Despite efforts to reduce its dependence on Moscow, the United States still imports a large portion of its nuclear fuel from Russia. “The United States still imports about 20 percent of its nuclear fuel from Russia,” Assistant Secretary of State Geoffrey Pyatt, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in 2014, said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on January 15. “It will take time to build an alternative supply chain.”
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Russia supplied about 27% of the enriched uranium purchased by US civil nuclear reactors in 2023.
Although President Joe Biden signed a law banning uranium imports from Russia last year, special exemptions allow the US to continue buying, in some cases, until 2028. In response to the ban, the Russian government in November imposed temporary restrictions on exports of enriched uranium to the US.
Although the United States owns uranium mines, domestic mining and enrichment has declined significantly over the past several decades due to competition from low-cost foreign producers and environmental concerns, leaving domestic production facilities marginalized, according to the online platform Nuclear Insider.
“There are a lot of important political decisions to be made around the uranium and nuclear fuel supply chain,” Nick Lawson, CEO of investment group Ocean Wall, told the Financial Times. “Building new facilities will take years and involve huge costs.”
Russia currently holds about 44% of the world's uranium enrichment capacity, playing a key role in supplying the fuel, helping it maintain its leading position in the market, according to the most recent figures.
Notably, enriched uranium prices have soared to record highs this month, as major tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon look to use the fuel to power energy-hungry data centers, as the race for artificial intelligence heats up.
Washington has pledged billions of dollars to expand domestic nuclear fuel production, including allocating $2.72 billion from the Russian Uranium Import Ban Act to invest in uranium enrichment facilities in the United States.
However, getting rid of dependence on Russia remains a big challenge for the US in the coming time.
