And then the setup for 2025. So on the supply side, we've seen headlines of disruptions. People are seeing Kazakhstan, they're seeing Russia. On the demand side, they're seeing hyperscalers talk about the use of nuclear power and powering their data centers. So Grant, help us put this together. What have we seen in 2024 as it relates to those supply-demand developments, and then what's the setup for 2025?
Yeah, happy to start there. And just would start with a bit of a plug too as well. A thank you to Adam. Adam picked up the coverage and picked it up very well of Cameco with a really strong understanding that there's more to the nuclear fuel cycle than just the uranium component. And that's certainly important. But once you have uranium, it then begins a really long journey to become a bespoke fuel bundle for a reactor. So if you don't understand the reactor cycle and you don't understand the rest of the fuel cycle, you're missing a big part of the story. And I think the work that you did, Adam, to connect the conversion and the enrichment, the fabrication piece back to uranium was really well done. So a bit of a plug for that. I want to talk about two main things.
One is fundamentals and one is bifurcation, because those are the main themes generally in the nuclear fuel market. On the fundamentals, I would agree with the idea that the demand is facing tailwinds, the likes of which we've never seen, and it's creating a durability of demand, the likes of which we have never seen in our industry. And really, the main reason there is nuclear started to enter the conversation as being part of the climate security strategy. And then, quite frankly, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it became part of an energy security strategy, which obviously elevated it. But the final piece to really add wind to the opportunities in nuclear was once the world understood the importance of big data and understood the importance of onshoring and remanufacturing of industries, it was the reality that the critical path item to achieving these objectives was electrons.
And not just any electrons, electrons that were baseload, firm, durable, and clean. And those are nuclear electrons. And so nuclear suddenly became part of a national security agenda, climate security, energy security, national security agenda, which has given the demand profile strength that, quite frankly, we haven't seen before. Yet on the supply side, turns out markets work. After years of low prices, the investments weren't being made in preparing the fuel cycle for the opportunity that's now in front of it. So some catch-up has to occur. And that catch-up is actually in the form of higher prices. And the higher prices come about through contracting. So it's just as simple as utilities gain more confidence in how long their reactors are running, as utilities restart reactors that were shut down, as utilities go through subsequent license renewals to extend the life of reactors.
And of course, 63 reactors under construction globally. As all of that starts to build, utilities gain confidence, and a confident utility comes and procures. They procure fabrication, they procure enrichment, conversion, and uranium that helps discover appropriate production economic pricing. So there is a durability to demand. There's an uncertainty of supply that needs to be filled by more contracting and price discovery. That is underway. But there's also a bifurcation in the market that needs to be factored in. This bifurcation in the market is relatively new. The uranium fuel market, the nuclear fuel market was unfettered globalization for a long time, and those days seem to be over. Origins matter, where those origins come from matter. And really, we have to grapple with a world where Western capacity has to grow to meet Western demand and offset the dependence that was created by, for example, Russia.
You don't have to look any further than the U.S. market, where they were providing a quarter of the enrichment service into the U.S. market, which the president of Russia does not allow to be exported from Russia at the moment. There's a voluntary export restraint in place. So lots of exciting things going on. Demand is strong, supply is uncertain. It has to be filled by price corrections and contracting. And the market is bifurcating in a very permanent way, all exciting for an incumbent producer like Cameco.
That's great, Grant. Let's stay on the supply side for a moment, and we're going to talk a lot about origin disconnect throughout this panel, but let's just talk about what you think might be underappreciated by the market as it relates to new supply coming online. This is not a resource that we can just develop tomorrow. I think in previous statements, you said it could take 10+ years to develop a mine, and that's assuming everything goes right, so talk about what it really means to bring a mine online and what that path looks like in the longer term.
Yeah, that's a great question, and let's again nest it first in the fuel cycle. If you think about the fuel cycle as having four big components, the uranium that then needs to be converted, that then needs to be enriched for the 90% of the reactors that are light water reactors, and then it needs to be fabricated, the last three steps are all manufacturing steps. They're manufacturing steps that occur in factories, factories that can be built anywhere, and generally factories that with the right demand profile and the right contracts can be built within the time frame of building a new nuclear reactor. Uranium cannot be. Uranium cannot be built in the time frame of building a new nuclear reactor. The process of exploring for and discovering and developing and commissioning and then operating uranium mines takes way longer.
