Current Uranium Prices: Spot, Term and Outlook

Spot uranium closed September 2026 at US$89.63 per pound of U3O8, and the long-term price was US$96.50, according to the month-end industry averages Cameco publishes from UxC and TradeTech quotes. Trading Economics showed about US$90 on 14 October 2026, a figure it derives from a contract for difference, so treat it as an estimate rather than a settlement price.

This page is written for investors who follow the uranium market. It shows both prices on one chart, explains why the two differ, lists what published sources do and do not forecast, and includes a calculator that blends spot and contract prices. All prices are dated, and none is advice to buy or sell.

Current uranium prices: spot and long-term at a glance

U3O8 is triuranium octoxide, the dried powder (often called yellowcake) that mines ship to converters. It is the unit in which almost all uranium prices are quoted, in US dollars per pound. The spot price is for delivery within a short time. The long-term price is what buyers and sellers agree for deliveries years ahead.

• Spot, 30 September 2026: US$89.63 per pound (Cameco, industry average).
• Long-term, 30 September 2026: US$96.50 per pound (same series). That is the highest month-end value in the series, which Kazatomprom’s chief executive described in August 2026 as a mid-to-high-nineties level.
• Range since January 2025: spot month-ends ran from US$64.23 (March 2025) to US$94.28 (January 2026).
• Earlier peaks: the series shows US$100.25 in January 2024 and US$136.00 in June 2007.

Uranium does not trade on an open exchange. Cameco states that buyers and sellers negotiate contracts privately, which is why every public price is an average of broker or consultant quotes. If you need the same price in other units, our pages on the price per pound and per ton of U3O8, the price per kilogram and the price per gram convert the same series, and our explainer on what moves the U3O8 price per pound covers the spot side in more detail.

Spot and long-term uranium prices over the past 13 months

The first chart plots the Cameco month-end series from September 2025 to September 2026. Spot moved in a band of about US$75 to US$94 during that time. The long-term price rose in every month except three flat ones, from US$83.00 to US$96.50.

Chart

Spot and long-term uranium price, month-end

US$ per lb U3O8, September 2025 to September 2026

Two features stand out. First, the long-term line is smoother, because term prices are reset by negotiation and do not react to a single week of trading. Second, spot sat below the long-term price in every month from October 2025 onward except January 2026, when spot jumped to US$94.28 against a long-term price of US$89.00.

Spot also rose in 2025. It was US$64.23 per pound at the end of March 2025, the low for the year, and reached US$82.63 at the end of September, the high for the year, as the American Nuclear Society reported from Cameco’s data. No month-end spot price in 2025 reached US$90.

Why the long-term uranium price sits above spot

Most uranium is sold under contracts of three to 15 years. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) says term contracts are usually priced above the spot market because they buy security of supply, and that spot trading has made up about a quarter of volume in the decade to 2024 (WNA page updated August 2024). A utility that owns a reactor needs fuel for decades, so it pays a premium to lock in a supplier. A trader or financial buyer, who makes up a large share of spot trading, has no such need.

Chart

Annual average spot and long-term price

US$ per lb U3O8, mean of month-end values

The gap is not fixed. In 2022 and 2023 the average long-term price sat close to or below spot, and in 2025 it ran about US$8 above it. The chart shows annual averages that we calculated from the Cameco month-end values (the 2026 figure is the average of January to September).

Long-term prices also lag. Contract prices are often related to the spot price at the time of delivery, according to the WNA, and many were agreed years ago, when prices were lower. That is why the next section matters for anyone reading a producer’s reported revenue per pound.

What buyers actually pay: contract prices versus the headline

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects what US reactor owners paid. For deliveries in 2025 they bought 46.9 million pounds of U3O8 equivalent at a weighted average of US$58.46 per pound, 11% above the 2024 average. Spot-contract purchases were 13% of volume at US$76.01 per pound, and long-term contracts were 87% of volume at US$55.91 per pound.

Chart

Headline prices versus what US buyers paid in 2025

US$ per lb U3O8 (equivalent), 2025 deliveries and 2025 averages

Those averages are below the Cameco term price (US$81.96 on average in 2025) because they include contracts signed in earlier years, when the market was lower. The same effect shows up on the producer side. Kazatomprom reported an average realised price of US$67.88 per pound for the first half of 2026, while the average month-end spot price over the period was US$86.83.

The lesson for investors is simple. A rise in the quoted price reaches a producer’s income only as old contracts roll off, and it reaches a utility’s costs only on new purchases. EIA also reports that at the end of 2025 US reactor owners had 186 million pounds of unfilled requirements for 2025 to 2035, which is volume that has still to be bought on the market or under new contracts.

We cover a connected topic in Copper Price Projections and Uranium Outlook Compared.

Uranium price forecast: what published sources say

The query that brings most readers here is “u3o8 price outlook” with the name of the World Nuclear Association attached. The honest answer is that the WNA publishes demand scenarios, not price forecasts. Its World Nuclear Fuel Report (2025 edition) estimates reactor requirements of about 68,920 tonnes of uranium (tU) for 2025 and projects just over 150,000 tU in 2040 in its Reference Scenario, with a Lower Scenario above 107,000 tU and an Upper Scenario above 204,000 tU.

