While everyone was watching NVIDIA’s stock, they should have been watching Centrus Energy. The AI revolution has a dirty secret: it is radioactive.
The massive surge in nuclear stocks this week—driven by Meta and other Tech Giants securing power deals—confirms that Uranium (specifically HALEU) is the scarcest resource in the compute supply chain. It is not just about building reactors; it’s about fueling them.
What is it? (Simply Explained)
You can build a fancy nuclear car (the reactor), but it’s useless without gas (the fuel). The new, safe, small nuclear reactors that AI companies want require a special type of super-fuel called HALEU. Right now, the US barely makes any of it. Russia makes most of it. Prices are skyrocketing because everyone needs this “gas” at the same time.
Under the Hood: How It Works
The bottleneck is Enrichment.
- HALEU (High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium): Traditional reactors use fuel enriched to 5%. The new SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) needed for data centers require enrichment up to 20%. This density allows the reactors to be smaller and run longer.
- The Centrifuge Gap: Enriching Uranium requires massive cascades of centrifuges. Developing this infrastructure takes a decade. The West let its capacity atrophy, while Russia (Rosatom) maintained dominance.
- The Supply Crunch: We have a “Paper Reactor” problem—lots of planned reactors, zero fuel to put in them.
How We Got Here
For 30 years, the West neglected nuclear supply chains, assuming we could buy cheap fuel from global markets. The geopolitical fractures of the 2020s ended that.
Simultaneously, the AI boom created a sudden, desperate demand for “Green, Baseload Power.” Solar and wind are too intermittent for server farms. Nuclear is the only option, exposing the fuel shortage.
The Future & The Butterfly Effect
First Order Effect (Stock Super-Cycle):
Uranium miners and enrichment companies (like Centrus, Cameco) enter a “Super-Cycle.” Their product is inelastic—companies must buy it at any price to keep their AI running.
Second Order Effect (Tech Mining Funds):
We will see Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI investing directly in mines in Wyoming and Canada. They cannot risk the open market; they need vertical integration from the mine to the microchip.
Third Order Effect (Energy Sovereignty):
Uranium becomes a matter of National Security equivalent to oil. Export controls will tighten. The US will likely subsidize a massive domestic enrichment build-out to break reliance on adversaries, framing it as “AI Security.”
Conclusion
The cloud has a radioactive lining. The digital world is built on physical rocks. As the AI race accelerates, the shovel becomes as important as the semiconductor.
Are we ready for a world where software companies own uranium mines?