That's the piece we think the market is now falling asleep on. We think the market has figured out they need to incent more enrichment. The market clearly has figured out it needs to incent more conversion through historic conversion prices. There's still a bit of a sleepy notion that, but isn't there lots of uranium? Isn't there a lot of people providing uranium? Isn't there a lot of sources you can get your uranium from? Every day a uranium mine runs, it depletes. If you're not putting in replacement capital, you're running a depletion curve. Even replacement capital is not growth capital. Growth capital hasn't been assigned to the uranium space for a long time. Right now, yes, there's a lot of appropriate focus downstream. There isn't enough focus on uranium. Here's the good news. That focus is coming.
You can't have a delinked cycle. So at the moment, while there's focus on enrichment and conversion, that demand has to find its way into the product, which is uranium, for which there is no substitute. That demand has to come. And every day we delay that demand, it pushes it out in a more compressed way over top of supply stack that's growing more uncertain. That sounds super constructive for a company like Cameco. This is why we remain in supply discipline. This is why we remain patient, because we've seen these walls of worry build before, and we've seen this demand come. And there's no incentive for us to front-run it. We wait for the demand to show up in the form of long-term contracts. Then we plan our investment decisions. The piece that I think is really misunderstood on the uranium side is the role of mills.
I hear a lot about, well, I've got mining projects and I've got land and I've got this and I've got that, but there's no milling strategy. Milling in uranium is actually a critical path item. Mills in the uranium space are hard to build and they're hard to operate. They're unlike any other mill that you find in the mining business. So you actually have to have a combined mining, milling, and marketing strategy to be successful in the uranium space. That's the piece that's underloved and underappreciated. And it's the one that needs to attract more attention in the coming years.
That's great. Let's flip over from supply to demand. And obviously, the demand profile for nuclear power has undergone a huge shift in the past 12 to 18 months. Can you talk about what that shift really looks like, some of your conversations maybe with the hyperscalers that are trying to potentially explore the use of nuclear power going forward? And then maybe touch on, I think you've said in the past, nuclear is getting bigger, but it's also getting smaller. So can you clarify what you mean by that?
Yeah, there's a number of elements to that question. And maybe I'll start with when you look at the demand build-up. It is more full cycle in a way that it hasn't been. The nuclear story, for those of you who have been around it for a while, was always idiots like me sitting up on stages like this saying, well, you know demand's going to be flat for a while, but don't worry, then there's going to be a whole bunch of new build and it'll hockey stick upwards and it'll be really good times. And then someone says, well, you said that last year and you said that the year before. But what's occurring right now is something very different. We're saving reactors we thought we were going to shut down. And not only that, we're starting reactors that were already shut down and already begun decommissioning.
And why does that matter? It brings near-term fundamental utility demand into the market. And then reactors are going through subsequent license renewal. The U.S. pioneered it. Now many other jurisdictions have figured out the best way to retain baseload carbon-free power is to keep your nuclear power plants running. So now subsequent license renewal, the U.S. term is being extended in many, many markets. Look at the refurbishments going on in Ontario. That's bringing massive midterm demand into the market. And that's connecting to the 63 reactors plus that are under construction. So the demand curve no longer goes flat and hockey sticks. It's jumping now to connect to a higher point on the demand curve.
Second element that's different, and you alluded to it. In the past, and I look around the room and I see some familiar faces from the utility side, we used to take our view of where nuclear was going exclusively from our customers. We'd meet with our customers. We'd understand their catchment area. We would add it up regionally, nationally, internationally, and we'd come up with a view. We now often hear from our customers' customers. We hear from the hyperscalers. We hear from those who are interested, the new folks that want to deploy nuclear for mobile, remote, or micro operations or want deep decarbonization replacement through nuclear or want to build big gigawatt scale. Again, when those conversations start, folks understand they need to understand where the fuel is coming from. And so we're hearing from them sooner as Cameco, as Cameco through Westinghouse. That's unusual. It's unique.
It's giving us a perspective of how real these conversations are. They're feeling pretty real.
