Nexus Uranium Pivots to Wyoming and Arizona as South Dakota Hearing Slips Indefinitely

South Dakota board adjourns exploration permit hearing; federal lawsuit over Lakota translation services adds uncertainty, pushing Nexus to accelerate Wyoming and Arizona uranium assets.

Nexus Uranium's Chord project in South Dakota remains in regulatory limbo after the state Board of Minerals and Environment adjourned the long-awaited hearing without a decision or a new date. The May 18-22 session ended with no resolution on exploration permit EXNI 453, and a federal lawsuit now threatens to push the timeline further into the future.

One investor at the Federal District Court of South Dakota is seeking a temporary restraining order that would suspend the hearing until the court provides additional interpretation and translation services in the Lakota language. Nexus stresses that the legal challenge does not question the technical merits of the Chord project or seek to block the permit outright. Still, the uncertainty has rattled the market. Shares fell 7% on Friday to €0.46, bringing year-to-date losses to 62%.

The stalled hearing was supposed to clear the way for a fully financed summer drill program at Chord. The plan calls for up to 38 reverse-circulation exploration holes, each no deeper than 700 feet. That timeline now hinges on when—or if—the board can reconvene.

While Chord languishes, Nexus is accelerating work on two other uranium assets. In Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management has approved the exploration plan for the South Pass project. The only remaining hurdle is the posting of a reclamation bond required by the state. South Pass consists of 151 mineral claims spanning roughly 3,020 acres in Fremont and Sublette Counties. Historical data points to uranium mineralization at depths that could be amenable to in-situ recovery (ISR) mining, a method that dissolves uranium underground without conventional open-pit or underground operations.

Further south, Nexus has opened a third front at the Arizona Strip project in Mohave County. The company acquired 100% ownership in March 2026 and holds 38 federal mining claims targeting seven collapse-breccia pipe deposits. The Arizona Strip is considered one of the most significant uranium districts in the United States, and Nexus aims to push both exploration and permitting forward there.

The multi-asset strategy is designed to cushion the impact of regulatory delays in any single jurisdiction. With Chord stuck in neutral, South Pass and the Arizona Strip are now the primary levers for maintaining momentum. The next concrete milestones are a new hearing date from the South Dakota board, completion of the Wyoming reclamation bond, and the start of field work in Arizona. Investors tracking these signals will get an early read on whether Nexus can keep its summer schedule intact.