Before we get going, tonight at 6:00 P.M., out on the lawn next to the fish statue, there's cocktails, so come and have a cocktail, right? 6:00 P.M. until 8:00 P.M. Just in terms of the format, we've got a slightly funny format here. This is sort of the extended uranium session. This is us calling the bottom. What we're going to do is 15 minutes from Cameco. We've got Grant. We've got 15 minutes from Kazatomprom. We've got Marit. After that, everyone's going to come up on stage, and we're going to have a panel. That panel is not going to be hosted by me. It's going to be hosted by Lawson, who is next door, because he was double booked. I'm starting off, and then we'll do a sort of a tag team.
Look, I'm very pleased to welcome Cameco. Grant's going to walk us through the company a little bit, largest Western producer of uranium. So Grant, over to you.
Great. Thanks very much. Normally, when we do these presentations, we spend all our time talking about the market, and we never end up getting to talk about Cameco. Thank you for this opportunity, because I'm going to talk about Cameco today. I'm sure we're going to talk about the market all the time, once we get into the panel session. There is absolutely no mystery to what I'm going to say in the next 15 minutes. Number one is, we are looking at a very durable demand setup for the nuclear fuel cycle at a time when the uncertainties around the supply side have never been greater. That's a great setup for an incumbent producer.
Of course, the second thing I'm going to say is that we're in a uniquely strong position to take advantage of the pricing that's required to solve the structural deficit in the nuclear fuel cycle. With that, I'm going to jump ahead to this stylized cartoon. The point of this cartoon is to set the context for why we find ourselves in a durable demand context. In the middle of that diagram, kind of blurred out a little bit, is the electricity grid. What's interesting about this, from our perspective, is there has never been a greater focus on 24-hour baseload, hardened, dispatchable, secure, clean electrons than there is today. You know, we've talked about electricity before. We focused on electricity before. We wanted it to be cheap. We wanted it to be, you know, available or distributed.
Now we have some really profound problems with the electricity grid. It turns out, in a lot of markets, and this country is a very good example recently, we built grids for peak perfection. We did not build them to be robust and resilient. That is proving to be a very big challenge. That requires 24-hour electrons. On top of that, we're going to electrify a whole bunch of things we've never electrified before: mass transport, commercial vehicles, home heating, industrial heating, process heating that is typically done by thermal generation. We're apparently going to do that through electrification now. We're going to harden and make everything robust. We're going to add a bunch of new electrical applications to the grid. On top of that, we're going to clean up the areas that aren't already clean.
If that's not enough of a challenge, we're also then going to apparently onshore a whole bunch of manufacturing that we sent overseas over the last couple of decades. That's all coming back to the developed markets. If that's not a big enough challenge, we're apparently going to add massive amounts of demand for data AI. We've got a massive challenge to electrons. What we're seeing is that 24-hour baseload electrons are the critical path item to achieving all of that. Nuclear power is becoming the critical path item to the 24-hour baseload electrons. Nuclear power really began its reemergence around climate security. You know, the idea that it's 24 hours baseload, it's carbon-free. Then nuclear started to play a role, because it isn't just climate security, it's energy security.
Because once you have it, you've got really hardened assets that have fabricated fuel bundles in their strategic inventory. If you've just taken a light water reactor through a fuel outage, it's going to run for 18 months before you need to deliver another fuel bundle to that reactor. If it has a strategic inventory, one reload at the reactor, it's going to run for 36 months, even if there's not a fuel delivery to it. It suddenly became part of energy security. Now, as we look at things like the remanufacturing and onshoring, the data AI expansion, we're looking at that through the lens now of national security. Nuclear has gone from a climate security solution to an energy security solution, and now to a national security solution.
This is great, because not only is nuclear power a critical path item to achieving all of these security ambitions, Cameco is a critical path item to nuclear power. You cannot have a conversation in the Western world about nuclear power without involving Cameco, either on the nuclear fuel cycle or on the reactor cycle now with our ownership of Westinghouse. The final point I want to make on this slide is, we've been using this term much more than mining. I just want to clarify that at a mining conference. It's not that we're distancing ourselves from mining at all. In fact, we're very proud of our mining background. Mining will remain a core of what we do. The point is, additional value can be added to a uranium producer when you're invested across the nuclear fuel cycle.
When you're a part of all of those conversations about where the demand is coming from, when the customer who's deciding to build a new gigawatt scale reactor is also procuring uranium and everything in between, you can add a lot of value to your mining assets that a uranium-only producer can't add. We're more than mining because it adds value to our world-class mining assets. I want to skip to this slide. If the previous point was nuclear and Cameco is critical path, the point to this slide is Cameco has critical assets. Let's characterize these a little bit here. Just a few fun facts about Cameco. When you look at the left-hand side of the panel, that's all our uranium.
Whether it's our tier one assets that are running, our tier two assets that remain in care and maintenance right now for strategic reasons, or all of the expansion opportunities and brownfield leverage opportunities we have along the bottom, you know, the key point is, we have the largest exploration portfolio in the Athabasca Basin, which is a prolific zone for uranium mining globally. We have the largest commercial pipeline of resources and reserves, including our Yeelirrie deposit in Western Australia. On the uranium production side, we operate the two largest uranium mines in the world, MacArthur River and Cigar Lake. We operate the world's largest uranium mill, the Key Lake Mill. We are the largest commercial producer of uranium. We have the largest commercial brownfield leverage. What I mean there is we're actually only running 70% of our licensed capacity right now by strategic design.