That's great, Grant. And maybe that's a good pivot to Westinghouse. It's been over a year since you closed that acquisition. Maybe to those that are in the room that are maybe newer to the story, talk about the key driving points behind that deal, what it does in terms of unlocking value for Cameco across the value chain, and then talk about really the outlook for this business in the next year to five years even.
Yeah, the rationale, and I think it's pretty well understood, but let me say it again. What we love at Cameco are strategic assets. We love assets that are already licensed, already permitted, that are constructed, that have a skilled workforce, that have social license to operate, have brownfield leverage opportunities, are in sovereign safe jurisdictions that are too big to fail and won't face competition immediately overnight. That's McArthur River. That's Cigar Lake. That's our Blind River refinery. That's our Port Hope conversion facility, as well as our Port Hope fuel manufacturing. That's all of Westinghouse's assets. That's the Columbia plant, the Springfields plant, the Vasteras plant in Sweden. So for a company like Cameco to get our hands on another set of scarce, absolutely critical nuclear assets, you can't pass up that opportunity. So the why is pretty simple.
It fits into our strategic view that if you've got the strategic assets in the nuclear fuel cycle, you've got a big part of the story at your fingertips, so the why, it was an absolute no-brainer. There is one part of Westinghouse that is underperforming acquisition assumptions, and that is the division of Westinghouse that was going to decommission reactors that were going to shut down, so happily, that division is underperforming our acquisition assumptions.
Everything else is overperforming. The core of the business, the fuel fabrication, the reactor services, why is it overperforming? Because they suddenly have a bunch of new customers from Central and Eastern Europe that they never had before. A region the size of South Korea showing up overnight as demand. That never happens in the nuclear business for the fuel fabrication. The reactor services business expands. Why? Because we're restarting reactors that were shut down.
They need engineering. They need the proprietary work that only Westinghouse can do. Reactors that are going through subsequent license renewal, reactor new builds. It's pretty clear that as China builds out its nuclear fleet, its preferred model is the Westinghouse reactor, is the AP1000, their version of it. That's great for Westinghouse's instrumentation and control business and its broader reactor services business. So Westinghouse on the core is performing very well with some really neat upsides. Its ability to go into accident tolerant fuel or LEU+ fuel, its ability to penetrate more into the boiling water reactor space. That's all growth for the core beyond our acquisition assumptions. And of course, there's a conversion plant that's desperately needed for the West. Westinghouse has it in Springfields. It needs to come back to the market. That's all upside to the acquisition case.
But let's not forget there's another pillar, and that pillar is energy systems. At the time of acquisition, we actually modeled new builds at zero. We just said they're too big, they're too binary, and we're not putting a value to it. Well, since the acquisition, Poland has chosen six Westinghouse AP1000s. Bulgaria has chosen two. Ukraine has chosen nine. They're advancing construction on one. They've bought all the parts from the old Summer plant that was being built and abandoned in the U.S. So there are real projects moving forward towards final investment decision, which are all upside to the energy systems case beyond the acquisition. So happily, the only area that's underperforming is the area that was going to shut down and decommission reactors. And we're absolutely glad that that's underperforming. Everything else is exceeding our expectations.
I think a big debate in the U.S. right now, at least in the power space, is when are we going to see a large-scale build in the U.S.? I think a lot of people point to Vogtle Unit 3, Unit 4 as being challenged in terms of the timeline and the cost overrun profile. And even though the technology is safe, it's commissioned, we understand how it works. People are trying to figure out, is this going to happen by the end of the decade? Is it the mid part of the 2030s? So in your conversations with investors, but also as a part of Westinghouse now, what's the outlook for a large-scale build in the U.S. in the context of the new administration coming in as well?
Yeah, and I don't know if it's linked specifically to the new administration. It is linked to the sheer reality of the expansion of the electricity grid that's required in the U.S. When the Vogtle plants were opened in the summer, the Secretary of Energy started her speech by saying, "Two down, 198 more to go." It gives you a sense of the scale of baseload power. 200 GW of baseload power, that's an easy number to model. It's not an easy number to build, but it's an easy number to model just given the sheer expansion of the demand for high-quality electrons that we're seeing in the United States and quite frankly elsewhere. So there are lots of conversations about what this means for nuclear. How do you take existing plants and operate them? How do you effectively bring back plants that were shut down?
