Fifty Years

I joined the nuclear industry 50 years ago this summer, right out of graduate school. To answer the question of how/why I got into the nuclear industry, I interviewed for two main jobs. One was writing a weekly report on the Soviet economy for Henry Kissinger, and the other was as an economist in the Office of Uranium Resources and Enrichment at the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), which later became the Department of Energy (DOE). There was a lot going on with the Soviet Union and nuclear energy back then – not really much different than today, except now it’s Russia, as the Soviet Union no longer exists.

I chose the job at ERDA in 1975, a choice I was probably destined to make. I studied undergraduate and graduate economics at the University of Virginia. I only found out in recent years that Rouss Hall, the building that housed the economics department at Virginia, was the location of the U.S. centrifuge program overseen by Dr. Jesse Beams in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. The office I joined oversaw the operation of the U.S. enrichment program as well as U.S. uranium production and resources.

We all know that the centrifuge lost out to gaseous diffusion in the U.S. but was the ultimate winner on the world stage. The interplay between the enrichment and uranium markets has been a key factor influencing my work on nuclear fuel economics. By the time I found out about the Rouss Hall/centrifuge connection, I had already written dozens of articles relating to the significance of the enrichment market, some making it into academic literature. In 2008, I gave a presentation on world enrichment supply at the Sam Nunn Forum on Nonproliferation and the Global Nuclear Renaissance: Bridging the Gap, on the same program with Mohammed ElBaradei, with Ted Turner sitting in the front row.

As the uranium economist at ERDA and then DOE, my job was to deal with the adequacy and economics of fuel supply to support reactor growth. One of my first tasks was to debunk an article in Science magazine that suggested the U.S. was running out of uranium. I was also asked to accompany a team to the Treasury Department where a one-billion-dollar loan guarantee program for U.S. uranium miners was under consideration to expand production. I argued (successfully) that such a program was unnecessary as the uranium price was in the process of doubling, and this would provide all the incentive that was needed. By the end of 1977, the uranium price reached $43 (over $170 in today’s dollars) per pound and by the time I left the government in 1980, annual U.S. production had grown to nearly 44 million pounds.

I also provided the U.S. government with uranium price forecasts for reactor planning. In this capacity, I was the lowest-ranking attendee at a special Saturday DOE meeting where the fate of the Clinch River breeder reactor was to be “decided.” The political decision had already been made, but it needed to be justified by economic analysis. The meeting was headed by John Deutch who was then with DOE but later held other positions, including the Director of the CIA.

At ERDA and DOE, I oversaw the survey of U.S. uranium marketing activity, an annual report that was in much demand during my tenure as the increase in contracting spurred the uranium price rise. I also consulted with the Australian Embassy as Australia sought to refine its uranium export policy.

After DOE, I went to work for a small consulting company in Atlanta. One of my first assignments was to accompany two representatives from Niger as they sought to sell uranium in the U.S. Concerns at that time were that Niger’s uranium would end up in the hands of governments pursuing nuclear weapons programs, as some of its uranium had already made its way to neighboring Libya. The then President of Niger, Seyni Kountché, famously said that his country “would sell uranium even to the devil,” so finding an alternative market was important. This statement was repeated to me by Mahamadou Issoufou, a young engineer on the two-man team.

Years later in 2008, I was making a presentation in Cape Town and asked the Nigerien contingent there about the two Nigerian representatives I worked with years earlier. When I mentioned Issoufou’s name, I was surprised to learn that, as leader of the opposition party, he was likely to be the next President of Niger. Three years later, he was elected president.

I joined Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1989. At SAIC, I established and edited the Nuclear Fuel Market Quarterly (NFMQ), which drew both upon SAIC’s extensive staff of experts as well as industry contributors, including Tom Neff and Jim Glasgow, for articles. Much of the focus of the NFMQ over its four years of existence was the evolving situation in the Soviet Union and its effect on the nuclear fuel market, as the Soviets had excess supply capacity following the Chornobyl accident and the Soviet Union was in the process of breaking up. This was a fascinating time for me given my academic training and career choice.

