Uranium held near $85 per pound in July 2026, staying elevated after peaking above $101 earlier in the year, as demand from a nuclear buildout continued to outrun mine supply. The metal traded around $86 in late July, while the long-term contract price reached roughly $94 per pound at the end of June, its highest level in about 18 years. The spot price gained 4.3 percent over the first half of the year.
Three forces have converged to support the market. Governments are extending existing reactor licenses and planning new capacity, operators of AI data centers are signing long-term nuclear power agreements, and mine production has lagged demand growth for years, producing chronic deficits. Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have each entered agreements to secure nuclear capacity for future data center operations.
US policy has reinforced the trend. Washington added uranium to the Critical Minerals List in November 2025, and Centrus Energy, the only domestic uranium enricher, reported a first-quarter result that beat consensus sharply and carries a backlog valued at about $3.8 billion running through 2040.
Despite firm prices, uranium mining equities have underperformed. Mining stocks fell 3.9 percent over the same stretch and junior miners lost 7.4 percent, with sharper drops in June. Investment firm Sprott characterized the gap between strong fundamentals and weak equity performance as a potential value setup, noting that share prices had not kept pace with the underlying commodity.
Source: MINING.COM - https://www.mining.com/sprott-sees-buying-opportunity-as-uranium-stocks-trail-market