Conor here: This reminds me of the quote, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Well, with Russia emerging victorious in Ukraine, the elite minds in the West suddenly seem to be realizing that their Project Ukraine required some actual planning.
This piece about how the Biden administration is just now getting around to maybe trying attempting to reduce its nuclear fuel reliance on the country it wants to destroy is a great example, as is the Royal United Services Institute dropping some late-in-the-game wisdom this week:
The unprecedented sanctions against Russia have highlighted the importance of third countries – those countries that are neither the target of sanctions nor adopters of sanctions against Russia/Belarus (and thus are not legally bound by sanctions). Such third countries make up a majority of the world and are therefore an important factor in determining whether sanctions are ultimately effective.
Is it beginning to dawn on the West’s elite minds that they’re essentially isolating themselves with their over reliance on sanctions? That remains unlikely as the takeaway is that more must be done to make sanctions more effective. Similarly, in the the following OilPrice piece there is no admission of faulty planning (one wonders what would the US have done had Project Ukraine been successful and Putin was overthrown and Russia descended into chaos, thereby disrupting the nuclear supply chains in addition to the gas and oil supply chains). And the Biden administration is still going off the script that they just need to up the pressure a little more.
By Haley Zaremba, a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. Originally published at OilPrice.
- The U.S. depends on Russian state-operated firm Rosatom for nearly 50% of global uranium enrichment, essential for the nation’s nuclear energy production.
- America’s reliance on Russian nuclear supply chains continues despite sanctions, inadvertently funding Russia’s defense sector and creating a critical vulnerability in energy security.
- The Biden administration is seeking $2.16 billion to boost domestic uranium enrichment capabilities, emphasizing the urgency to diminish dependence on Russian nuclear fuel for national security and energy independence.
The United States has enough uranium to power the country for 100 years but lacks the nuclear fuel enrichment capacity to become self-reliant. As a result, the nation is dangerously reliant on Russian nuclear energy supply chains to keep the lights on. This is problematic on several levels. Not only does it undercut and water down the West’s energy sanctions on Russia to condemn the ongoing war in Ukraine, it also severely compromises the United States’ energy security.
The United States is reliant on nuclear energy for nearly a fifth of the national energy mix (18.2%, according to the Energy Information Agency). In fact, the U.S. is the largest nuclear energy producer in the world, accounting for a whopping 30% of global production. But while the United States is first in the world in terms of nuclear energy production, it’s far from first place in terms of uranium enrichment capacity to produce nuclear fuel. That distinction belongs to Russia. Indeed, almost 50% of the world’s uranium enrichment is conducted by Russian state-operated nuclear energy firm Rosatom.
Companies in the United States sent nearly $1 billion to Russian state-operated nuclear energy firm Rosatom in 2022 alone, according to the Royal United Services Institute in London. That’s a serious chunk of change for an economy that the West is supposedly trying to choke off. “That’s money that’s going right into the defense complex in Russia,” Scott Melbye, executive vice president of uranium miner Uranium Energy and president of the Uranium Producers of America, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. “We’re funding both sides of the war.”
In fact, throughout the entire energy sanctions timeline following the illegal invasion of Ukraine in February of last year, the Russian nuclear sector has never stopped raking in export revenue. While sanctions from the United States, the European Union, and their political allies have cost the Kremlin tens of billions of dollars in lost revenues, their ongoing reliance on Russian nuclear energy supply chains represents a critical weak spot in the offensive.
And that weak spot may not be patched up all that quickly, as Rosatom’s services will be extremely difficult to replace. Other suppliers are extremely limited and have much smaller enrichment capacities. What’s more, Russia is well positioned to make itself even more essential to the sector as Rosatom subsidiary Tenex is the only company on planet Earth providing commercial sales of Haleu – a high-assay low-enriched uranium that could be a key fuel source for small modular reactors, a new technology which many think will soon be the new industry standard.
Russia doesn’t only control global enriched uranium supply chains, it’s also a key source of funding for new nuclear facilities. Nearly one in five nuclear power plants in the world are either in Russia or are built by Russia. And Rosatom’s influence is still growing around the world, especially as Russia continues to push into emerging economies that could not otherwise afford to build up their own nuclear sectors – a massively expensive pursuit.
Reducing reliance on Russia for nuclear fuel has become an increasingly important political priority in the United States. Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary for nuclear energy for the Biden administration, told the Financial Times it was “gravely concerning” that Russia for a fifth of its nuclear fuel. The Biden administration has reportedly appealed to Congress for $2.16 billion to fund incentives for domestic companies to ramp up their uranium enrichment and conversion capacities.
