The ongoing race to find new sources of domestic uranium supply isn’t slowing down. And now two major players in mining are doing a new deal.
What’s happening:
- Uranium Energy (NYSE: UEC) has entered into a new deal with mining giant Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO) to purchase their fully licensed Sweetwater Plant uranium production facility located in Wyoming as well as multiple uranium exploration projects
By the numbers:
- Uranium Energy will pay $175M USD to Rio Tinto as part of the acquisition
- Within Wyoming, Uranium Energy already owns 12 existing uranium projects
- The Sweetwater Plant is capable of producing 4.1M pounds of uranium annually
- Rio Tinto’s uranium mining properties that are being sold to Uranium Energy as part of the new deal have historical resource estimates of 175M pounds of uranium
Why it matters:
- With the growing scale up of nuclear power infrastructure in North America and globally, domestic sources of high quality uranium production have become more important than ever and has even led the the United States Department of Defense to commit multiple billions of dollars in new funding for domestic uranium supply
Going deeper:
- Uranium Energy already has existing uranium production facilities that are fully operational in both Wyoming and Texas
- Multiple new notable nuclear power projects have been accelerating in the United States, including Bill Gates founded TerraPower recently beginning construction of their leading edge nuclear power plant which is also located in Wyoming
The intrigue:
- Both Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) have made moves to secure nuclear power production for their data centres, with Microsoft recently announcing plans to restart historic nuclear power facility Three Mile Island and Amazon previously acquiring a data centre in Pennsylvania powered entirely by nearby nuclear energy production
