Uranium and nuclear fuel prices

Uranium is $89.68/lb on the spot indicator and $96.5/lb long-term as of August 2026. But uranium is only about half of what fuel costs, and the price a utility actually paid is often nothing like the headline, because uranium does not trade on an exchange at all.

Current indicators

• Uranium: Cameco's published industry average, calculated from UxC and TradeTech data.
• Conversion: North American indicator, month-end August 2026.
• Enrichment: Spot SWU at $200 is historically extreme. For comparison, US operators paid an average of $108.70/SWU across their actual contract portfolios in 2025.
• Fabrication: Indicative. Fabrication is priced per contract against a specific assembly design and is not quoted as a market indicator, so this figure is an order-of-magnitude placeholder used only to complete the cost stack. Treat it as the least reliable number on this page.

What a reactor's fuel actually costs

The headline uranium price is not the fuel price. A utility buys uranium, pays someone to convert it, pays someone else to enrich it, and pays a third party to fabricate assemblies. Enrichment is the second-largest line and is frequently left out of commentary entirely.

A large PWR loads roughly 25 to 30 tonnes of fuel at each refuelling, so this works out to the order of $100 million per core load, against fuel costs for a comparable gas plant that run to that much every few weeks. Fuel is a small fraction of the cost of nuclear electricity; capital is nearly all of it. That asymmetry is why a doubling of the uranium price barely moves the cost of nuclear power, and why nuclear operators are far less exposed to fuel markets than gas generators.

Forty years of price

Labelled turning points rather than a continuous series, the free indicators support monthly points, and the paywalled weekly series is not reproduced here.

$7.1 2000-12, Post-Cold-War trough

Downblended Soviet weapons uranium was flooding the market under Megatons to Megawatts, and secondary supply crushed the price below the cost of mining almost anywhere.

$125 2007-05, The 2007 spike

A flood at Cigar Lake and a collapse at Rabbit Lake removed expected supply at the same time as hedge funds entered the physical market. The price rose roughly seventeen-fold in six years.

$66.5 2011-03, Before Fukushima

The accident took 50 reactors offline in Japan alone and ended a decade of demand growth overnight.

$18 2016-11, The long bottom

Below the production cost of most of the world's mines. Cameco suspended McArthur River, the best orebody on earth, and Honeywell idled the only US conversion plant.

$100.25 2024-01, Recovery

Restrictions on Russian supply, reactor life extensions, data-centre demand and the restart of idled capacity pushed the price above $100 for the first time since 2007.

$89.68 2026-08, Current

Long-term contract price at $96.50 sits above spot, which is unusual and signals expected tightness.

Why the price is so volatile

Uranium demand is almost perfectly inelastic in the short run. A reactor that has been built will be fuelled almost regardless of price, because fuel is a small share of its operating cost and the alternative is leaving a multi-billion-dollar asset idle. Supply, meanwhile, takes a decade to respond: a new mine needs permits, capital and construction long before it produces anything.

Inelastic demand plus slow supply gives you a market that does very little for years and then moves violently. The 2007 spike and the post-Fukushima collapse are the same mechanism running in opposite directions. It is also why the industry contracts long-term, and why the only US conversion plant could sit idle for six years without anyone building a replacement.

Uranium price questions

What is the price of uranium today?

As of August 2026, uranium is about $89.68 per pound of U3O8 on the spot indicator and $96.5 per pound on the long-term indicator. Uranium does not trade on an exchange: these are assessed indicators, and most volume moves under privately negotiated long-term contracts.

Who sets the uranium price?

Nobody sets it. There is no exchange or order book. Two consultancies, UxC and TradeTech, assess a price from the deals they can observe, and Cameco publishes an industry average calculated from those two assessments.

How much does nuclear fuel cost?

At the August 2026 long-term indicators, about $4,210 per kilogram of 4.4% enriched uranium. Uranium itself is roughly 51% of that, enrichment 31%, and conversion and fabrication the remaining 18%.

What does a pound of U3O8 mean, and what is that per kilogram of uranium?

U3O8 is the oxide concentrate, sometimes called yellowcake, that mines sell, and prices are quoted per pound of it. One kilogram of uranium metal is about 2.60 pounds of U3O8, so the spot indicator of $89.68/lb is about $233 per kilogram of uranium.

What is the highest uranium price on record here?

Of the labelled turning points below, the highest is $125/lb in 2007-05 (the 2007 spike) and the lowest $7.1/lb in 2000-12 (post-cold-war trough). These are milestones, not a continuous series, so a brief peak between them would not show.