What do subsequent license renewals look like? And yes, what does new build look like? And on new build, the market is really starting to mature. It used to be sort of you treated micro reactors, five to 50 MW, small reactors, 300 MW, and gigawatt scale reactors almost equivalently. And you just said, well, new build. But the market is starting to separate where the use cases for micro are becoming more clear. Where do you need mobile power? Where are you competing with diesel generation? Remote operations, remote communities, industrial resource operations, you generally burn more diesel taking the diesel to site than you burn at site. So it's a pretty easy math to do to figure out what your power cost is you're competing with. SMRs, 300 MW, are really starting to mature in a use case for deep decarbonization.
Take down carbon-based power and replace it with non-carbon power, but tie into all existing transmission distribution, but when you get into the gigawatt scale, it's just the sheer size. So Bruce Power right now in Canada looking at building four gigawatt scale reactors because they've been told they need to bring 4,800 MW to the grid by 2040, 2050. And that story is being repeated in jurisdiction after jurisdiction. So the conversations are accelerating. What I think we should be mindful of is maybe the model is changing. I think in the past, a single utility on the backs of a single rate base shouldering the cost of new build will occur in a few cases. But I'm actually looking to conversations that appear to be suggesting a multi-utility, multi-investor, multi-customer fleet model is probably what's going ahead.
If you haven't seen it, I would encourage everybody to read the DOE's recent Liftoff Report. It's all about building gigawatt scale nuclear again in the United States. It captures the learning effects at Vogtle. It matures them with the learning effects in China, the learning effects at the Barakah units in the UAE, and tells a pretty damn compelling story about the role of new nuclear in the United States and other countries.
I want to wrap up the discussion on Westinghouse with Springfields. And when we look at the conversion markets right now, it's essentially triple-digit prices. And I think we were at what, $4, $5, $10 years ago at this point. So when we think about the conversion markets being extremely tight, the potential value unlock for Cameco to bring this asset back online, what are some of the key considerations going into that decision? And then also talk about the unique advantages of that asset over some of the other ones that are operating across the world right now.
Yeah, the conversion market in the West really has four facilities, three of them. So Cameco's Port Hope facility in Canada, the ConverDyn facility at the Honeywell facility in Metropolis, as well as Orano's conversion plant in Tricastin in France, all trying to ramp up to their nameplate capacity, and they need to get to nameplate capacity. That leaves the fourth asset, which is the Springfields plant in the U.K., which Westinghouse runs. It went into care and maintenance in 2014 because I shut it down. Cameco had the toll conversion contract with Springfields. From 2005 to 2014, we marketed all the conversion. Conversion was around $5 a kgU, and we didn't see an end in sight. Secondary supplies were flooding the market as UF6 already converted material.
We warned the market over and over again that this is not a sustainable situation because when those secondary supplies are gone and they need to be replaced, they're going to be replaced with uranium that needs fresh conversion. Nobody listened. Springfields went into care and maintenance. Port Hope production came down. ConverDyn went into care and maintenance. So now we're paying the price. Now we just need higher prices of conversion to get all this Western capacity running. Springfields is in a unique situation relative to our Port Hope plant or the ConverDyn plant or even France's plant because Springfields is a multi-purpose facility in the UK that has very little restrictions on what it can do. It has very little restrictions on the criticality of the material that can happen there and the types of activities.
So what we want to do, we want Westinghouse to do with Cameco's help, obviously, is put the right industrial logic in place. Figure out everything Springfields can do from mainstream down the middle UF6 production, reprocessing of spent fuel, so reprocessed uranium, maybe enhancements to the fabrication line. Maybe there's a role to play in advanced reactors that Britain is looking at right now. Maybe there's a role to play in naval fuel around the AUKUS program. Get that industrial logic right because there's probably a lot of sharing of common infrastructure and figure out the math there and what makes sense. So ultimately, there's a big piece of work, a big piece of engineering work to occur, and that work is underway. But ultimately, what you need is utilities prepared to step forward and put the contracts in place that justify bringing the supply back.
And right now, the interest is getting Port Hope, ConverDyn, and Orano up to full capacity. I would say generally utilities haven't turned their full attention to what's required to get Springfields back. And conversion's just like uranium. You don't build capacity and then start knocking on people's doors and trying to sell it because there's never any in-year demand. So you've got to build that book of business, which becomes the investment case for the facility. We're getting closer, but we're not there yet.
