Did you know the U.S. paid Russia over $1 billion last year to keep the lights on?

This isn’t just fearmongering or speculation…

As I’m sure you know, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western nations sought to punish Russia. So they cut off access to energy products.

Like last March, when the U.S. government announced a ban on imports of Russian oil, liquified natural gas, and coal…

But it left one commodity off the list: uranium. It had no choice…

With strained power grids, we need all available power generation to meet our energy demands. And that includes nuclear energy that runs on uranium fuel.

Nuclear accounts for 20% of electricity here in the United States. And some states – like Illinois, South Carolina, and New Hampshire – even generate more than half of their power from nuclear.

So for all its efforts to punish Russia, the U.S. is still forking over billions every year to purchase uranium to keep nuclear reactors running.

And there’s no end in sight.

That’s because, as regular readers know, nuclear is set to play an important role in the energy distortion that’s underway.

That means the U.S. could face a crisis if the uranium supply chain isn’t fixed. Let me explain…

Uranium’s Chokepoint

Russia accounts for 40-45% of the global uranium fuel supply, according to estimates. And production can’t just be easily moved elsewhere.

That’s why the U.S. government has continued shelling out billions to Russia and other countries. It must ensure an adequate supply of uranium to fuel our nuclear reactors.

Other countries have mostly filled the void left by Russia’s exit from oil and natural gas markets. But the same can’t be done for uranium.

Nuclear reactors run on a special type of uranium fuel. It’s known as U-235. And its atoms are easy to split as part of the nuclear fission process for generating energy.

But U-235 is pretty rare. It’s only found in trace amounts naturally. So you need to mine the uranium… And then enrich and concentrate it in a complex process for it to be useful as nuclear fuel.

The U.S. is nowhere near able to mine and enrich enough uranium to keep our current fleet of nuclear plants running… let alone supply new ones coming online.

In fact, the U.S. recently set a record for the smallest amount of uranium produced since the start of the nuclear age.

In 2022, 95% of the uranium purchased by domestic nuclear power plant operators came from other countries.

That’s why the U.S. paid Russia over $1 billion last year for enriched uranium.

But with no signs of tensions easing between the U.S. and Russia, uranium imports could stop.

A disruption to the uranium supply chain could be catastrophic for U.S. domestic power generation.

As a result, there’s a massive movement underway to bring the uranium supply chain back to the U.S.

And that will boost a small group of companies well-positioned to take advantage…

Washington Is Picking This Market’s Winners

Inside Wall Street editor Nomi Prins has been tracking these developments for months.

It’s all part of a much bigger trend to bring critical supply chains home. And it has massive government backing on both sides of the aisle.

As she explained in a recent update for paid-up readers, lawmakers have introduced legislation supporting this trend in both the House and Senate. Here’s Nomi…

Where there is true bipartisan support, acts still get passed, and money still flows.

And in the midst of the budget drama last week, a key piece of legislation was re-introduced into the House. It’s one championed by two senior members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

In fact, I spoke with the staffer of one of them (Congressman Bob Latta) just this week to confirm that he remains committed to this area of the energy market.

The legislation Nomi writes about is the Nuclear Fuel Security Act. That act would do two things. Here’s Nomi again…

One, it would direct the Department of Energy to prioritize domestic production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for use in existing nuclear reactors.

And two, it would accelerate efforts to make special types of uranium fuel to be used in advanced reactors.

It’s yet another example of onshoring a critical supply chain piece. Which is one of the ways in which Washington picks the market’s biggest winners and losers.

Ensuring a domestic supply of uranium is critical. That’s why, in 2020, Congress also established a program to create a strategic uranium reserve.

That stockpile of uranium, produced in the U.S., will serve as a backup supply for U.S. nuclear power plants. And, at the end of 2022, the first contracts were awarded to start building the stockpile.

That means boom times are ahead for U.S.-based companies that deal with uranium mining. It’s a small, exclusive group…

Just look at the holdings in the Global X Uranium ETF (URA).

It’s the largest uranium exchange-traded fund (ETF), with $2 billion in assets. But only four of the 46 holdings in the portfolio are U.S.-listed stocks.

That’s a good place to start your search for the select few companies set to boom from the uranium supply chain buildout.

Regards,

Clint Brewer
Analyst, Inside Wall Street with Nomi Prins

P.S. As I mentioned above, URA is a great place to start your search. But if you’re looking for the best potential upside, you can do even better by speculating on individual companies. Like the tiny Oregon firm that Nomi recommended at her Rogue Strategic Trader advisory…

She calls it “The Next Exxon.” And, thanks to a federal license, it has a virtual monopoly on a lucrative corner of the nuclear energy markets. That’s setting it up to deliver potential gains as high as 20x in the long run.

If you’re already a paid-up Strategic Trader reader, you can access Nomi’s research on “The Next Exxon” here. If you’re not paid-up yet, click here to learn more about a Strategic Trader subscription.