery. They were the seed planters.
Today, they’re skeletal. The ecosystem that once sustained them has been hollowed out by a perfect storm of mistrust, market shifts, and changing appetites for risk.
Burned Trust (2011–2015): Billions vanished in the last gold cycle. Over-promises, bad geology, and outright scams poisoned the well. Investors fled, leaving legitimate juniors to starve alongside the frauds.
ETF Domination: Passive index funds became the new custodians of capital. They allocate by market cap, not by exploration potential. Drill holes don’t move the needle. The capital pool that once flowed freely into high-risk discovery stories has shrunk to a trickle.
Retail Drift: The everyday investor who once bought a thousand shares of a penny-stock explorer on a hunch now chases tech IPOs, cannabis booms, meme stocks, and crypto tokens. Rocks lost their shine in a world of instant returns and digital buzz.
Risk Aversion: Institutional capital demands cash flow, not speculation. Money flows to mid-tiers and majors who can produce quarterly results, not to juniors who burn cash in search of something that may not exist.
The result? An entire generation of junior companies reduced to husks—managing legacy properties, eking out survival on private placements, or vanishing altogether. Where once the TSX-Venture exchange was a bustling bazaar of discovery, it is now a thinly traded echo chamber.
The juniors are left begging for scraps. And without them, the pipeline of new discoveries—the very seed corn of the mining industry—runs dry.
Why the Majors Look Away
Big mining companies are not innocent bystanders in this drought of discovery. They’ve made a calculated choice—a choice that prioritizes quarterly comfort over generational security.
Dividends > Drills: Shareholders demand yield, not uncertainty. The likes of BHP, Rio Tinto, and Vale trumpet their dividend programs as proof of “discipline,” funneling billions back to investors instead of into the geologists who might find tomorrow’s ore bodies. The City of London and Bay Street cheer, but the exploration pipeline withers.
M&A Is Easier: Why risk the cost and uncertainty of greenfield exploration when you can let juniors shoulder the burden and then swoop in later? Barrick, Newmont, and Anglo American have built portfolios on acquisitions rather than discoveries, paying premiums for ounces once desperation sets in. This strategy works only as long as juniors exist—and today, even that seedbed is failing.
Permitting Pain: In the U.S., a new mine can take 10–15 years to permit. In Chile, Peru, and Argentina, political shifts and social unrest regularly derail development. Even Canada, once a paragon of mining stability, has bogged down in federal-provincial wrangling. To the majors, exploration feels like wasted effort if politics can veto production. Why drill if a discovery just becomes a stranded asset?
Artificial Scarcity: A tighter project pipeline props up higher commodity prices. For majors, scarcity is profitable—at least in the short run. Copper prices hold stronger when new supply is uncertain. Uranium equities rally when no new projects are breaking ground. But this “discipline” is short-sighted. Artificial scarcity enriches today’s balance sheets while mortgaging tomorrow’s grids.
The majors’ restraint looks like prudence, but in truth, it is systemic neglect. They have mistaken risk aversion for strategy. Instead of seeding the next generation of mines, they are cannibalizing the last generation’s discoveries, hoping someone else will do the dirty work of prospecting.
Yet “someone else” no longer exists. The juniors are starved, governments are paralyzed, and the majors have parked their drills. The system is eating itself.
The Timeline of Consequences
The story of exploration neglect is not abstract. It unfolds on a clock, with milestones as predictable as they are dire. Here’s what we will see in the coming year, 5 years, and 10 years if this pattern of neglect is allowed to continue:
📍 1 Year (2026): The Plateau(if this isn’t already the case)
Reserves continue to shrink across commodities—global copper reserves, for example, are already skewed toward lower-grade porphyries that cost twice as much to mine as their predecessors.
Senior geologists retire, taking with them decades of local knowledge about belts in Nevada, the Andes, and the African Copperbelt. Their field notebooks, often never digitized, gather dust in basements.
Once-vibrant districts—like northern Ontario’s greenstone belts or the Carlin Trend in Nevada—begin to lose their intellectual “muscle memory.” The living knowledge that connects old drill logs to new targets vanishes.
📍 5 Years (2030): The Gap
Project pipelines hollow out. The majors’ development schedules, already thin, collapse into a handful of advanced brownfield expansions.
