Before the conflict in Ukraine escalated into a full-scale proxy war between Russia and NATO last year, US nuclear power plants relied on Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for nearly half of their enriched uranium. More than a year after the conflict, Washington appears to have failed to find alternatives.
The Biden administration’s goal of isolating the Russian economy with sanctions over the past year has had a major exception as the US continues to buy enriched uranium from Russia for use in its nuclear power plants.
According to calculations, US companies bought about $1 billion worth of enriched uranium from Russia last year. The US has a network of nearly 60 nuclear power plants operating in more than 20 states, providing up to a fifth of the country's electricity and about 10% of its total energy needs.
A nuclear power plant in the US.
Industry experts say the continued US purchases are due to Washington's lack of domestic conversion and enrichment capabilities, with Russia's nuclear giant Rosatom the main global exporter of nuclear fuel.
Although Russia only mines about 6% of the world 's uranium, it controls about 40% of the uranium conversion market and 46% of total global uranium enrichment capacity.
In 2021, the US relied on Russia’s nuclear monopoly for 14% of the uranium that fuels its nuclear reactors. That same year, Europe also bought nearly a fifth of its nuclear fuel from Rosatom.
By the end of 2021, nearly one-fifth of the world's nuclear power plants were in Russia or built by Russia, and Rosatom was building 15 more outside Russia, according to Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.
On top of that, nuclear power is said to be resurgent amid soaring hydrocarbon prices (largely due to global market disruptions amid Western countries’ push for independence from Russian gas), as well as environmental concerns, with nuclear seen as the least damaging to climate-change-obsessed regulators looking for CO2-free energy sources.
Enriched uranium was thus curiously left out of the Biden administration’s import ban on Russian energy last year, and neither Washington nor Moscow appear to be heeding calls to seek alternative markets.
That means that in the event of sanctions on uranium, the US would have difficulty finding an alternative, unless it started buying Russian-origin enriched uranium relabeled as uranium from some third country.
Additionally, about a quarter of the uranium used by US nuclear power plants also comes from Russia's partners Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, meaning Moscow could put significant pressure on US energy security if Washington imposes sanctions in this sector.
According to VNA
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