What if you bought Uranium (lb) in 1990?
Commodities · Energy. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play8.0× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Uranium (lb) at the start of 1990 would be worth about $8,000 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Uranium trades in a small, opaque market dominated by long-term contracts between miners and utilities, so the spot price can move violently on modest news. Through the 1990s and early 2000s it languished below $15 a pound as utilities ran down inventories and decommissioned Cold War warheads supplied fuel through the Megatons to Megawatts programme. Then talk of a nuclear renaissance met real supply trouble, notably the flooding of Cameco's Cigar Lake mine in Canada in 2006, and speculators piled in; the price peaked well above $130 in mid-2007.
It deflated, recovered somewhat, and then the March 2011 Fukushima disaster set the industry back a decade: Japan shut its reactors, Germany decided to exit nuclear power, and spot prices drifted down to around $20 by 2016-2018. The revival began around 2021 as the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust bought physical supply, governments reconsidered nuclear power for climate and energy security, and technology companies sought around-the-clock electricity for AI data centres, including a deal to restart a Three Mile Island reactor. Prices climbed back toward their 2007 range.
The lesson: In markets where new mines take a decade to build, booms and busts run long; a single accident like Fukushima can reset demand for a generation.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $10.00 | $8,000 | $19,429 | 8.0× |
| 1995 | $10.00 | $8,000 | $14,783 | 8.0× |
| 2000 | $7.50 | $10,667 | $4,626 | 10.7× |
| 2003 | $10.00 | $8,000 | $7,727 | 8.0× |
| 2005 | $21.00 | $3,810 | $5,763 | 3.8× |
| 2007 | $72.00 | $1,111 | $4,789 | 1.1× |
| 2008 | $90.00 | $889 | $4,626 | 0.9× |
| 2010 | $45.00 | $1,778 | $6,071 | 1.8× |
| 2012 | $52.00 | $1,538 | $5,312 | 1.5× |
| 2015 | $36.00 | $2,222 | $3,301 | 2.2× |
| 2018 | $22.00 | $3,636 | $2,519 | 3.6× |
| 2020 | $25.00 | $3,200 | $2,092 | 3.2× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2000, turning $1,000 into $10,667. The S&P 500 from that same year: $4,626.
On this day
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Uranium (lb) is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in Commodities
- What if you bought Gold (oz)?
- What if you bought Silver (oz)?
- What if you bought Platinum (oz)?
- What if you bought Palladium (oz)?
- What if you bought Copper (lb)?
- What if you bought Crude oil (barrel)?