“It’s really critical that we get off of our dependence, especially from Russia,” Huff went on to say. “Without action Russia will continue to hold on to this market . . . this is really important for national security, for climate, for our energy independence.”
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The issue does not just concern uranium enrichment: Russia is also practically the sole provider in crucial aspects of the entire nuclear energy chain.
In particular, Rosatom processes spent uranium — coming from atomic power plants — into reusable fissile material, separating the extremely depleted uranium from it and storing it away.
Even France, which has all the capacity it needs to enrich uranium, is utterly dependent on Russia for reprocessing spent uranium (France can separate plutonium from spent uranium and use it for its own nuclear bombs, but cannot handle the remaining spent fissile materials). And so, despite the war in Ukraine, despite declarations that the contract with Rosatom would be re-assessed, despite publicly announced intentions of not depending on Russia, France continues to send its spent fissile material to Russia, and to get reprocessed fuel for its atomic power plants. The other aspect is that the extremely depleted uranium resulting from the re-enrichment process, and which is totally unusable because nobody has the installations nor an economic incentive to process it, remains conveniently in Siberia instead of overfilling the storage for nuclear waste in France…
I surmise that many other countries are similarly dependent on Russia because of the same issue.
Apparently the US was once dominant in fuel enrichment because of the first Cold War to the point of having a monopoly. And then neoliberalism happened and one plant after another was shut down because it was more “economical” to have other countries do the enrichment instead until the US lost its last source of domestic-origin enriched uranium back in 2013, just before Project Ukraine started. I suppose that like with Stinger missile production, the government can run around and try and hire those retired enrichment workers for great wages to come back to work. The ones that are still alive that is. But if the US is going to start investing money into a fuel enrichment plant, they should have a proviso that it never be shut down or shut down & sent overseas without government approval and in return the government will guarantee contracts to keep that operation in business at a profitable level. But they should have at least two plants running lest an accident or something shut down that one plant putting them back in the barrel again.
Isn’t it amazing that countries, so proud of their large nuclear sector, are in fact completely dependent upon the industrial infrastructure of the gas-station masquerading as a country? And it is not just a question of complementing insufficient capacity; they have none of the facilities required for some crucial steps in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Should Western countries try to impose a similar kind of wide-spectrum sanction packages against China, consequences will be even more humbling.
“But if the US is going to start investing money into a fuel enrichment plant, they should have a proviso that it never be shut down or shut down & sent overseas without government approval and in return the government will guarantee contracts to keep that operation in business at a profitable level”
So once a upon a time in June 1975 – that is exactly what was proposed! – Gerald Ford was behind the Project and the Partners – which required multiple types of guarantees by the federal government. The federal commitments involved extensive financial guarantees for the debt raised privately from the banks and insurance companies, guarantees of operating technologies and the transfer of US Government owned technology and potentially existing facilites in Paducah, Kentucky, Oakridge & Portsmouth, Ohio.
Bechtel & Goodyear were the lead managers and a consortium was formed with other major US companies with potential of foreign investment as well.
The objective was 50% of the world market which was very short of supply of enrichment services at that time and there was a huge backlog of nuclear generating plants in planning, construction, startup everywhere. This was a major foreign exchange and export opportunity for the US with proven technology – which was the leading force in the world at that time.
Uranium Enrichment Associates (UEA) was the vehicle with major establishment commitments, capable people and world class industrial and banking organizations as participants. The meetings were interesting and memorable at the Waldorf Towers in those days for a young guy.
Only the US would bother to construct such a Rube Goldberg kludge in order to avoid simple nationalization.
This is not quite true.
American Centrifuge Operating, LLC (ACO), a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Centrus Energy Corp. (Centrus), possesses two gas centrifuge enrichment facility licenses from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
On March 9, 2022, DOE announced its intention to open bidding on a new HALEU operations program which included the following three phases:
Phase 1 (~1 year) complete installation of the HALEU cascade and demonstrate an initial production of 20 Kg HALEU UF6
Phase 2 (1 year) produce 900 Kg HALEU UF6
Phase 3 (3, 3-year option periods) produce 900 Kg HALEU UF6/year.
On November 10, 2022, DOE awarded a $150 million contract to ACO to produce HALEU at the ACP for the three phases.
HALEU is being produced, just not (yet) for commercial sale. I believe at present the United States has no commercial reactors that _use_ HALEU.
None of the US money spent on EUP goes into Russian military budget. US knows that and generally don’t give a crap about this money. US doesn’t have its own enrichment industry, and does not see any reasons to play into hands of European URENCO / Areva or whatever current name of this failure of a company is.