The market has not fully formed on the uranium side. We prefer to leave pounds in the ground, then pull them up and chase a softer demand. We have a unique set of brownfield leverage from already licensed, already permitted, already built assets ready to come online when the price is there. If you flip over to the right-hand side, the fuel services, we have the largest Western refinery, in fact, the world's largest refinery of uranium into UO3. We are the largest commercial converter of UO2. We have the largest commercial capacity of UF6 conversion. We actually have the most brownfield leverage for conversion going forward at a time when conversion prices are at historic levels.
A really interesting fact is between Cameco's ability to fabricate fuel for heavy water reactors and Westinghouse's ability to fabricate fuel for light water reactors, pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, Russian VVER reactors, we're the world's largest fabricator of fuel. There are a lot of wins and a lot of firsts in that call. I think it gets lost a little when we do our presentations and spend most of our time talking about the market. As a consequence of being in this large position, we also have the largest commercial contract book across the nuclear fuel cycle. Finally, with the acquisition of Westinghouse, we are now a part of every conversation that's looking at building gigawatt scale reactors, either Westinghouse's AP1000 or now with the agreement to partner with the Koreans. If it's a Korean reactor project, we're still a part of it.
There isn't anything going on in the Western nuclear fuel cycle or reactor cycle that isn't involving Cameco and isn't coming through Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Why are we so excited? I want to put this slide up because it's really important to remember that we have a bit of a cheat code in our industry. If you want to know where uranium is going, look downstream. The reason for that is fuel buyers buy backwards. Fuel buyers don't start with the product and then go and contract the services. They start downstream at the reactor. How much fabricated fuel do I have? How many reloads do I have? If they feel like they need to start contracting, the first call they make is to the fabricator: Westinghouse, GE, Framatome. In the case of heavy water reactors, Cameco. The next call they make is to the enricher.
How much of my material is in process? How much capacity do I have tied up? They start to contract for enrichment. The next call after that is the converter. Only when they have these global services lined up do they go looking for the uranium. The reason is because in their minds, the fuel services are really scarce. There are only actually a handful of facilities around the globe that power 440 reactors globally. It is not a big network of facilities. Utilities typically believe that uranium is more abundant, there are more sources, there are more suppliers, so they can get it after. Now they know where the product has to go as it works its way through the chain. The cheat code is, what's going on downstream? Downstream, we have a lot of contracting going on. You know, the fabrication space, nearing record high prices.
The enrichment space, nearing record high prices, above replacement rate contracting. The conversion space, conversion's never been higher priced. At absolutely record prices, above replacement rate contracting going on in conversion. For very good reason. The market is trying to solve the problem of getting off the addiction of Russian fuel. As a consequence, it's driving a lot of attention downstream. The good news is, we know that demand is building, and we know that demand is coming into uranium. The bad news is, it hasn't shown up in uranium yet in a full way. Utilities are still pretty distracted downstream for good reason. They're still really tied up looking for the enrichment, looking for the conversion. We know that that demand has to come. They eventually need to come buy the product for which there is no substitute.
We just do not see that yet in the business. Downstream, things are looking very healthy. That gives rise to the final slide that I want to spend a bit of time on. Hopefully, it is a bit of a setup to the conversation around the panel. This is what gets us up in the morning. On the left-hand panel is the amount of material that utilities have not yet bought. More shaded area is good, less shaded area is bad. What you see is that the global utility customer base against the conservative base price forecast. What it does not include? It does not include massive amounts of onshoring and remanufacturing. It does not include data AI. It does not include a revolution in small modular reactors.
It's pretty much just the existing reactor base, the reactors being saved, the reactors being extended, and the new construction that's underway right now, plus the markets where we can count on more new construction like China, because they've delivered. That gives you a baseline requirements. Under that, you see that utilities have to buy in the next 20 years GBP 3.2 billion of uranium. We know they can delay. We know they can defer, but they ultimately cannot avoid those purchases. That demand is coming. The left-hand panel also reminds us why it's so important as a uranium producer to avoid the spot market. As you see, that very narrow window on the front end of the left-hand panel is the spot market window.
You always have to remember, there isn't a reactor on the planet that is loading a fuel bundle here in 2025 that has not already procured the uranium. They procured the uranium years ago, and they procured the conversion years ago, and the enrichment and the fabrication. There is never really any in-your demand for uranium. You have to set your strategy to be capturing and positioning for the demand that's building, that's out in front of you, the term market. That's the high-quality, non-discretionary, fundamental market for uranium. It is big. It has never been this big before. That is a pretty exciting story. It would not matter if supply was poised to respond. When you look at the right-hand panel, you see very clearly that markets work.
After years of keeping the price low, we are not positioned as an industry to know exactly where all the supply is coming from. What you see on the right-hand panel, you take the known secondary supply. This includes Russia. This is a global view. It does not matter if Russia is in or out in your thinking. You take the known primary supply. This assumes all primary production is running at full capacity. All of ours, all of merchants. It is not right now, but this picture assumes that we are all running at full capacity. This picture also assumes we have got Rabbit Lake running and the U.S. running. You layer in projects that are at the feasibility stage, which we think might come to the market. That gives you your gray wedge.
You are left structurally with GBP 1.3 billion of uranium that we just do not know where it is coming from right now. The solution to this problem is very simple. It is higher prices. The higher prices that are needed to convert more uranium resources into uranium reserves so that we can start to fill in that supply gap. When we look at a market, we see a durable demand profile. We see nuclear power being absolutely essential for climate security, energy security, and national security. We see a supply stack that needs to respond and will only respond if higher prices come through to the market.
That tells us that our strategy right now of being patient, of being disciplined, of capturing the demand first before we call for more production, and backing that up with a conservative financial management so we can wait longer than the utilities do and wait for that big bulge of demand to come through the market is absolutely the right one. Lots to be excited about and hopefully a bit of provocative comments to set up the panel. Thank you.