Kazakhstan strikes again: Uranium falls off everything rally as CY26 output set for boost

Let’s just get to the point: Uranium prices have fallen off the ‘everything rally’ wagon in the last few days, largely because major Kazakh-based uranium miner Kazatomprom has moved to boost uranium output by up to 9% this year.

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This feels a lot like a few years ago when the uranium price briefly went wild, then not-so-wild, after forecast shortages from Kazatomprom, due to mine issues, were countered by news from Canadian global major Cameco that it would boost production. (Fun fact: That was nearly two years ago to this very day.)

There’s a rule in uranium trading: You’ve gotta be quick. That remains the case.

Spare a thought for shareholders in the likes of Peninsula Energy (ASX:PEN), who, after a long wait, saw the price climb from 40cps last year, up to 80cps, then out of nowhere, very quickly ascending to 90cps, 95cps, then over $1.00/sh – before coming back down to <80cps intraday Wednesday. (Though, to be fair, it looks like 80cps is where the market has agreed the price should be.)

Equally-troubled Boss Energy (ASX:BOE), meanwhile, was worth a little over $2/share at the end of January, but has since taken a blow down to $1.78/share, at time of writing. And then Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) closed out January trading at $14.14/sh and now sits lower at $13.50/sh, at the time of writing.

Perhaps not dramatic declines, but the situation is less tame in futures markets.

Uranium is down -5% in the last 24 hours, eating into what had been monthly gains of over +12%. Compare that to +15% for silver, and nearly +14% for gold – that’s even after we saw those metals plummet, what, some… forty-eight hours ago.

The big thing to note here, you can probably see for yourself – these screenshots were taken at the same time, and right now, uranium’s not on the way back up.

If Kazatomprom have come out with a plan to boost production by +9% – and remember, nuclear plants don’t really need that much uranium to operate; it’s refiners who take on more monetary risk – then it’s hard to see how a narrative momentum around shortages can take hold in the zeitgeist.

Before the Kazatomprom announcement midway through Week 6, a lot of people had been banking on AI data centre power demand being a use case for uranium (even though the reactors take decades to build).

As ever, it’s uranium: You gotta be quick.

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