The US and its allies are trying to revive nuclear reactors to deal with the energy crisis, but the problem is that they depend on uranium from Russia.
Nuclear power once accounted for nearly 20% of America's electricity supply and about 25% of Europe's, but has been gradually abandoned over the past few decades, as nuclear reactors were seen as too costly and potentially risky.
However, as the Ukraine conflict rages and the West tries to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, there are signs that nuclear power is making a comeback, as countries seek stable supplies to cope with the threat of energy crises and climate change.
In the US, after years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, a nuclear reactor in Georgia began taking its first steps toward commercial electricity production in March. Another reactor at the facility is expected to begin operating next year.
Reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Dauphin, Pennsylvania, US in 2019. Photo: Constellation Energy
Finland last month began regular electricity production at Europe’s largest nuclear reactor, with the ambition of providing a third of the country’s electricity. Poland in November selected the US company Westinghouse Electric to build its first nuclear power plant, which is expected to have three reactors and cost about $20 billion.
A recent Gallup poll found that Americans are more supportive of nuclear power technology now than at any point in the past decade.
Westinghouse, a pioneer in electric power, has struggled in the nuclear sector and has changed hands repeatedly amid volatile markets and tighter industry regulations following reactor accidents around the world such as the Chernobyl explosion and the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami.
A group of US investors bought Westinghouse for nearly $8 billion in October, a move seen as a bet on a nuclear energy revival. Westinghouse said this month it plans to build a series of smaller reactors that would cost about $1 billion each.
However, Westinghouse and other US energy companies face a difficult problem: They still rely on Russian enriched uranium to produce nuclear fuel, despite many technological advances over the years.
Nuclear fuel is one of the few Russian energy sources that has not been subject to Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, a result of a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the risk of Soviet-era nuclear warheads.
Under the Megaton to Megawatt Program, initiated by MIT researcher Thomas Neff, the United States agreed to buy 500 tons of enriched uranium from Russia to convert into reactor fuel. This amount of uranium is enough to produce 20,000 nuclear warheads.
Arms control advocates hailed the deal as a win-win. Moscow got much-needed cash, Washington got less proliferation worries and its power plants got cheap fuel. It remains one of the world’s most successful nuclear disarmament programs.
The agreement “did what it was intended to do,” Neff said. “It left humanity with fewer nuclear weapons and fewer fissile materials than it had before.”
But the deal made Russian uranium so cheap that other suppliers found it difficult to compete. Soon, American and European nuclear fuel companies were forced to scale back, leaving Russia as the world’s largest supplier of enriched uranium, accounting for nearly half of global supply.
Before the agreement expired in 2013, Russian suppliers signed new contracts with private US companies to supply fuel outside the government-to-government program. In 2007, Russia created the State Nuclear Energy Corporation Rosatom from various agencies and organizations of the Russian nuclear power industry and took over the sale of nuclear fuel to the US.
Rosatom supplied a quarter of its nuclear fuel to US companies, earning about $1 billion last year, according to analysis by Darya Dolzikova of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
Pressure is mounting on the West to increase uranium enrichment capacity, not least because much of the US economy depends on Russian fuel. US and European investors are pushing for a new generation of nuclear reactors that are considered safer and more environmentally friendly, but they require special fuel, for which Rosatom is the sole supplier today.
“We need that fuel to fire up the reactor,” said Jeff Navin, director of external affairs for TerraPower, which plans to build its first reactor in Wyoming, US.
He said the US was paying the price for years of neglecting to build a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. “Our choice is to accept building that Russian fuel-dependent reactor now, or wait for some miracle solution from another country,” Navin said.
A Russian uranium shipment is loaded onto a truck in Dunkirk, France in early 2023. Photo: AFP
The US currently has two uranium production facilities, one of which is owned by Eunice, New Mexico-based Urenco Corp. The company says it is spending about $200 million to increase capacity and could spend more if the US blocks uranium supplies from Russia.
What Eunice needs is government assurances that there is a market for the uranium it produces. Kirk Schnoebelen, Urenco’s sales director, said the company fears that in the next few years, cheap Russian uranium will flood the world market, causing prices to plummet.
Schnoebelen added that the concern was rooted in history. In the 1990s, Urenco planned to build the first new uranium enrichment plant in the United States in decades. But the Megaton-to-Megawatt Conversion Program effectively derailed that project. Today, that memory haunts the board, making it reluctant to invest billions of dollars in the field.
Bipartisan legislation in the US Congress is pushing to ban the use of Russian uranium, build a national uranium stockpile, boost domestic production capacity and add uranium to the critical minerals list.
But Patrick Fragman, chief executive of Westinghouse, said the bill was long overdue. "Countries should have been keeping a close eye on what was happening in the nuclear industry. They should have sounded the alarm when a lot of Western nuclear plants were closing down," he said.
Thanh Tam (According to WSJ )
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