Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan supply nearly half of the U.S. energy industry. So, to avoid rising electricity prices, the American nuclear energy industry had asked President Joe Biden in June to not prohibit the import of Russian uranium. As a result, unlike oil, oil products, gas, and coal, uranium imports were not prohibited.

So far, U.S. sanctions have not affected Russian nuclear fuel, but the Americans are “prompted by political risks.”

For more than 30 years, the United States has purchased cheap Russian uranium. From 1993 to 2013, they used Russian weapons-grade uranium as fuel under the HEU-LEU contract signed by Boris Yeltsin. Russia destroyed 20,000 nuclear warheads after receiving $17 billion from the Americans. This fuel, packaged for American nuclear power plants by the European company URENCO, met half of the country’s total nuclear fuel requirements. The United States has 96 operational nuclear reactors, but the country lacks isotope separation facilities. Russia is home to nearly half of the world’s uranium separation facilities. They are redundant for Moscow, so a significant portion is oriented toward America.

tfiglobalnews U.S. nuclear power in the absence of Russian uranium?