Canada and the U.S. have long been locked in a nuclear partnership—can it survive a tariff war?
By Sara Kim, Staff Writer
Despite being close allies, the U.S. has proposed up to 10% of tariffs on Canadian uranium. During President Trump’s first term, tariffs on steel and aluminum shook confidence in North American free trade, though uranium was exempted at the time.
Canada welcomed the exemption, noting that Canadian uranium is not a national security threat to America. Yet tensions are mounting again as new threats of tariffs emerge.
“The days of what we expected to be barrier-free trade with the U.S.—those days are gone,” says Cory Kos, Vice President of Investment Relations at Cameco, a leading supplier of Uranium in Canada at Saskatchewan.
Uranium isn’t just a trade good; it’s the backbone of nuclear power, one of the most stable and low-carbon sources of electricity. With growing global demand for nuclear energy, protectionist policies risk far more than just market access. Tariffs on uranium could undermine the trust and cooperation that support the North American nuclear supply chain.
Energy Security Isn’t What It Used to Be
Energy security today means more than just keeping the lights on. It’s about ensuring affordable, reliable, and politically stable access to critical energy resources.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, countries started rethinking who they rely on. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) explains, modern energy security includes managing price shocks, avoiding single-source dependency, and ensuring supply chain resilience.
Canada’s own uranium giant, Cameco, says control over the entire fuel cycle —mining, conversion, enrichment—is key to reducing risk.
Kos puts it plainly: “energy security is… ensuring that you have full control of all aspects of your energy infrastructure… You don’t want to depend on other nations [and] other entities for your [nuclear] fuel.”
Matthew McClearn, an energy and investigative reporter with The Globe and Mail, notes that Canada’s dependency on the U.S. spans “so many different channels.” And as the relationship deteriorates, “tariffs are making it difficult…. [and] we are suddenly asking questions that were kind of in the background.”
Canada’s Enrichment Gap
Canada is one of the world’s largest uranium exporters. But unlike countries with full nuclear capability, it lacks uranium enrichment technology.
Enrichment is the process that transforms raw uranium into reactor fuel by increasing the percentage of the isotope U-235. Most commercial reactors use uranium enriched to around 3–5%, which is ideal for power generation. But anything above 20% is considered weapons-grade under international nuclear safeguards.
For decades, Canada relied on its own CANDU reactors, which run on natural (unenriched) uranium. These heavy-water reactors were once a Canadian standard, but they now account for only about 11% of global reactors.
Today, with rising demand for nuclear energy, about 90% of reactors require enriched fuel. It’s part of the reason CANDUs have fallen out of favour. As McClearn points out, “It’s been more than 30 years since we built the last one… the CANDU is sort of regarded as a bit of an older technology at this point.”
Now, Canada is looking ahead to the next wave: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). These are newer, more compact nuclear technologies designed to be quicker to build and easier to site than older models.
Unlike traditional plants, SMRs are suited for smaller grids, remote communities, or industrial hubs. Ontario’s planned GE Hitachi BWRX-300 units are part of this shift, marking Canada’s first new reactors since the 1990s.
But these new reactors come with a catch: they need enriched uranium—a type of nuclear fuel that Canada doesn’t produce. That’s why Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has partnered with American and French suppliers to process and build the fuel abroad. This kind of cross-border supply chain wasn’t seen as a problem—until now.
“It really has become a very real possibility that… the Americans… would deny us access [to enriched fuel],” McClearn said. “And I think that’s starting to dawn on people in the industry.”
The worry isn’t just about logistics; it’s also about leverage. As Kos put it, “we’re going to need [U.S.] enrichment… even though we own [GLE] from a Canadian company… if there was a dispute, we’d be cut off from our own technology.”
Canada never expected this kind of vulnerability in the highly regulated sector. The nuclear relationship with the U.S. has long been built on trust and cooperation. But as analysts warn, proposed tariffs on Canadian uranium could throw that trust into question.
The Nuclear Option: Should Canada Enrich Its Own?
Under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, enrichment for peaceful, non-weapons use is allowed—so long as it stays under 20% U-235.
The real issue for enrichment for Canada has always been cost, politics, and practicality. According to one policy brief, Canada’s historic lack of enrichment isn’t due to prohibition, but policy choice.
Still, the conversation is changing.
While there’s no formal price tag, McClearn says experts he’s spoken to have ballparked the cost of developing enrichment infrastructure in Canada to cost billions of dollars.
Moreover, the scale of investment makes enrichment hard to justify, especially for a country without a military nuclear program. “It’s traditionally been only nuclear weapons states that do enrichment,” McClearn notes, because it’s “so painfully expensive.”
Kos shares that skepticism. He doesn’t see Ottawa moving ahead unless Canada is fully cut off from global enrichment. “We’re not going to build a plant in Canada unless you couldn’t ship it anywhere,” he says. “There’s still global capacity available and accessible to Canada.”
That said, Canada does have a foot in the door. Cameco owns nearly half of Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), a joint venture developing next-gen enrichment in North Carolina. But GLE remains in development, and it’s not on Canadian soil.
Kos notes that even though Cameco co-owns Global Laser Enrichment, “we don’t get to see how it works.” The intellectual property (IP) is held in the U.S., and the technology is protected by American top-secret clearance. “[Cameco has] these consultants who give us a thumbs up or down to keep investing,” he adds.
An Unpredictable Future for North American Nuclear Security
Canada’s nuclear future isn’t spiralling—but its dependencies are certainly exposed.
The nuclear supply chain doesn’t stop at the border. As Kos explained, nuclear material “goes back and forth across the [Canada-U.S.] border a dozen times” during the fuel cycle, from mining to processing to fabrication.
It is clear that the nuclear supply chain is deeply interconnected—and fragile. This is why tariffs on them don’t make much sense from a policy standpoint, and it is also why slapping a tariff could add billions in costs. Canada and the U.S. are not just trading partners; they’re operationally integrated.
A CSIS analysis warns that tariffs on Canadian uranium could spike global prices. Canada supplies roughly 25% of American uranium needs.
“If the tariff going into the U.S. is 10%,” Kos estimates, “you can probably expect just the global uranium price to go up 9.95%.”
McClearn warns the political impact may be just as severe. “You’re partnered with this country [the U.S.] that is increasingly behaving in a hostile manner… these unthinkable questions start arising. Like, what if they cut us off from the fuel?”
Tariffs have forced a tough conversation for Canada: can a country rich in uranium afford to stay out of the enrichment game forever? Or, will our nuclear partners in the U.S. come to recognize that true energy security relies not just on control, but on cooperation?
Stable nuclear cooperation with the U.S. is still possible, but it won’t happen overnight. It will require clearer, more predictable policies, closer coordination with the current administration, and a rethink of what energy security really means for Canada in the new age of tariffs.
As a developer of SMRs in Canada, through my company headquartered in Canada, I think it is imperative that the Canadian Federal Government commission a Public/Private initiative, similar to the NWMO, to properly study and address the needs of the nuclear fuel supply chain, not only enrichment. In this period of increased investments in nuclear energy and SMRs, Canada must complete a comprehensive analysis of this most critical issue. This should be under the direction of NRCan or AECL and include companies like Cameco, and others across the nuclear energy spectrum. Cost is the primary concern, and should be, but the demand is growing rapidly, and the gap is widening. Canada can and should look at how it will profitably fill this burgeoning need.