Juniors consolidate into survival mergers or collapse outright, leaving only a skeletal handful of companies with active drills. The TSX-Venture—the historical cradle of global discovery—is reduced to a backwater of shell companies and recycled management teams.
Governments scramble to reverse decades of neglect: Washington floats “Critical Mineral Moonshots,” Brussels pushes exploration tax credits, Beijing doubles down on African offtake agreements. But the measures are too late. You cannot conjure ore bodies with subsidies once the drills have gone silent.
Supply deficits bite. Copper, lithium, and rare earths become the new oil shocks—triggering inflation, power rationing, and trade wars over who gets the last shipments.
📍10 Years (2035): The Ghost Tap
You cannot turn on a tap that isn’t connected to a pipeline. Mines take 10–20 years to permit and build. By 2035, the missing decade of exploration has come due.
Critical minerals are no longer market stories—they are national security flashpoints.
China leverages its dominance in rare earths to dictate terms in global trade.
The U.S. Defense Department stockpiles uranium and cobalt like Cold War-era oil.
Europe, unable to build batteries without imported lithium, faces rolling blackouts and stalled EV adoption.
Even record-high commodity prices won’t matter. A $15,000/t copper price or $200/lb uranium price won’t magically materialize new deposits. Discovery takes decades, and the decade has already been lost.
The result is a ghost system: idle smelters, shuttered gigafactories, and stalled wind and solar farms—technology stranded for want of the materials that should have been planted years before.
The Geopolitical Context
We are entering an era where geology is geopolitics. Control of the periodic table is now as decisive as control of sea lanes or satellite constellations.
China throttles rare earth exports, weaponizing its near-monopoly in magnets and battery materials. Its Belt and Road Initiative has already secured lithium and cobalt across Africa and South America.
Russia leans into resource nationalism, tying uranium exports and energy corridors to its foreign policy goals. Kazakhstan—producer of over 40% of the world’s uranium—sits in Moscow’s orbit.
India is no longer just a consumer but an aggressive competitor, racing to lock down lithium supplies in Argentina and rare earth projects in Australia.
The West risks becoming a permanent importer, dependent on rivals for the metals that power its grids, weapons, and economies.
This is not about abstract “market dynamics.” It is about whether democracies will control their own futures.
Without uranium, copper, lithium, and rare earth elements, there is no AI revolution, no data center backbone, no renewable transition, no electric vehicle fleet. Strip away the minerals, and the high-tech towers of modernity collapse like sandcastles in the tide.
And here lies the hard truth: exploration is the first act of sovereignty. Mines take 10–20 years to permit and build. If we do not plant seeds now, by the 2030s the United States and its allies will be paying whatever price Beijing or Moscow demands—or doing without altogether.
The call to action is clear:
Reinvest in exploration with the urgency of a Manhattan Project—geological surveys, public-private partnerships, and incentives that pull risk capital back into the field.
Build Western supply chains that can withstand geopolitical shocks, from Nevada lithium to Saskatchewan uranium to Australian rare earths.
Treat geology as strategy, not afterthought. The United States Geological Survey should be viewed with the same seriousness as the Pentagon, for both are guardians of national defense.
This is the rallying cry for the U.S. and its allies: sovereignty begins at the drill rig. Without exploration, there is no mining. Without mining, there is no economy. Without an economy built on secure foundations, there is no freedom to defend.
A Glimmer of Policy Reform
For all the gloom, there are sparks of recognition—early shoots that hint the field may not be barren forever.
FAST-41 Permitting Reform: Once a bureaucratic chokehold, permitting in the U.S. is showing signs of movement. The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FAST-41) is beginning to streamline timelines for “covered projects.” Uranium juniors like Anfield Energy with its Velvet-Wood mine in Utah, and EnCore Energy with Dewey-Burdock in South Dakota, have already secured wins under this process. What once looked like stranded assets are edging toward daylight.
Pentagon–MP Materials Partnership: The U.S. Department of Defense has invested directly in MP Materials’ Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California—hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to secure separation and magnet manufacturing capacity on U.S. soil. This is no boutique project: MP Materials controls the only rare earth mine (of scale) in the U.S. and is ramping toward vertical integration that could anchor a Western supply chain.
Copper as a Keystone: Projects like Resolution Copper in Arizona—one of the largest undeveloped copper resources in the world—remain politically tangled, but their scale makes them unavoidable. If unlocked, Resolution alone could supply up to 25% of U.S. copper demand for decades.
