Nuclear Monitor #916
By Jan van Evert, editor Nuclear Monitor
On the 13th of May President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act – two weeks after the bill was passed unanimously by the US Senate. The law bans the import of low-enriched uranium (LEU) that is produced in Russia or by a Russian entity and is another sanction against Russia because of the war against Ukraine. LEU contains less than five percent of Uranium-235 and is used in nuclear reactors.
The prohibition would come into effect 90 days after the date of the enactment of the bill, and would terminate in 2040. The Department of Energy may however waive the ban if it determines that “no alternative viable source of low-enriched uranium is available to sustain the continued operation of a nuclear reactor or a US nuclear energy company” or that importation of uranium is in the national interest. The amount of uranium that could be imported under such a waiver is limited, and must terminate by the 1st of January 2028.
Almost all the uranium used in US commercial reactors is imported. After reaching a peak in 1980, domestic mining now accounts for about only five percent of the fuel used in US reactors. At least twelve percent of US uranium imports comes from Russia. Another 48 percent is imported from Russian satellites Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Why did it take two years for this act to come into effect? The answer is simple: the US is not planning to scale down its nuclear energy production. On the contrary, the new law is preceded by the recently passed Nuclear Fuel Security Act. This act aims to establish and expand critical US nuclear fuel programmes to boost domestic uranium mining, production, conversion and enrichment capacity. The United states has only one uranium conversion plant that converts uranium oxide into uranium hexafluoride for enrichment.
The bill’s enactment “releases $2.72 billion in appropriated funds to the Department of Energy to invest in domestic uranium enrichment” said the US State Department.
However, the effect of the ban on the Russian economy remains to be seen. Even though Kazakhstan is the world’s largest producer of uranium, much of its milled uranium travels through Russian conversion plants before it is exported.