The table lists the figures we could verify that bear on price. No agency in this list gives a price target, and we do not add one.

The WNA and Red Book figures differ for 2025 because they are separate estimates by different bodies, with different cut-off dates. Both point the same way: more demand over the next 15 to 25 years.

The Red Book, a biennial report from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency, says identified resources recoverable at under US$260 per kilogram of uranium reached 8.1 million tU, enough for the highest demand case to 2050, but that turning resources into mines takes 15 to 20 years and needs sustained investment, as reported by the American Nuclear Society. It also says exploration and development spending passed US$1.78 billion in 2023 to 2024, 46% more than in 2021 to 2022.

Factors driving uranium prices

Six factors decide most of the movement in the price. We list them with the evidence that exists today.

Reactor demand and restarts

Demand is predictable because reactors, once built, run for decades. The WNA notes that demand forecasts depend mainly on installed and operable capacity. The Red Book counted 418 operating reactors with 378 GWe of capacity at the start of 2025, plus 23 reactors in suspended operation. At the August 2026 results, Kazatomprom’s chief executive said 38 countries had signed a plan to triple nuclear power by 2050.

Mine supply and cost

Supply is the other half. Kazatomprom’s 2026 production guidance is 27,500 to 29,000 tU on a 100% basis, and its cost of production rose in the first half of 2026 because of a higher mineral extraction tax (9% to 12.4%) and dearer sulphuric acid. Acid is needed to dissolve uranium underground at its in-situ leach wells. Its new acid plant at TQZ is delayed by 6 to 12 months to a window between the third quarter of 2027 and the first quarter of 2028. Cameco, the second-largest producer, kept its 2026 guidance at 19.5 to 21.5 million pounds (its share) in its second-quarter 2026 report, after short stoppages at Key Lake, McArthur River and Cigar Lake.

Secondary supply and stockpiles

Mines supplied about 90% of reactor requirements in 2024, according to the WNA, with the balance from stockpiles, recycling and down-blended material. EIA reports that US reactor owners held 118 million pounds U3O8 equivalent in inventory at the end of 2025.

Enrichment and Russian supply rules

Uranium is only one step in the fuel chain. US reactor owners paid an average US$108.70 per separative work unit (SWU, the standard measure of enrichment effort) in 2025, up 11%, and about a quarter (26%) of the SWU they bought came from Russia. The US ban on Russian low-enriched uranium allows limited waivers only until 1 January 2028, and the Department of Energy has said it intends to buy and resell low-enriched uranium from new US enrichment capacity, as the WNA’s US fuel cycle profile describes.

Utility buying behaviour

Kazatomprom’s chief executive said in August 2026 that utilities were moving away from spot buying towards long-term inventory security. The company also said pricing power had returned to producers with large proven reserves. These are producer views, not independent data.

Financial buyers

The WNA says traders and financiers account for roughly 60 to 70% of spot-market activity today, compared with 5% in 2000. Their buying and selling can move spot sharply for reasons unrelated to reactors, which is one reason spot is more volatile than term prices.

How a spot price change reaches electricity costs

For a utility, the uranium price is only part of the fuel bill. The WNA notes that at the prices utilities are likely to pay for current delivery, only about one-third of the cost of the fuel loaded into a reactor is the mined uranium itself. The rest is mostly enrichment and fabrication, with a small share for conversion. A move in the spot price therefore changes fuel cost by less than the same percentage, and most US purchases are priced by older long-term contracts anyway, as the EIA figures above show.

Who mines uranium: supply by country

Production is concentrated. In 2024 Kazakhstan produced 39% of world mined uranium, Canada 24% and Namibia 12%, so those three together supplied about three-quarters, according to the WNA’s production table. World output was 60,213 tU, and in-situ leaching, in which acid or alkaline solution is pumped through the ore underground, delivered 55% of it. Kazatomprom was the largest single company at 12,463 tU (21%), ahead of Cameco at 10,193 tU (17%).

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Uranium mined, selected countries, 2024

Thousand tonnes of uranium (tU); Uzbekistan and China are estimates

Canada’s weight comes from the Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan, where McArthur River/Key Lake (7,808 tU) and Cigar Lake (6,501 tU) were the two largest mines in 2024. Canadian output more than tripled from 3,885 tU in 2020 to 14,309 tU in 2024.

For US readers, the EIA’s buyer survey shows where US reactor fuel came from in 2025: Canada 32%, Kazakhstan 28%, Australia 15%, Uzbekistan 7%, Namibia 4% and the United States 7%. Australia holds the largest identified resource (27% of the world total, per the WNA) but produced 4,598 tU in 2024.

Uranium is also found outside these producing countries. Our short explainer below asks whether Zimbabwe has uranium and shows why a known deposit is not the same thing as a mine.