Lithium Rising: The controversial but progressing Thacker Pass project in Nevada, and Ioneer’s Rhyolite Ridge, have secured federal loans and partnerships, positioning the U.S. as a serious player in lithium carbonate production. Thacker Pass, with more than $2 billion in projected investment, is not just a mine but a downstream refining hub in the making.
Downstream Momentum: Supply chains are finally catching political attention. From rare earth magnet plants in Texas to lithium hydroxide refineries in Nevada, the U.S. is beginning to invest not only in the rocks, but in the capacity to turn them into finished products. That is the true measure of sovereignty.
These reforms are encouraging, but they are still small strokes on a canvas that demands bold, sweeping lines. A handful of permitting wins and defense contracts are not a revolution. What’s needed is a scale-up—tenfold, a hundredfold. Only when the U.S. and its allies treat minerals with the same urgency once reserved for oil, or for the space race, can we say things have truly changed.
This glimmer is fragile, but it is real. If fanned, it could light the torch of a new exploration renaissance.
Conclusion: Choose Risk or Embrace Ruin
The mining industry thought it was playing it safe by pulling back on exploration. In truth, it was gambling the future—trading short-term stability for long-term scarcity. The result is hollow pipelines, fragile supply chains, and a generation of geological knowledge at risk of fading into silence.
Exploration is not a luxury. It is the R&D of civilization itself. Without it, there is no copper for wires, no lithium for batteries, no uranium for baseload power. Starve exploration, and we starve the future.
The real risk isn’t in drilling holes—it’s in failing to drill them. The world’s faucets are running, but the reservoir is dropping. The only question that remains is whether we have the vision and courage to dig the next well before the water stops.
For those still with me at the end of this essay, here’s the wry truth in one line:
“Exploration: the riskiest bet we can’t afford not to make.”
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” – Vladimir Lenin (and, let’s be honest, every energy sector analyst this month)
For years, the phrase “American uranium renaissance” has lingered in industry headlines like the smell of a diesel rig that never quite fired up. Promising starts faded. Policy support came in fits and starts. And those of us in the trenches—operators, geologists, engineers—held on to a vision of domestic nuclear revival that never quite made it out of committee.
Until now.
The last few weeks have delivered something different: not just press releases, but permits, production, and political will—aligned, accelerating, and actively reshaping the landscape of uranium in the United States. From Wyoming to Utah to Texas, major players are pushing forward with restarts, expansions, and acquisitions, emboldened by a rare trifecta: market fundamentals, government policy, and infrastructure readiness.
Let’s take a tour of the sector’s seismic shifts.
🚨 Policy First: Washington Opens the Gates
It started at the top.
In April and May, the Trump administration rolled out a flurry of Executive Orders aimed at reviving the nuclear fuel cycle. These included:
Emergency Declarations identifying uranium as a strategic national asset
A ban on Russian uranium imports (signed into law in May 2024)
Federal directives to streamline permitting for domestic uranium and vanadium projects
The creation of the National Energy Dominance Council brought policy coordination to a new level, explicitly calling out uranium as an “amazing energy asset.” That might sound like political theater, but in an industry as permit-constrained as ours, it’s hard to overstate what a signal like this does to capital flows and operational confidence.
And the results? Almost immediate.
⛏️ Anfield Energy: Permitted at the Speed of Policy
On May 27, Anfield’s Velvet-Wood Project in San Juan County, Utah, became the first uranium mine approved under the new emergency declaration. The U.S. Department of the Interior wrapped environmental review in just 14 days—a process that once took years. This was not a pilot or demonstration; this was the green light to go.
Anfield’s position is even stronger when you consider their Shootaring Canyon Mill, one of only three licensed conventional uranium mills in the U.S. With mill capacity in place and a $238 million pre-tax NPV (PEA combined with Slick Rock), Anfield’s production pipeline is now a strategic national asset.
In June, Uranium Energy Corp (UEC) doubled down, acquiring 170 million Anfield shares and boosting its stake to over 37% (partially diluted). In doing so, UEC is anchoring itself not just as a producer, but as a portfolio architect of the American fuel cycle.
