Kazakhstan, the world’s largest uranium producer, is hoping to capitalise on a nuclear power resurgence, according to mining executives speaking at PDAC 2025 in Toronto yesterday (2 March).
Opening the panel discussion, Dastan Kosherbayev, chief director for strategy and international development at state-owned Kazatomprom, said a second uranium renaissance is “actively developing” and “demand is robust”.
“The nuclear sphere is receiving support, not only from political entities, but from financial institutions as well,” he added, pointing to an agreement signed by 14 financial institutions during New York Climate Week in September 2024.
Kosherbayev also referenced the Net Zero Nuclear initiative, which calls for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050.
Cameco, which owns Inkai 3 through a 40:60 joint venture with Kazatomprom, joined the initiative as a strategic partner in February 2025.
“The primary benefit from the [nuclear industry] rejuvenation [is that] we are expecting demand to increase significantly with structural shortfalls in production,” said Sean Quinn, senior vice-president, chief legal officer and corporate secretary at Cameco.
Quinn also pointed to Cameco’s ambition to gain a greater foothold in the conversion and enrichment space. “As the uranium industry reboots itself… we are looking to our investment in Westinghouse and other fuel cycle opportunities like GLE [Global Laser Enrichment] that can give us even greater exposure,” he said.
GLE is the licensee of the proprietary Separation of Isotopes by Laser EXcitation laser uranium enrichment technology. Cameco is the commercial lead for the GLE project with a 49% interest and an option to attain a majority interest of 75%.
Meanwhile, Kosherbayev pointed to Kazatomprom’s ambition to expand its footprint in the nuclear fuel cycle and rare earth space, as outlined in Kazatomprom’s strategy for 2025–34, released in January.
“Conversion and enrichment projects may come as lucrative. Of course, we would like to expand outputs in these areas but not at any cost,” he stated.
Kosherbayev added that Kazatomprom has identified rare earth element by-products such as scandium at some of its mines and that the company is currently testing potential equipment to separate these by-products efficiently.
“Should that happen, we are going to pursue some industrial-sized opportunities,” he said. However, he noted that natural uranium remains Kazatomprom’s largest revenue stream, accounting for around 90% of sales.
Kazakhstan was the world’s leading uranium producer in 2024, contributing 38% of global output and delivering a 10.4% increase compared with 2023, according to a recent report from GlobalData, Mining Technology’s parent company.
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