The United States and other Western nations such as Canada, Australia and Namibia are restarting or ramping up production of uranium oxide. Yet, it’s nowhere near enough to meet just the 50 million lb. a year needed to power US nuclear power plants. Output from global leader Kazakhstan has been hampered by sulphuric acid shortages. The West is attempting to limit uranium supplies from pariah Russia, which controls some 40% of the world’s capacity to enrich uranium into fuel.
“What Trump will continue to do is support local industry in the name of national security and reshoring, and that obviously has implications right across the whole nuclear fuel supply chain,” Ciampaglia said in an interview on Friday with The Northern Miner. “Canada will be a huge winner here as we restart uranium projects and build new uranium mines.”
Utilities defer
However, utilities, which buy the majority of their uranium in…