🛠️ IsoEnergy: Restart Plans with a Permit-First Strategy
Also on May 27, IsoEnergy Ltd. announced it had kicked off technical optimization programs at its fully permitted Tony M Mine in Utah. These included:
Ore sorting with Steinert’s sensor-based technology
High-Pressure Slurry Ablation (HPSA) for improved uranium recovery
Enhanced evaporation to speed up dewatering and reduce pond buildout costs
All of IsoEnergy’s mines in Utah—Tony M, Daneros, and Rim—are fully permitted. With a toll milling agreement already in place with Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill, IsoEnergy is poised to become a low-capex, near-term producer with minimal regulatory hurdles.
A restart decision is anticipated by the end of 2025. From where I sit, that’s not just likely—it’s inevitable.
🧭 Ur-Energy: Expansion Secured, Basin Rising
In early May, Ur-Energy received final approval from both Wyoming DEQ and the EPA to expand its Lost Creek ISR project by six additional mine units. While production in those areas is several years out, the regulatory legwork is now done—a rare luxury in our industry.
More immediately, Ur-Energy’s focus is on the Shirley Basin Project, with construction underway and startup expected in early 2026. When combined with Lost Creek, Shirley Basin increases Ur-Energy’s licensed production capacity by 83%.
And just in case you missed it: according to EIA data, Ur-Energy was the top U.S. uranium producer in 2024.
🧮 Production Reawakens: The Data Don’t Lie
Fourth-quarter 2024 U.S. uranium production reached 375,401 pounds U₃O₈—the highest since 2018. Here’s how the key players stacked up:
Company
Q4 2024 U₃O₈ Output
Notables
Energy Fuels
157,525 lbs
White Mesa Mill + Pinyon Plain (AZ)
EnCore Energy
127,293 lbs
Alta Mesa ISR (TX)
Ur-Energy
74,006 lbs
Lost Creek ISR (WY)
UEC
Restarted 2024
Christensen Ranch ISR + Irigaray processing
Peninsula Energy
2,669 lbs
Lance ISR (WY), full output expected mid-2025
UEC also added Rio Tinto’s Sweetwater Mill to its portfolio—a massive 4.1 million lb/year licensed facility. Plans are underway to retrofit it for resin-based recovery from ISR feedstock, creating a centralized processing solution for Wyoming’s next chapter.
🔮 What It All Means
We’ve crossed a threshold. These aren’t speculative PEA-stage juniors poking around the desert. These are licensed facilities, operational mines, and full-cycle infrastructure moving into motion under the influence of:
Strong uranium prices
A domestic supply crisis
And now—at last—unified federal support
The combination of ISR assets (UEC, EnCore, Ur-Energy) and conventional mine-mill pairs (Anfield, IsoEnergy, Energy Fuels) represents a diversified, scalable, and increasingly de-risked supply base.
More importantly, this isn’t a rerun of 2010s false starts. The Russian ban is real. The mills are licensed. The ore is moving. The politics are aligned.
✍️ Final Thoughts: The Clock Is Ticking—and We’re Finally Ticking With It
For years, the U.S. uranium industry has been a paradox—essential, but ignored; strategic, but unsupported. Today, that paradox is breaking.
What’s emerging is not just a domestic comeback. It’s a structural reawakening—where geology, capital, and policy are syncing into rhythm. As a geologist and project manager in this space, I’ve never seen the lines on the map feel so alive.
From drill rigs in Wyoming to boardrooms in Toronto, the message is clear:
The uranium engine is no longer idling. It’s revving. And this time, we’re going somewhere.
Mark Travis, CPG is a consulting geologist, writer, and uranium exploration advocate based in Nevada and Wyoming. He is President of Arkenstone Exploration and serves as Acting Vice President of the Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition.
Recently here in June of 2025, Nuclear Fuels Inc. officially kicked off its 2025 drilling program at the Kaycee Uranium Project in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. For those of us on the ground, this marks more than the start of another drill season—it represents a strategic pivot point in America’s race to revitalize domestic uranium production.
Building on Discovery, Not Just Hype
The 2025 program plans to complete at least 100,000 feet of rotary mud drilling, expanding on successes from late 2024 when the Outpost and Trail Dust Zones were discovered. Both zones returned solid intercepts of roll front-style mineralization—textbook ISR targets.