In 1989 before the NFMQ was launched, Tom Neff and I wrote an article about expanding nuclear fuel trade between the U.S. and the Soviet Union where HEU supplies from dismantled Soviet warheads was mentioned as a possible future source of reactor fuel. Tom not only wrote about the Soviet situation for the NFMQ, but in 1992 he teamed up with SAIC for Nuclear Arms Reductions and Commercial Nuclear Fuel Markets, the seminal study examining the market prospects for nuclear fuel supplies from dismantled nuclear warheads. This was a year after he proposed the HEU deal in a New York Times op-ed but before the government-to-government deal for the purchase of 500 MT of HEU was signed in 1993.

The Ux Consulting Company (UxC) was created in 1994 as an outgrowth of The Uranium Exchange Company (Ux) with Dave and Heera Clark. At first, UxC focused on custom consulting but eventually took over Ux’s publications, including this Ux Weekly and market reports. Over time, we added new products and special reports. Today, in addition to our price reporting responsibilities, we routinely publish over a dozen different reports on the entire nuclear fuel cycle and the nuclear power industry.

One of our key functions has been to educate individuals, companies, governments and international organizations about the nuclear fuel market. Our popular Nuclear Fuel Training Seminar, which was just held in Vienna, Austria, is consistently oversubscribed. As the nuclear industry continues to grow, we believe it is important to educate new participants as well as to provide new information and methods to existing participants.

Part of our outreach is to present papers at various nuclear and energy conferences around the world due to the international basis of our industry and our business. To this end, UxC has given well over 200 presentations in at least 20 countries over the years. Although writing is more my thing, I have given more than 40 presentations spanning four continents over my career.

In 2004, I presented a paper entitled “Fueling the Future: A New Paradigm – Assuring Uranium Supplies in an Abnormal Market,” at the WNA Symposium. The paper was spurred by my concern that traditional uranium price information at that time was insufficient to capture the future scarcity of uranium. From my academic training and prior experience, I recognized the power of prices and their effect on markets.

This concern and the subsequent spike in prices led UxC to augment the price information that was then available, and we worked with industry brokers to establish forward prices and with NYMEX to set up the world’s first and only uranium futures contract in 2007. Over the next 10 years, I made two subsequent presentations at the WNA which tracked these pricing developments and the evolution of the market. Innovation in uranium price reporting is part of Ux’s and UxC’s heritage. In 1987, Dave Clark’s Ux published the first weekly spot price. In 2021, UxC began publishing a daily price, another milestone in price reporting, under Jonathan Hinze’s direction, as he was running the company by that time.

The initial Fueling the Future paper, which provides a blueprint for uranium supply security, is probably more relevant today than when I first gave it over 20 years ago. Over time, it has become clearer that nuclear energy is the future due to its contributions to energy security, environmental security, and national security, all of which are closely related. At the same time, challenges remain when it comes to fuel supply, as the overall demand for nuclear fuel continues to grow and the nature of that demand evolves.

Over my career, my job has been to monitor and analyze the nuclear fuel market, and to try and make it work more efficiently to support nuclear power. This was the case when I worked for the government and remains the case with the continued operations of UxC. In this regard, I have seen lots of changes over the past 50 years, including the evolution in price reporting mentioned above. On the reactor side, Clinch River has gone from being the site of a breeder reactor to the designated location of an SMR to be built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). To this end, instead of making price forecasts to determine breeder economics, UxC is now studying the availability of advanced fuels for small, advanced, and micro reactors (SAMRs).

Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to work with accomplished people in an industry that is both interesting and consequential. To continue supporting our industry, I established the AtomPeace website as part of UxC’s outreach program. The purpose of this website is to emphasize the positive aspects of the atom while addressing solutions to the negative aspects, as there is an unavoidable nexus between peaceful and military uses of the atom. This is done on the website through news postings and occasional articles and longer essays which are made available to the public.

Also, as part of this outreach, UxC has been supporting Ukrainian atomic workers and other Ukrainian causes through our annual 5K Atomic Runners event spearheaded by Anya Bryndza. In addition to this, I have been working with the Tellus Science Museum for several years to increase its nuclear energy content and to establish a permanent exhibit on electricity, by funding design studies and working to ensure that nuclear energy gets proper recognition in the process. As I’m sure many of you have experienced, this wasn’t easy at first but is getting easier to do as nuclear power continues to increase in importance in the evolving energy landscape.

This article was originally published in the August 4, 2025 issue of the Ux Weekly.