Got it. Very clear. Let's shift over to the mining operations. So when we think about the footprint for Cameco, we've got the Athabasca Basin, but we also have a JV in Kazakhstan. And you guys put out a press release a week or two ago just around an update around Inkai. Would love to get your thoughts on the 30-second view on what happened at Inkai, what's the outlook in the near term, and then maybe open it up to how do you think about Cameco's position in Kazakhstan going forward as a result?
Yeah. Let me start with the last point and then work backwards. Cameco's been in Kazakhstan for a very long time. We've had a partnership with Kazatomprom for a very long time. In fact, I think Tim Gitzel is still the Kazakh Consul General in Saskatchewan to give you an idea of the kind of relationship he has with Kazakhstan. So it's been an important partnership. Obviously, putting out a press release on December 31st to say that production is shutting down January 1st is not Cameco's normal style. Those of us who have been following us sometimes know that we're probably transparent to a fault. And if we had any idea there was any risk to that production, we would have press released it much, much earlier than the day before it was supposed to happen.
We can only take our partner at face value that this is a minor issue. It's a compliance issue that has to do with a gray area about whether a proper submission had gone into the Ministry of Energy. We don't operate that. We're the minority partner, so it's not something we would normally have standing in. But our partner has said that it'll be resolved in January and production will resume in February and that there would be no disruption to 2025 production. So we'll obviously see. We have to learn more. We'll obviously have some conversations with our partner, but consultation ahead of time would be better than a press release for an event that's occurring the next day. But ultimately, it seems like a precautionary move by Kazatomprom based upon an uncertainty about what this filing meant.
And we just have to view it as probably not that big of a deal. What it does do, though, is it just reminds the world how difficult uranium production is. I mean, whether it's complying with a regulation and just making sure on a precautionary basis you're complying, or whether it's acid supply in Kazakhstan, or whether it's skilled labor supply in the Athabasca Basin, this is difficult. It's hard to do. And that risk needs to be priced into the market. It's not fully priced into the market. So this was just yet another reminder that the days of assuming the supplies of uranium are always going to be reliable and always going to be easy, those days are long over, and that risk needs to be priced accordingly.
I think one question we're getting a lot is Cameco's longer-term strategy as it relates to the production profile, and specifically looking at the assets in Canada, Cigar Lake is a world-class asset that's essentially going to run out in 2036. We talked about earlier in this discussion, it takes about 10 years plus minus to develop a mine. Here we are at the start of 2025. When we think about Cameco's strategy longer term, obviously well into the next decade, is it a function of the organic growth? Is it a function of tapping on the tier two assets? Or is there a potential for inorganic activity coming up?
Yeah, our owners always want to know that you learn the lessons from the past and you build those into how you think about it going forward. We've seen these cycles before, and we know that these cycles take some time to fully develop, and we know that real price formation in uranium happens when utilities are buying at or above replacement rate, and they haven't done that since 2012, so there's a backlog of demand building in our industry that's being reflected in the growing uncovered requirements wedge, and that's just code for demand that needs to come to the market, and because that much demand needs to come to the market, it tells us now is the time to remain disciplined and remain cautious and wait for that demand to fully form.
So when it comes to things like Cigar Lake, yeah, there's an 18 million pounds per year hole in the uranium supply stack coming in 2036. Do I think that's priced in today's market? Nope. Do I want to wait for that to be priced into today's market before we start making additional production decisions? Yes. Because Cameco's owners are never rewarded for us front-running demand with supply. In fact, they're rewarded if we're slightly late because of the tightness that it creates. So for us, this market hasn't grappled with the risks. It hasn't grappled with the end of life of Cigar Lake. It needs to figure that out. It needs to price it in accordingly. And we can be patient because remember, Cigar Lake's an 18 million pounds hole for the market in 2026, but it's only a nine million pounds hole for us.
As I said at the outset, we're still in supply discipline. We still have 30% of our production under care and maintenance because we don't think the market has called for it appropriately through price signals. We can easily replace our share of Cigar Lake. We just can't replace the French share or the Japanese share of Cigar Lake. That's a problem for the market that needs to be priced in. We've seen these markets before. We would prefer to wait for that price signal.