Outpost Zone: 0.082% eU₃O₈ over 6.5 ft (GT 0.532) at 767 ft depth
Trail Dust Zone: 0.0553% eU₃O₈ over 5.5 ft (GT 0.304) at 886 ft depth
These aren’t headline-grabbing grades, but they’re meaningful, especially when contextualized within a district that hosts over 430 miles of roll fronts across a consolidated 55-square-mile land position. ISR uranium is a volume game, and Kaycee is one of the few districts in the U.S. where all three historically productive formations—Wasatch, Fort Union, and Lance—are present and mineralized.
This is no small feat. It’s been four decades since this patch of uranium country was under single-company control. That historical fragmentation is exactly why it has been overlooked—until now.
Fast-Tracking the Future? The Role of Fast-41 and Domestic Policy
It’s also no accident that this kind of momentum is happening in Wyoming, a state that not only supports energy development but also operates under “Agreement State” status, streamlining the ISR permitting process in partnership with the NRC.
Policies like Fast-41—first implemented under the Trump administration to accelerate federal reviews for critical infrastructure—are back in the conversation. And they matter. Fast-41 designations don’t just cut red tape; they elevate a project’s visibility, encourage inter-agency cooperation, and unlock capital that would otherwise sit on the sidelines due to regulatory uncertainty. In today’s geopolitical climate, where nuclear energy is being rediscovered as the linchpin of a clean and sovereign energy future, the uranium sector is moving from “interesting” to “imperative.”
M&A: Consolidation Brings Clarity
The recent announcement that Premier American Uranium will acquire Nuclear Fuels adds another layer of momentum. Once completed, the merger will create one of the largest pure-play uranium explorers in the U.S. with a portfolio of 12 key projects across several top-tier uranium basins.
We’re seeing a broader trend across the sector:
Uranium Energy Corp. continues expanding ISR capacity via South Texas and Wyoming acquisitions.
enCore Energy, our strategic partner at Kaycee, is pivoting from explorer to near-term producer.
And legacy juniors are being rolled into larger vehicles that can leverage scale and permitting strength.
These moves aren’t just about size—they’re about aligning technical teams, capital, and permitting expertise to match a coming uranium demand cycle that’s being driven by utility restocking, geopolitical stockpiling, and a resurgence of U.S. nuclear builds.
My Role in the Shift
As the Project Manager for Nuclear Fuels, and now part of the integrated team under the Premier American umbrella, my role remains the same in spirit but is growing in scope. I’ll continue overseeing the Kaycee exploration campaign—coordinating drill planning, target modeling, logging, and resource delineation. The groundwork we’re laying now isn’t just about proving pounds—it’s about positioning Kaycee as one of the next ISR uranium projects ready for resource definition and eventual development.
Being a Qualified Person under NI 43-101, I’ve reviewed and signed off on the technical content of our news releases, but I’m also deep in the field: managing contractors, monitoring lith logs, and piecing together the kind of geologic story that excites engineers and investors alike.
And I believe in that story.
A Foundation for the Next Cycle
We’re not in the discovery-for-discovery’s-sake phase anymore. The uranium sector is tightening, and developers with real ground, real data, and real people doing the work are rising to the top. The Kaycee Project has the hallmarks of a future ISR producer: favorable host formations, supportive jurisdiction, strong partnerships, and aggressive yet responsible exploration.
So here’s to another season of mud, probes, logging runs, and long drives between rotary rigs. If you’re watching the uranium space, keep your eye on Kaycee. The pieces are coming together.
Mark Travis, CPG Project Manager – Nuclear Fuels Inc. / Premier American Uranium Geologist, Permitting Liaison, and Explorer of America’s Energy Future
There’s a strange poetry in the digital dreams of Silicon Valley being powered by the dense, invisible force forged in the heart of an Illinois cornfield.
Meta—the same company that gave us Facebook and our collective descent into the algorithmic abyss—is now hitching its AI ambitions to the atom. In a headline that’s as surreal as it is inevitable, Meta just inked a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation Energy, locking in nuclear energy from the Clinton Clean Energy Center to help feed its growing fleet of data centers.
And no, this isn’t just another “we’re buying some credits and planting trees” PR stunt. This is baseload. This is carbon-free. This is nuclear—and it’s a signal flare in the night sky of America’s energy future.
