The world’s largest uranium producing mine is Cigar Lake in Canada. Some 6,924 metric tons of uranium were generated there in 2018. The second-largest mine is Olympic Dam in Australia, with nearly 3,200 metric tons of uranium produced in 2018. Approximately 55 percent of the uranium worldwide is produced by the mining method of in-situ leaching.
Kazakh state-owned KazAtomProm is the world’s leading uranium company, having produced about 11,100 metric tons in 2018. French Orano and Canadian Cameco follow closely behind. In the same year, only 14 companies accounted for 91 percent of the total global mine production of uranium.
The leading consumers of uranium worldwide are the countries with the highest share of nuclear energy: the United States, France, and China. The U.S. used nearly 19,000 metric tons of uranium in 2017. That was nearly twice as much as France, which ranked second. Although there are global tendencies towards alternative energies, projections for nuclear energy consumption show a distinct increase until 2035. This means that uranium will continue to be an important commodity for decades to come.