Now, when we think about Cameco's operating footprint across mining, conversion, and fuel fabrication, now with Westinghouse, it seems like the one area where there may be some room for further growth is on the enrichment side. And you guys have the investment in GLE. And I think we are getting a lot of questions around enrichment, just given the headlines for the Russia implications going forward. And really, who knows what happens with that situation. But as you think about Cameco's exposure across the fuel cycle, is there anywhere where there's a greater focus, or do you think that the asset base, the operating footprint, is good for right now at least?
Well, I mean, we always look for strategic assets. If I go back to your opening question, if we found the opportunity to get our hands on strategic assets, we would. I want to drill down a little bit on enrichment because we've never been shy about saying we want to be in the enrichment business. We just have never found the opportunity to get in as Cameco and generate the kind of returns our owners want and, quite frankly, deserve for the risk in the nuclear fuel cycle. So we decided to explore our way into enrichment. And we did that through third-generation laser enrichment technology, initially with GE, but now with the technology innovator Silex. And we remain very excited about this project. The possibility of delivering new enrichment sometime early in the next decade, if everything goes to plan, is exciting.
It's exciting because GLE actually offers a couple of different solutions. I mean, it can be an enrichment play. It can replace Russian enrichment, and it can do it on both a supplier and technology diversified basis. It's not centrifuge enrichment. It doesn't require the same factory that the centrifuge plants that Orano and Urenco use. It's a different technology base. So it gives you technology diversification, excuse me. But also, there's an eagerness in the market to have a new supplier. So there's a supplier diversification as well. But it also is an above-ground uranium mining conversion plant in disguise because remember, GLE also has an obligation to the Department of Energy to re-enrich depleted UF6 tails that are sitting at Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky.
When you re-enrich UF6 back to natural UF6, you essentially have an above-ground uranium mine, three to four million pounds, maybe five million pounds a year, up to 2,000 tons of conversion at a time when the conversion price is at a historic level and uranium, especially U.S. origin uranium, is needed. GLE checks a lot of boxes, but it still needs technology development. It's still on a pathway. We still have to make the right decisions, and a final investment decision hasn't been made. We really like the opportunity that's shaping up not just in enrichment, but how it also supports conversion in uranium.
Grant, I want to wrap up with a discussion on the mindset of a fuel buyer in 2025 and going forward. And the reason why is we talked a lot about supply constraints. We talked about how difficult it is to start up a mine, bring a mine online. We talked about the strong demand tailwinds. And I think maybe for a lot of people in the room, they think, "Okay, this is a really constructive setup," but you're not seeing it in the contracting activity yet. And maybe there are uncovered requirements really starting in 2028, that 2029 timeframe. Talk to us about what's the hesitation to jump back into contracting, and then when do you see a potential pickup going forward?
Yeah, obviously not a fuel buyer, but I talk to lots of them, and I know lots of them. And if I were to generalize, there's always a danger of generalizing, but let me go ahead and do it anyway. If I were to generalize, if you think about that fuel cycle that we talked about, uranium through conversion, enrichment, and fabrication, there's lots to worry about right now in enrichment and conversion.
And that drives a lot of attention and a lot of focus against a backdrop of historically not worrying so much about the uranium and against a backdrop of saying, "Well, let's get our services lined up first and then go find the uranium because now we know how everything has to navigate." So for me, it's just as simple as the Russian voluntary export restraint against the U.S. legislative ban is just consuming more attention in the enrichment and conversion space. It's delaying the attention that inevitably needs to come to uranium. It's not that every fuel buyer is absent. Some are very active right now in the uranium space. But uranium has not yet hit replacement rate like enrichment has, like conversion has. This is just a timing thing.
It is the product for which there's no substitute, and there's no point in contracting services if you don't have the product going into it, so that demand has to come. It can be delayed. It can be deferred, but it ultimately cannot be avoided, and we just expect that the voluntary export restraint in Russia is going to drive more attention downstream for a period of time, maybe measured in a quarter or two, and it's pretty inevitable, but it will have to translate into more uranium demand at some point.
Grant, I want to thank you again for being here. Obviously, a lot of things going on in the nuclear space. And again, this is the first time we've had a nuclear uranium presence here at the GS Energy Conference. So we're looking forward to continuing the conversation around nuclear going forward. Thank you.
Thanks, Adam.