Uranium: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Uranium is mostly sold to utilities on multi-year contracts, so the spot price is thin and moves in long cycles. It depends on reactor build-outs and restarts, mine supply from Kazakhstan, Canada and Namibia, enrichment capacity and sanctions on Russia.
Market price IMF global price of uranium US$/lb · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026What its price moves with
Selected linkUranium and Natural gas
Monthly changes 0.04 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.01 little or none correlation Last 5 years 0.17 monthly changes Lead or lag −3 mo Uranium tends to lead by 3 months (r 0.10) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Uranium ≈ 21.9 × (Natural gas)0.29 R² 0.17 On this fit, a 10% higher natural gas price goes with a 2.8% higher uranium price over the long run. Units: US$/lb and $/mmbtu. The fit is loose, so treat the function as a rough guide.Chart: Uranium and Natural gas prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Uranium price against Natural gas price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Nearly all uranium is burned in fission reactors, so new reactor programmes in China and India and life extensions in the West set demand. This site uses the uranium price itself for nuclear fission, so the two share a series and no separate statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Nuclear power competes with gas-fired power, and gas price spikes revive political support for reactors, but that works over years, not months. Monthly moves barely correlate (0.04), which fits uranium's contract-based pricing and long reactor lead times.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsIn-situ leach mining, used for most of Kazakhstan's output, dissolves uranium underground with sulphuric acid, and acid shortages there have cut production. The US acid index shows no link (-0.07 monthly), because acid matters through supply disruptions, not cost pass-through.
little or none co-movement month to month · 225 months Show chartsUranium oxide is converted to uranium hexafluoride for enrichment using hydrogen fluoride, so fluorine chemistry sits in the fuel chain. Conversion is a small cost and the proxy is a broad US acids index, so monthly moves show no correlation (-0.02).
little or none co-movement month to month · 214 months Show chartsThorium can fuel some reactor designs, and India's three-stage nuclear programme plans to use its large thorium reserves, making it a long-run substitute for uranium. No traded thorium price exists, so the link is strategic rather than measurable.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.