About 20% of America’s enriched uranium comes from Russia, Assistant Secretary of State Geoffrey Pyatt says
The United States remains reliant on Russian nuclear fuel, with one-fifth of its supply still coming from Moscow, according to Geoffrey Pyatt, US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources.
The US Department of Energy previously expressed serious concerns about Washington’s reliance on Russian nuclear fuel, underlining the need to reduce and ultimately to eliminate it.
“The United States still gets about 20% of our nuclear fuel from Russia so it’s going to take time to build out a non-Russian supply chain for those nuclear fuel materials,” Pyatt admitted on Wednesday during an event hosted by Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Russia supplied approximately 27% of the enriched uranium purchased by US civilian nuclear reactors in 2023.
Last year, US President Joe Biden banned uranium imports from Russia, by signing into law The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act. However, a system of waivers allows purchases under specific conditions until 2028.
In response to the ban, in November the Russian government announced a temporary cap on the export of enriched uranium to the US.
While the US has its own deposits of uranium, production has dwindled over recent decades. Market competition from lower-cost foreign producers, along with environmental concerns, have largely sidelined domestic mining and enrichment operations, the online platform Nuclear Insider noted.
“There are lots of very important political decisions to be made” about nuclear and uranium supply chain investments, Nick Lawson, chief executive of investment group Ocean Wall, has told the Financial Times (FT). The building of new facilities would take “years” and cost huge sums of money, he added.
Washington has committed billions of dollars to expand domestic production of nuclear fuel. The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act authorized $2.72 billion in federal funding to invest in US-based uranium enrichment facilities.
Russia plays a critical role in the global enriched uranium market, holding a dominant position in both enrichment capacity and supply. The most-recent data shows Russia accounts for approximately 44% of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity, making it the largest single player in the sector.
Prices for enriched uranium surged to a record high earlier this month, the FT noted, as Big Tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon have become interested in using the fuel to power the energy-thirsty data centers amid competition for market share in generative AI.
