America depends on Russia to revive nuclear energy

The US and its allies are working to revive nuclear reactors to cope with the energy crisis, but the problem is that they depend on uranium from Russia.

Nuclear power once accounted for nearly 20% of the US electricity supply and about 25% of Europe, but has gradually been turned away in the past few decades, as nuclear reactors have been deemed too costly and potentially too costly. risks.

However, as the Ukraine conflict erupts and the West tries to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, there are signs that nuclear energy is slowly making a comeback, as countries look for stable supplies to cope. energy crisis and climate change.

In the United States, after years of delays and billions of dollars in excess costs, a nuclear reactor in the state of Georgia began in March taking the first steps toward commercial electricity production. Another reactor at the facility is expected to come online next year.

Reactor at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Dauphin, Pennsylvania, USA 2019. Photo: Constellation Energy

Finland last month started regular electricity generation at Europe's largest nuclear reactor, with the ambition to provide a third of the country's electricity. Poland in November selected the American company Westinghouse Electric to build its first nuclear power plant, expected to include three reactors and cost about 20 billion USD.

A recent Gallup survey found that Americans are now more supportive of nuclear power technology than at any time in the past decade.

Westinghouse, a pioneer in electric power, has faced many difficulties in the nuclear sector and has constantly changed hands in the context of market volatility, stricter industry regulation after reactor incidents around the world such as Chernobyl explosion and Fukushima earthquake and tsunami disaster.

A group of American investors bought Westinghouse for nearly $8 billion in October, a move seen as a bet on a nuclear energy revival. Westinghouse said this month that it is planning to build a series of smaller reactors, which will cost about a billion dollars each.

However, Westinghouse and American energy companies are facing a difficult problem to solve: They remain dependent on Russian enriched uranium for nuclear fuel production, despite many technological advances in recent years. past year.

Nuclear fuel is one of the few Russian energy sources not subject to Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine . The reason stems from an agreement signed by the US with Russia in 1993 to reduce the risk of nuclear warheads from the Soviet era.

Under the deal, called the Megaton to Megawatt Conversion Program, initiated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researcher Thomas Neff, the United States agreed to buy 500 tons of enriched uranium from Russia to convert it into reactor fuel. response. This amount of uranium is enough to produce 20,000 nuclear warheads.

Arms control advocates hail it as a win-win deal. Moscow gets the cash it needs, while Washington eases fears of nuclear proliferation and its power plants have cheap fuel. It remains one of the most successful nuclear disarmament programs in the world.

The deal "did what it was expected to do," Neff said. "It helps humanity to have fewer nuclear weapons and materials to produce them than before."

However, the deal made Russian uranium so cheap that other suppliers could hardly compete. It wasn't long before American and European nuclear fuel companies had to downsize, making Russia the world's largest supplier of enriched uranium, accounting for nearly half of the global supply.

Before the deal ended in 2013, Russian suppliers signed new contracts with private American companies to supply fuel outside of the program between the two governments. In 2007, Russia established Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation from various agencies and organizations of the Russian nuclear power industry and took over the sale of nuclear fuel to the United States.

Rosatom supplies a quarter of its nuclear fuel to US companies, earning about a billion dollars last year, according to analysis by Darya Dolzikova of the Royal Research Institute for Defense and Security (RUSI) in London. London.

Pressure to increase uranium enrichment capacity is growing for the West, not least because much of the US economy is dependent on Russian fuel. American and European investors are pushing for a new generation of nuclear reactors that are judged to be safer and more environmentally friendly, but they need the special fuels of which Rosatom today is a party. single offer.

"We need that fuel to power the reactor," said Jeff Navin, director of external affairs for TerraPower, which plans to build the first reactor in Wyoming, US.

He said the US is paying the price after years of not focusing on building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. "Our choice is to accept building that Russian fuel-dependent reactor now, or wait for some miraculous solution to come from another country," Navin said.

A shipment of Russian uranium is loaded onto a truck in Dunkirk, France in early 2023. Photo: AFP

The US currently has two uranium production facilities, one of which belongs to Urenco Corporation based in Eunice, New Mexico. The company says it is spending about $200 million to increase capacity and possibly more if the US blocks uranium supplies from Russia.

What Eunice needed was assurance from the government about the demand for the uranium it produced in the market. Kirk Schnoebelen, Urenco's sales manager, said the company fears that in the next few years, cheap Russian uranium will flood the world market, driving down prices.

Schnoebelen adds that this concern is rooted in history. During the 1990s, Urenco planned to build the first new uranium enrichment plant in the US in decades. But the Megaton to Megawatt Exchange Program made that project completely bankrupt. Today, that memory still haunts and makes the board hesitant to invest billions of dollars in the field.

Bipartisanship in the US Congress is pushing for a bill to ban Russia's use of uranium, build a national uranium stockpile, boost domestic production capacity and add uranium to the list of important minerals.

But Patrick Fragman, chief executive officer of Westinghouse, thinks the bill is too late. "Countries should have been keeping a close eye on what's going on in the nuclear industry. They should have sounded the alarm when a series of Western nuclear plants shut down," he said.