When Data Demands a Dynamo
AI is hungry. Really hungry. Think: city-scale electricity loads to run the silicon minds dreaming up everything from deepfake movie scripts to how your toaster should talk to your car. With natural gas still king and renewables playing catch-up, Big Tech is suddenly realizing that if you want round-the-clock, carbon-free electrons—you need to cozy up to uranium.
Meta’s move doesn’t pull power off the grid. Instead, it’s a financial handshake: a promise to pay for the clean attributes of nuclear generation, offsetting their less-green draw elsewhere. It’s not about plugging servers straight into a reactor. It’s about giving that reactor a new lease on life—and making sure those precious electrons stay in the game.
And here’s the kicker: the Clinton plant was already facing the ticking clock of a 2027 relicensing deadline. This deal doesn’t just keep the lights on—it funds relicensing, system upgrades, and possibly even paves the way for a second reactor on site. The term “lifeline” doesn’t do it justice. This is strategic resuscitation.
From Meltdown to Momentum
Meta’s deal follows a similar PPA struck between Microsoft and Constellation to restart the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island. Yes, that Three Mile Island—the ghost of nuclear nightmares past, now being resurrected not by government fiat, but by the insatiable need for clean, scalable power.
We’re witnessing something remarkable: the pivot of private capital into nuclear stability. It’s not ideology. It’s not politics. It’s demand pressure meeting supply crunch and realizing that the atom still has something to say.
A New Playbook for Clean Energy
Here’s why this matters far beyond Meta’s data closets:
It validates nuclear’s role in the clean energy mix. Not just in theory—but in dollars and contracts.
It provides a replicable model for other plants facing closure or uncertainty in competitive markets.
It opens the door to expanding capacity—whether that’s uprating existing plants, building second units, or finally bringing small modular reactors (SMRs) off the whiteboard and into the dirt.
Constellation’s CEO, Joe Dominguez, called it what it is: billions in capital risk, made bankable only through long-term certainty. And that’s exactly what these PPAs provide. We may not get new nuclear without solving our permitting and political paralysis—but we can shore up what we already have. And that’s no small feat.
Why It Matters to the Rocks and Wires Crowd
For those of us in the mining, exploration, and energy-adjacent world—this is music to our ears. It means demand for uranium is no longer just a function of geopolitical saber-rattling or reactor restarts elsewhere in the world. It’s increasingly being driven by the business case for domestic, carbon-free power.
And let’s be honest—this gives us something new to say when we’re cornered at the barbecue by someone asking, “But isn’t nuclear dangerous?” You can now reply, “Dangerous to ignore, maybe. Even Facebook thinks so.”
Closing Thoughts: AI’s Atomic Appetite
Meta’s deal isn’t just about electrons. It’s about narratives shifting. It’s about legacy infrastructure finding new relevance. It’s about the atom rising again—not as the ghost of Cold War terror, but as the workhorse of our digital future.
The AI age won’t be solar-only. It won’t run on vibes and wishful thinking. It’ll need something denser. More consistent. More resolute.
And nuclear, once cast aside, might just be the steel backbone beneath our silicon dreams.
Something big just moved beneath the surface—and not just geologically.
On June 5th, it was announced that Premier American Uranium Inc. (PUR) will acquire Nuclear Fuels Inc. (NF), creating one of the largest pure-play uranium explorers in the United States. As someone who’s had the privilege of serving as Project Manager for Nuclear Fuels, I’m proud to share that this is not the end of a chapter—it’s the doubling down of a mission. And I’ll continue to be actively involved in this newly merged entity as we push forward across the map, the drill deck, and the development pipeline.
What This Means: Consolidation with Purpose
The new company brings together:
12 exploration and development-stage projects across Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and Colorado;
A land position totaling over 104,000 acres;
Historic and modern datasets from more than 4,200+ drill holes in Wyoming alone;
And a rare emphasis on ISR-focused uranium exploration, an area often overlooked but critically needed for the U.S. energy transition.
This isn’t consolidation for consolidation’s sake. It’s strategic integration—combining NF’s flagship Kaycee Project in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin with PUR’s Cyclone Project in the Great Divide Basin, both sitting squarely within America’s most prolific ISR districts.
Why Now? Because Timing is Everything
We’re in a moment.
In the last few months alone:
Uranium projects in the U.S. are being fast-tracked.
The Grants Mineral Belt in New Mexico—home to PUR’s Cebolleta Project—has received federal attention via the FAST-41 permitting program.