HALEU is produced by the same facilities and equipment as more ubiquitous commercial EUP. The reason why Rosatom is the only one supplier is that is the only one willing to produce and sell it. Demand for the stuff is very low, so rivals wouldn’t even bother with the HALEU as they don’t want to incur costs connected with altering production cycle, acquiring permissions, licensing and so on.
Just like in so many other fields, animosity towards Russian nuclear is more of a Kabuki theater: raging in public, cozying up behind closed doors. US is getting cheap SWUs, leaving toxic waste abroad, in Russia, of all places. In the same time US is keeping European producers in check and is happy about it. From time to time topic of Russian uranium is brought up by politicians, seeking political points, US miners, interested in subsidies and indifferent towards enrichment, and URENCO emissaries, eager to dispose competition. Americans are practical people, so time and again it ends up without any real results.
What he said…!
Demand for the stuff is very low, so rivals wouldn’t even bother with the HALEU as they don’t want to incur costs connected with altering production cycle, acquiring permissions, licensing and so on.
Because Markets!
“Americans are practical people”
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Do we dare mention the kind of international cooperation that the long term plans of China and Russia appear to envisage? A bit of humility could avoid significant costs of “derisking,” including the entrenched confrontational mentality and endless brinksmanship with constant risk of mutual nuclear annihilation.
If Russia is a supplier of vital enriched uranium to the U.S., why not be friends with them? I remember the friendship between our two countries during the war on terror and believe it is not impossible.
The oligarchy of US empire will never allow such an idea to be circulated among the “little people” who make up the American citizenry.
I find it amusing that the US is waging war with sanctions, when our society is more vulnerable to the economic impacts and more likely to be politically volatile in the face of said impacts. Arguably the sanctions war aimed at regime-changing Russia, is in the process of causing regime change among western nations from Warsaw to Washington, while Putin is more politically secure than ever.
Whenever I see “illegal invasion, ” instead of “Special Military Operation” (SMO) or something more accurate than “illegal invasion”, it calls into question where the author stands (or hides). Given such fuzzy criteria, It seems like the definition of a legal invasion is simply, “when the US or one of it’s toady allies does it,” .
“raking in” = negative connotation
“in the offensive” = euphemism for (a just) war on Russia.
But ironically, the thrust of this article is also (justifiably) very negative on European hypocrisy via its end run around environmental concerns by pushing the climate degrading practices of resource mining and processing of nuclear materials off onto the Baltic States including the need to plunder local Baltic farmers of their land on the cheap.
So is “illegal invasion” some sort of sop, or “I’m cool guys” way of deflecting onto Russia its criticism of Europe for moving its more scummy industrial resource exploitation from Russia to it’s less well off Baltic neighbors?
If you write for any western publication you really don’t have a choice.
If the author doesn’t write it, the editors will simply insert it.
Baltic states chose friends and enemies, so they must offer something of value to the friends the gained with frantic efforts. E.g. nobody stands as boldly against China as Lithuania. Latvia threatened Iran with “serious consequences” at some point etc. Enabling some boldness deserves gratitude.
OTH, do Balticians process nuclear materials? First time I read about it.
U.S. Bets on Small Nuclear Reactors to Help Fix a Huge Climate Problem NYT
A good overview of the Vogtle and Sumner debacles.
The party line explanation about the fuel cycle is here: The U.S. Is Paying Billions to Russia’s Nuclear Agency. Here’s Why.
Who has confidence in the scientific, engineering and management capabilities of the US to re-shore enrichment? The US doesn’t do industrial policy unless it has potential for grift and corruption.
(one wonders what would the US have done had Project Ukraine been successful and Putin was overthrown and Russia descended into chaos, thereby disrupting the nuclear supply chains in addition to the gas and oil supply chains).
It’s more like the US was counting on taking over the nuclear supply chains and a market disruption would only apply to other countries!
What’s missing from this interesting article is the role ex-president Bill Clinton and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played which helped the Russian company Rosatom gain influence: Bill Clinton’s $500,000 speeches at a Russian bank, Hillary’s signing off on a deal as required by the SoS.
From the NYT, “The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.”
An interesting read: NYT “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal”
By Jo Becker and Mike McIntire April 23, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html
No mention of the Rosatom/Uranium one deal?
No mention of the $100MM pledge to the Clinton Global Initiative or Bill’s $500K speaking fee when HRC was Secretary of State, the one he gave to big time Russian Bankers in Moscow?