The Last Time This Happened, Uranium Jumped 20x

In March 1942, a starving conductor named Karl Eliasberg shuffled through the frozen streets of Leningrad, knocking on doors, searching for musicians still alive.

He found fifteen.

Their instruments were broken. Their bodies were wrecked. The city was surrounded by the German army, and more than a million people would die before the siege ended.

But Eliasberg had been given the score to Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, four thick volumes of music, and he was told to perform it.

He looked at the score and said, "We'll never play this."

They played it.

On August 9, 1942, the exact date Hitler had boasted he'd be feasting in Leningrad's finest hotel, a skeleton orchestra of starving musicians performed the symphony.

They wore gloves with the fingers cut off because their bodies couldn't regulate heat. An oboe player named Ksenia Matus brought her instrument to a repairman who said he'd fix it for cat meat.

Loudspeakers blasted the music through the bombed-out streets, across no-man's-land, into the German trenches.

Years later, a German soldier told Eliasberg what happened on the other side of the line:

"The realization began to dawn that we would never take Leningrad. But something else started to happen. We began to see that there was something stronger than starvation, fear, and death — the will to stay human."

I think about this story a lot.

Not because I'm comparing anything we face to a wartime siege. But because of what it reveals about conviction. About seeing something everyone else has written off, and refusing to let go.

That's exactly what's happening right now in the uranium market. And almost nobody is paying attention.

The Setup Nobody Sees

Uranium has been in a structural supply deficit for thirteen consecutive years.

For thirteen straight years, the world's nuclear power plants have consumed more uranium than miners have pulled out of the ground.

And during that time, utilities, the people who actually need this fuel to keep the lights on, have only contracted for about 45% of their annual consumption.

They've been kicking the can down the road. Drawing down inventories. Assuming someone else will solve the problem.

Grant Isaac, President of Cameco, one of the world's largest uranium producers, put it bluntly at a recent conference:

Every single buyer knows the price has to rise. Every single one thinks they won't be the one caught holding the bill.

That's a game of musical chairs. And the music is slowing down.

I grew up in a house where nobody talked about money. My parents didn't own stocks. They didn't understand commodities.

They worked hard, saved what they could, and hoped the system would take care of the rest. It didn't.

The system doesn't reward hope. It rewards the people who see the asymmetry before the crowd and have the conviction to act.

Uranium is one of those asymmetries. Let me show you why.

The Demand Tsunami

Six years ago, the World Nuclear Association estimated that global reactors would need about 260 million pounds of uranium annually by 2040.

In 2023, they revised that number to 328 million pounds. Their latest estimate? 390 million pounds.

A 50% increase in projected demand in six years. And what’s driving this demand is real policy commitments from the world's largest economies:

• The U.S. aims to begin construction of at least eight large reactors by 2030 and quadruple nuclear capacity by 2050.

• China is targeting 400 GW of nuclear capacity by 2060 — 26 reactors under construction, 42 more planned.

• Japan is restarting reactors and targeting 20–22% of energy from nuclear by 2030.

• South Korea reversed its nuclear phase-out entirely.

• The UK is planning 16 GW of new capacity.

We’re witnessing a global policy stampede toward nuclear power driven by AI's insatiable appetite for electricity, the need for energy security, and the reality that you cannot decarbonize a modern economy without nuclear baseload power.

Every single one of those reactors needs uranium to run. And the supply side? It's a mess.

The Supply Side Is Broken

Global uranium production last year came in around 165 million pounds.

Annual demand from the existing reactor fleet, before any new builds come online, runs between 190 and 200 million pounds.

That's a deficit of 25 to 35 million pounds per year, right now, today.

And it's getting worse.

Kazakhstan has supplied roughly 40% of the world's uranium for years. Now its largest mines are nearing peak output.

Kazatomprom, the state-owned producer, has already flagged a reduction in 2026 production.

Even aggressive new drilling tomorrow couldn't offset the decline in time. And their customer base is increasingly tilting toward Russia and China.

Niger, historically an important supplier to Europe, saw its elected government overthrown by a military junta in 2023. The junta seized control of the country's main uranium mine. Last year, production was zero.

In Canada, the McArthur River mine lowered its 2025 output due to development delays. In the U.S., in-situ recovery mines have resumed operations but are running behind schedule.

Only two large-scale mines could come online in the next few years… Denison's Wheeler River and NexGen's Arrow deposit.