And domestic supply security has become more than a talking point—it’s a mandate.
This merger lands at exactly the right time, with exactly the right assets, and exactly the right team.
Kaycee: A Keystone Asset
Let me take a moment to highlight what makes Kaycee so special—because I’ve walked it, mapped it, and logged more than a few of those holes myself.
Kaycee spans a 35-mile roll-front system with over 430 miles of mapped trends, supported by historic drilling and modern work that proves uranium mineralization in all three major sand units: Wasatch, Fort Union, and Lance. That’s a rarity in ISR uranium, and it’s a big part of why this deal makes so much sense.
Our 2023 and 2024 drill campaigns were among the largest ISR exploration programs in the U.S., and the trend is just beginning to heat up. With C$14M in combined cash on hand, the new company is poised to aggressively advance Kaycee and our other high-potential assets in the months to come.
The People Behind the Rocks
This isn’t just about drill footage and roll fronts.
The combined company will be backed by some of the strongest strategic players in the space—Sachem Cove, enCore Energy, IsoEnergy, and Mega Uranium—and led by Colin Healey as CEO, with representation from both the PUR and NF boards. I’m honored to remain involved post-merger, contributing to the continued growth of the project portfolio and the technical strategy that guides it.
Exploration geologists don’t often get to see their work reach critical mass. This is one of those rare and exciting exceptions.
Looking Ahead
U.S. uranium isn’t just coming back. It’s growing smarter. Sharper. More deliberate.
With the Premier-Nuclear Fuels merger, we’re not just stitching together acreage. We’re assembling the kind of exploration-first, production-ready platform that’s been missing from the domestic uranium narrative. A platform with the data, the drilling history, the land, the resources—and the team—to make something enduring.
This is about more than uranium. It’s about how we meet the energy future with boldness, science, and a little bit of grit.
🔗 If you’re following the uranium sector, the time to pay attention is now. If you’re already invested—in industry, interest, or curiosity—this is a story worth tracking.
And if you’re a geologist like me?
You know what this really means: we’ve still got plenty of ground to cover—and we’re just getting started.
In a move that feels like the opening scene of a modern-day energy epic, the U.S. Department of the Interior has granted a swift green light to Anfield Energy’s Velvet-Wood uranium and vanadium project in Utah. This isn’t just another mining approval; it’s the first to benefit from a newly implemented 14-day environmental review process, a stark contrast to the years such assessments typically consume.
Why does this matter? Because it’s not just about one mine; it’s about setting a precedent. This expedited approval could be the catalyst that reignites domestic exploration and production of critical minerals, particularly uranium—a resource that’s poised to become the linchpin of our energy future.
The Velvet-Wood Project: A Glimpse into the Future
Anfield Energy’s Velvet-Wood project isn’t starting from scratch. It’s a revival of the historic Velvet mine, coupled with the development of the nearby Wood deposit. Together, they boast an estimated 4.6 million pounds of uranium oxide equivalent (eU₃O₈) in measured and indicated resources, with an additional 552,000 pounds in inferred resources. The vanadium-to-uranium ratio stands at an impressive 1.4:1, adding another layer of value to the operation.
But the real game-changer? The plan to reopen the Shootaring Canyon uranium mill, one of only three licensed, permitted, and constructed uranium mills in the U.S. This facility will process the ore into uranium concentrate, reducing our reliance on imports—a staggering 99% of the uranium used by U.S. nuclear power plants in 2023 came from countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
A New Frontier for Exploration
This fast-track approval doesn’t just benefit Anfield; it sends a clear signal to the entire industry. The message? The U.S. is serious about securing its mineral future. For geologists, explorers, and investors, this is a clarion call to action. The regulatory landscape is shifting, and with it, the opportunities for domestic exploration are expanding.
Imagine the untapped potential in regions like the Colorado Plateau or the Wyoming Basins. With streamlined permitting processes, these areas could see a surge in exploration activities, leading to new discoveries and a revitalized domestic mining sector.
Investing in Uranium: The Next Oil Boom?
Drawing parallels between uranium today and oil in the early 20th century isn’t just poetic—it’s prophetic. Back then, early investors in oil companies reaped astronomical returns as the world transitioned to petroleum-based energy. Today, as we pivot towards low-carbon and nuclear energy solutions, uranium stands at the cusp of a similar boom.
