With a wary public already raising concerns, some hyperscalers have talked up the opportunity to run the facilities using nuclear power.

Published on: Sep 10, 2026, 18:07:03 IST

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Data centers have helped push up copper prices to record highs.

Some commodity market participants think they can drive uranium prices higher, too.

The spot price of U3O8, a lightly processed concentrate known as yellowcake that is used to make fuel for nuclear reactors, is at its highest since early February, according to market-data firm UxC. At almost $90 a pound, it is as much as five times more than sellers were fetching at the lowest parts of the downturn that followed the Fukushima reactor meltdowns in 2011.

Long-term prices, reflecting what power companies are willing to pay under multiyear contracts, are at their highest level in at least 18 years, miners say.

Data centers need electricity—lots of it—to operate. With a wary public already raising concerns about data centers drawing on local electricity supply and consequently driving up power bills, some hyperscalers have talked up the opportunity to run the facilities using nuclear power.

Just this week, Nordic utility Fortum signed a deal with Alphabet’s Google to power data centers in Finland, extending the life of its Loviisa nuclear power plant.

On a recent call with executives of BHP Group, Barrenjoey analyst Glyn Lawcock asked if the world’s biggest miner has become more bullish about uranium.

“I would’ve thought it has many of the attributes of copper,” Lawcock put to the BHP executives, drawing parallels between uranium and the industrial metal that is central to the miner’s growth plans.

BHP produces uranium at its copper-mining operations in South Australia and has a new chief executive officer at the helm. In response to Lawcock, CEO Brandon Craig described uranium as very attractive, although “at this stage” only as a byproduct to favored commodities such as copper.

The exchange reflects the renaissance under way in the uranium market, which spent a decade in the doldrums after the Fukushima meltdowns.

The tailwinds for uranium prices extend beyond data centers and the boom in artificial intelligence. Countries are investing in new power projects to meet energy security goals and phase out fossil fuels such as coal, which are blamed for emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Uranium supply growth has lagged market expectations, analysts say. UBS sees market deficits swelling into the 2030s and beyond.

Production costs are also under pressure industrywide, said Meirzhan Yussupov, CEO of major producer Kazatomprom. “New realities are signaling that the era of ‘cheap’ uranium is fading away,” Yussupov said.

Jonathan Hinze, president of market-data firm UxC, sees such trends drawing a wide array of first-time attendees to the World Nuclear Symposium, the industry’s largest annual conference. They include aspiring uranium suppliers as well as small, advanced and micro reactor, or SAMR, developers, nuclear-reactor supply chain firms and investors, he said.

“The ‘traditional market’ will want to get a feel for how serious these new players are—both potential future buyers and sellers of uranium—and what this portends for the long term in terms of changing market dynamics,” Hinze said.

The London gathering is taking place against one of the most bullish market backdrops in years.

Jefferies last week raised its long-term uranium-price forecast by 36% to $95 a pound. In the shorter term, analysts at Citi think uranium could jump to $140 a pound by late 2027.

There are reasons for caution, regarding both demand and supply. Nuclear power development across the West has been slow. Several mining projects are in development that could progressively add to global uranium supply over the next five years.

Any slowdown in data-center expansions due to a public backlash could also delay the development of new reactors, said UxC’s Hinze.

“While constructive over the medium-to-long term, we acknowledge near-term macro headwinds remain difficult to ignore,” UBS said. The spot price has been volatile since approaching $100 a pound earlier this year, it said.

For BHP, the decision not to invest more heavily in uranium in big part reflects the market size at around $10 billion currently, Citi analysts said. Citi says the market would need at least to triple in size to appeal more to the miner—growth that could take two or three decades.

Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com

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