Wheeler River just got its final permit, but won't produce before mid-2028.

Arrow, the highest-grade uranium deposit on the planet, is still in permitting and might not start until 2031 or 2032.

Michael Alkin, CIO of Sachem Cove Partners and one of the sharpest minds in this space, put it plainly: utilities assuming Arrow comes online when they think it will, at the volumes they think it will, "could possibly be in for a rude awakening."

Meanwhile, the cumulative production deficit through 2040 is estimated at 1.125 billion pounds.

The Price Is Lying to You

And then we have the part most investors miss entirely.

The "official" long-term contract price for uranium sits around $90 per pound. That sounds high compared to the $30 cycle low in 2016. But that number is misleading, and here's why.

About 70% of contracts being signed today aren't fixed-price deals. They're "market-related," meaning the actual price is determined at delivery, often with floors and ceilings. And those market-related prices are significantly higher than $90.

The industry just doesn't report them.

Think of it like a real estate market where 70% of homes sell above asking price, but the newspaper only prints the listing price. Sure, it’s technically accurate, but it’s functionally useless.

Cameco's Grant Isaac:

The real price of uranium, the price being agreed to in the vast majority of actual contracts, is already north of $100.

The spot price sits around $73 per pound as of late February 2026.

The gap between where spot trades and where real contracts are being signed is one of the widest disconnects in any commodity market right now.

During the last uranium bull market, the price ran from $7 to $137 per pound, roughly $200 in today's dollars.

And that was without a structural supply deficit. The price spiked purely on fear of a shortage after a major mine flooded.

Today, the deficit is real. The demand acceleration is real. The supply constraints are real. And the price hasn't even caught up to where contracts are actually being signed.

Alkin put it simply: "We don't know where the price goes today, but we think it has multiples of upside from where it is."

Why This Is a National Security Problem

The U.S. government issued a Section 232 proclamation on critical minerals, specifically naming uranium as a national security vulnerability.

The numbers should keep policymakers up at night.

America currently produces less than one million pounds of uranium per year, against a domestic need of roughly 50 million pounds. Half of our supply comes from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.

If the U.S. follows through on its plan to quadruple nuclear capacity, it would need to increase uranium enrichment capacity twelvefold, assuming all fuel is domestically sourced.

Jean-Luc Palayer, CEO of Orano USA, flagged that number. Twelvefold. In an industry where it takes a decade to permit and build a single mine.

The Section 232 proclamation directs the U.S. to negotiate with trading partners and consider remedies such as price floors and trade restrictions.

The Department of Energy has already committed $2.7 billion to strengthen domestic uranium-enrichment services over the next decade.

As it stands, this is a structural repricing that could take years to fully play out.

The last time fundamentals were even remotely this tight, and they weren't nearly this tight, uranium went from $7 to $137.

The One Thing You Can Do

Here's my ask: study the uranium supply-demand picture for yourself.

Don't take my word for it.

Pull up the World Nuclear Association's latest reactor demand projections. Look at Kazatomprom's production guidance. Read Cameco's quarterly disclosures on contract pricing. Check how many pounds are uncontracted through 2040.

The data is there. It's public. And it tells a story that almost no one in mainstream financial media is covering with the urgency it deserves.

You don't need to be a nuclear physicist. You need to be someone willing to look where others aren't looking and act before the crowd figures it out.

That starving orchestra in Leningrad didn't wait for perfect conditions. They didn't wait for someone else to go first.

They picked up broken instruments, put on gloves with the fingers cut off, and played the most important concert of their lives.

Sometimes conviction is the only edge you need.

If you're a Premium Member, get ready. We're wrapping up research on a new addition to the Moonshot Minute portfolio.

I've been digging into the supply side of this market for weeks, and I found an asset that sits at the exact center of the deficit I just described. The kind of name where the asymmetry is pure arithmetic.

I'll have the full breakdown in your inbox soon. The ticker, the thesis, the entry, and how it fits alongside the positions we already hold in this space, which are up 23% and 35% as I write this.

If you're not a Premium Member yet, I'll just say this.

The people who moved on our earlier picks in this market didn't do it because it was comfortable. They did it because they looked at the same data you just read and decided that conviction matters more than consensus.

The next move is coming. And I'd rather you be in the room when it drops, but ultimately, it’s up to you.

Double D

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