▶ A short explainer on whether Zimbabwe has uranium and why a known deposit is not yet a mine. · 4:27

Price of uranium ore and why grade matters

Uranium ore is not traded on its own. A mine crushes and leaches the ore at a mill, or dissolves it underground, and sells the resulting U3O8 concentrate. When people ask for the “price of uranium ore” they usually mean the value of the uranium contained in a tonne of rock, which equals grade times the U3O8 price.

Grade is the share of uranium in the rock. A high-grade ore needs less rock to be mined and milled for each pound sold, so its cost per pound is lower and it stays profitable at lower prices. A low-grade deposit needs a higher price, or a cheap method such as in-situ leaching, to work. The calculator in the next section lets you test this: enter tonnes, grade and a price, and it returns contained pounds and gross value before mining, milling and royalty costs.

The Red Book counts resources by a cost ceiling per kilogram of uranium, for example 8.1 million tU recoverable at under US$260 per kilogram. A resource is therefore a price statement as much as a geology statement: change the cost ceiling and the amount that counts changes too.

Uranium price outlook: five checks for investors

This is a list of checks, not a call on the price.

1. Which price is it? Spot, long-term, a futures-style quote or a company’s realised price. They can differ by US$20 per pound at the same date.
2. What is the date and the source? Month-end industry averages (Cameco) differ from weekly quotes and from Trading Economics’ contract-for-difference series.
3. What does the producer say about volume and cost? Look for production guidance, cost per pound, and inventory. Kazatomprom’s first-half 2026 inventory of finished U3O8 was 21.4 million pounds, up 23% on a year earlier.
4. How much is sold under contract? In the EIA survey 87% of US purchases for 2025 were under long-term contracts, so most of a producer’s pounds are priced by older deals, not by today’s spot quote.
5. What does the project need to be economic? A project at an early stage depends on a price assumption years ahead, a permit and a financing, and may take 15 to 20 years to reach production on the Red Book timeline.

The calculator below helps with the arithmetic. Prices are inputs: enter today’s quote from the source you trust.

How satellite screening supports uranium exploration

Price decides which deposits are worth finding, and exploration decides which ones exist. Farmonaut’s satellite mineral detection reads multispectral satellite imagery over a licence area and returns ranked exploration targets, which a geologist can then check on the ground. It does not produce a resource estimate, and it is not a substitute for drilling. Where an owner or investor has a licence boundary, it can narrow the area to walk or drill first. The video below explains the idea in four minutes.

Our sibling pages on the price of uranium per pound and per gram cover the quoting side, and this one covers the outlook. Use the three together if you compare projects.

▶ How satellite screening ranks places to drill before the first hole. · 4:26

Frequently asked questions

What is the current uranium price?

At the end of September 2026 the Cameco industry-average spot price was US$89.63 per pound of U3O8 and the long-term price was US$96.50. Trading Economics showed about US$90 on 14 October 2026, from a contract-for-difference series.

Why is the long-term uranium price higher than spot?

Long-term contracts guarantee supply for years, and utilities pay a premium for that security. The World Nuclear Association says term contracts are usually priced above spot. In 2024 the gap was reversed: spot averaged above the long-term price after reaching US$100.25 at the end of January.

What is the uranium price forecast?

No government agency or the World Nuclear Association publishes a price forecast that we could verify. Trading Economics’ model shows US$91.07 for the fourth quarter of 2026 and US$94.77 in 12 months, which is an estimate, not a prediction by a producer or regulator.

What did uranium cost?

Cameco month-end spot prices ran from US$64.23 in March to US$82.63 in September 2025, and averaged about US$73.54 for the year (our average of the twelve month-ends). The average long-term price was about US$81.96. US reactor owners paid US$58.46 per pound on average under all contracts.

What is U3O8 and why do prices use it?

U3O8 is triuranium octoxide, the concentrate that mines sell. It is about 84.8% uranium by weight, and a pound of U3O8 contains about 0.385 kg of uranium (our calculation: 0.4536 kg x 84.8%). Traders quote it because it is the standard form delivered to converters.

How is the price of uranium ore different from the price of U3O8?

Ore is not sold on a market. Its value equals the contained uranium (tonnes times grade) times the U3O8 price, less the cost of mining and milling. Higher-grade ore costs less to process per pound.

Which countries produce the most uranium?

In 2024 Kazakhstan produced 23,270 tU (39% of the world), Canada 14,309 tU (24%) and Namibia 7,333 tU (12%), per the World Nuclear Association. Australia, Uzbekistan and Russia followed.

Does the price move with reactor demand?

Slowly. Reactor demand changes little from month to month, so price swings in spot usually come from supply news, financial buying or contract timing. Demand shows up in the long-term price and in how many contracts are signed.

How much does enrichment cost?

EIA reports that US reactor owners paid an average of US$108.70 per separative work unit in 2025, up 11% from US$97.66 in 2024. Enrichment is a separate cost from the uranium itself.

Is this investment advice?

No. This page reports dated data from named sources and explains how the market works. It does not recommend buying or selling any uranium asset, fund or share.