Consider this: the global oil and gas market recorded revenues of $5.95 trillion in 2024 . The U.S. oil and gas sector alone is valued at over $1.5 trillion. If uranium follows a similar trajectory, early investors could see returns that mirror those historic oil booms.
The Bigger Picture: Energy Security and Sustainability
Beyond the financial incentives, there’s a broader narrative at play. Fast-tracking projects like Velvet-Wood aligns with national interests—reducing dependence on foreign adversaries, bolstering energy security, and promoting sustainable, low-carbon energy sources.
As we navigate the complexities of the 21st-century energy landscape, uranium offers a bridge between our current fossil-fuel dependence and a future powered by clean, reliable nuclear energy.
In Conclusion
Anfield Energy’s Velvet-Wood project isn’t just a mining operation; it’s a symbol of what’s possible when policy, industry, and innovation converge. For those with the foresight to see the writing on the wall, the uranium sector offers not just a lucrative investment opportunity but a chance to be part of a transformative chapter in America’s energy story.
The winds of energy policy are shifting, and they’re carrying a whiff of enriched uranium. President Trump is poised to sign a series of executive orders that could set the U.S. nuclear power industry ablaze—not with radiation, but with opportunity.
From streamlined reactor approvals to Cold War-style fuel independence and rumors of a massive domestic uranium procurement program, it’s starting to look a lot like the 1950s again… only with more AI, and (hopefully) less fallout propaganda.
A National Emergency? Nuclear Declared Critical
The heart of Trump’s upcoming orders is a declaration of national emergency under the Defense Production Act—an old-school move with new-age implications. Why? Because we’re too dependent on foreign sources (read: Russia and China) for enriched uranium, advanced reactor components, and nuclear fuel processing.
In a twist of Cold War déjà vu, the orders direct the Departments of Energy and Defense to identify federal lands for nuclear development and fast-track permitting. We’re talking serious logistical streamlining—enough to make the NRC blush.
AI, the New Atom Smasher
Driving this urgency is the massive power demand boom from Artificial Intelligence and data centers. Energy Secretary Chris Wright compared it to a “Manhattan Project 2”—an apt analogy, as the race is on to power a future built on silicon and servers.
AI doesn’t sleep, and it sure doesn’t like blackouts. That makes carbon-free, always-on nuclear power one of the few realistic contenders for the throne.
Loan Guarantees, Federal Land, and Red Tape Cutters
This isn’t just rhetoric. The orders encourage the DOE to dust off the Loan Programs Office and firehose funding into the sector through guarantees and direct loans—something underutilized in Trump’s first term but now brimming with cash thanks to legislation from the prior administration.
Combine that with potential reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the game may soon be played on a whole new field. A friendlier, faster, more results-driven one.
Back to the Future: AEC Vibes & the 200 Million Pound Bombshell
Perhaps the most exciting chatter? The rumored government plan to purchase 200 million pounds of U₃O₈ annually for a new U.S. strategic reserve.
Yes, you read that right. This would harken back to the golden days of the Atomic Energy Commission, when the government was the uranium market. Back then, exploration companies scrambled like claim-staking cowboys across the Western U.S., from the Colorado Plateau to Wyoming’s Wind River Basin.
If even a fraction of this deal materializes, it could supercharge domestic uranium exploration and development. Companies already holding past-producing assets or with NI 43-101 pounds in the ground could see unprecedented upside.
Opportunity for the Ready
This moment will favor the prepared, the proven, and the patient. If you’ve got:
Historic data and proven pounds in the ground,
Permitted projects or past-producing mines,
Geologists who know how to follow yellowcake trails…
Then you’re not just in the game—you’re on the edge of the next energy boom.
A Bipartisan Bridge?
Nuclear’s newfound spotlight is notable for crossing political lines. Democrats love it for its carbon-free reliability. Republicans champion it as a baseload powerhouse immune to cloud cover or calm winds. With AI and grid resilience uniting technocrats and climate hawks, nuclear just might be the great reconciling reactor in the room.
Final Thought: The Market Moves Faster Than Policy
Executive orders are one thing. Implementation takes time. But markets don’t wait. If this news sparks action—and it will—investors, developers, and explorers should already be positioning themselves. The reactor of opportunity is online. The rods are loaded. The only question is: are you ready to flip the switch?
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