We hear a lot about how the US is dependent on Chinese solar panels. (it’s not)
But how often do we hear people kvetch about US dependence on Russian Uranium?
The U.S. Senate approved on Tuesday legislation to bar imports of Russian uranium, as the United States continues to seek to disrupt Russia’s efforts in its war against Ukraine.
The Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent, meaning that no senators objected to it. The House of Representatives passed the bill in December.
Uranium is used to power commercial nuclear reactors that produce electricity.
The legislation would ban the imports 90 days after enactment. It contains waivers in case there were supply concerns for domestic reactors. The bill also frees up $2.7 billion passed in previous legislation to build out the domestic uranium processing industry.
The United States banned Russian oil imports shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and instituted a price cap on some exports of its crude and oil products.
U.S. nuclear power plants imported around 12% of their uranium from Russia in 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“Wyoming has the uranium to replace Russian imports, and we’re ready to use it,” said U.S. Senator John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, in a statement. Barrasso is from the state of Wyoming.
“Our bipartisan legislation will help defund Russia’s war machine, revive American uranium production, and jumpstart investments in America’s nuclear fuel supply chain,” he said.
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Biden is expected to sign the uranium imports bill into law.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council had called on Congress to impose the ban in a statement on Monday, saying doing so “would provide assurance to industry, allies, and partners that the U.S. has made a clear decision to establish a secure nuclear fuel supply chain, independent of adversarial influence, for decades to come.”
Meanwhile, at a small production facility in Ohio, the US is ramping up uranium enrichment, in particular of a specialized form of fuel called High Assay Low Enrichment Uranium (HALEU) – which is the fuel of choice for most of the emerging small modular reactor designs, and for which, until now, Russia has been the world’s only supplier.
“When you dig uranium out of the ground, it has less than 1% U-235. That’s the good stuff. That’s what makes the reaction go. So you send it to centrifuges to enrich it, so that you can get that U-235 concentration up to about 5%. Most of the existing reactors in the world, including all of them in the United States, run on low-enriched uranium. That’s about 4 or 5%. Think of that as like Miller Lite.
“If you were to go up above 90%, that is weapons grade. That’s what you would use for fueling submarines and that kind of thing. So you can think of that as like Everclear.
“But if you go between 5 and 20%, that’s what we call high-assay, low-enriched uranium. That is way below a level that could be used for military purposes, but it has a lot of useful attributes. You can think of it like a port wine or a nice Belgian beer.
“Most of the advanced reactors that are currently under development today require HALEU, unlike the existing generation of reactors that require [low-enriched uranium]. But up until October of 2023, [when Centrus opened its Piketon plant], the only source of HALEU in the world today was Russia. So Centrus is working to pioneer U.S. production of HALEU so that the United States can lead the way in commercializing and deploying these next generation reactors.”
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When Centrus Energy flipped three switches at its new plant last fall, it was a new beginning for an industry that had been dormant for more than a decade in Ohio: uranium enrichment.
As the U.S. looks to meet its clean energy goals, there’s increasing demand for the resource, which is necessary for nuclear power generation.
For years, the U.S. didn’t have a American-owned source of enriched uranium. (A subsidiary of Urenco enriches uranium in New Mexico, but it’s owned by a conglomeration of foreign governments and European-based businesses.) Now, Centrus Energy is attempting to fill in the gap. And it’s doing that at a plant in Piketon, Ohio.
“We have been working for many years to restore a domestic uranium enrichment capability that can be used for both national security purposes and commercial purposes,” said Dan Leistikow, the vice president of corporate communications for Centrus.
In 2019, Centrus Energy started building a cascade of centrifuges to enrich uranium on a parcel of land at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Those centrifuges started operating in October.
‘We hear a lot about how the US is dependent on Chinese solar panels. (it’s not)’
Since the US slapped tariffs on Chinese panels, production has switched to other countries, but China still makes 92.5% of the polysilicon that forms the major ingredient. In 2022, 12% of US uranium imports came from Russia.
HALEU is the fuel used in the newest version of our Navy’s nuclear fleet. Will the US be able to provide enough in the near future?
The Navy doesn’t use HALEU – that’s from 5 to 20% U235. The Navy uses weapons grade – over 90%. That way they can run the reactor for thirty years or more, the life of the submarine, without refuelling.