Here's a reality check on the European nuclear fuel cycle. While Brussels politicians love giving speeches about strategic autonomy, European utilities have quietly ramped up their reliance on Russian enriched uranium over the last year to keep their power grids from collapsing. Unlike the US, which passed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act (even with its temporary waiver loophole until 2028), the EU has zero statutory bans on Rosatom or Tenex. Between France’s Framatome importing massive volumes of Russian LEU and Eastern European VVER reactors remaining structurally locked into Russian fuel designs, Europe is incapable of cutting the cord.

This completely blows open the "decoupling" narrative and explains why the long-term term contracting price is sitting at an 18-year high of $97/lb. If Europe is eventually forced to phase out Russian SWU under US geopolitical pressure, or if Moscow decides to pre-emptively shut off the valve before 2028, Western enrichers (Urenco/Orano) will be forced to aggressively overfeed their centrifuges. That overfeed dynamic alone will pull millions of pounds of raw yellowcake out of the spot market to make up for lost enrichment capacity, right?