Uranium futures in the US hovered near $85 per pound in June, holding within a narrow band since early April after unwinding the sharp rally seen earlier in the year. The pullback from speculative highs has coincided with subdued spot purchases by utilities, which have increasingly relied on long-term contracts since the war in Ukraine heightened short-term trade uncertainty.
Yellowcake prices had previously been buoyed by geopolitical tensions that made power markets in major economies more volatile, intensifying interest in nuclear energy among governments and power-intensive AI hyperscalers building new data centers. Italy was the latest country to signal support for nuclear power, moving to approve a legal framework to reintroduce it, in line with initiatives in the US and Japan as major power users diversify generation sources to meet surging demand from data center projects. In parallel, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have signed agreements to secure new nuclear capacity for their future AI data center operations.
