Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Hard as it might seem to believe, a year after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, nothing has been done to stop the flow of billions of dollars that Russia is making from selling nuclear fuel to the United States. The money is fueling Russia’s brutal war machine, and its effect on Ukraine is horrible to contemplate.
U.S. nuclear power plants are using Russian nuclear fuel to generate electricity, and we have a moral obligation to stop doing it. Now is the time to expand uranium production in America by reopening mines that closed in the 1990s when uranium prices plummeted and by opening new mines.
Today, there is only one operating uranium mine in the United States. Most of the uranium used in the production of nuclear power -- which provides 20% of our nation’s electricity but more than 50% of the emission-free power -- is imported from overseas, mainly from adversaries like Russia and former Soviet states.
From 2017 to 2021, U.S. nuclear utilities bought an average of 17,500 tons of natural uranium plus enriched uranium each year from Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy monopoly Rosatom. This level of Russian imports -- which continues unabated -- amounts to 14% of U.S. utilities’ uranium purchases and 28% of uranium enrichment services.
If imports from Russia are combined with those from two of its closest allies, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the U.S. depends on Russia and its partners for most of the uranium used at our nuclear plants.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sanctions were imposed against Russian exports of oil, natural gas, and coal, but not uranium. Although Russia’s earnings from uranium sales to the U.S. and the European Union are small compared to what they had been for oil and gas before the sanctions, ending imports of nuclear fuel would pressure Russia to stop the war.
Recently, former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who is close to the Biden Administration, said U.S. imports of Russian uranium will “eventually” end. But when? A decade from now, when Russian tanks are on Poland’s border?
Despite its heroic resistance, Ukraine is being destroyed. The need for further sanctions against Russian imports has been spotlighted as never before by the threat of more horrific attacks on Ukrainian civilians and the possibility that Russia might invade other countries such as Poland, Moldavia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. Russia’s rocket attacks are too brutal for passivity. They require action.
Preventing Russia from annexing Ukraine is too important for cajolery. It requires instituting a bold, practical set of policies based on solutions for bringing Russia to its senses. This means ceasing any form of trade as a source of military power.
What would it take to replace Russian uranium with U.S. resources? The U.S. has plenty of uranium beneath the ground, principally in Texas, Wyoming, and New Mexico. And we have the expertise to extract the uranium and enrich it.
Replacing Russian uranium would increase the cost of nuclear power but not by much since most of the cost of running a nuclear plant goes for infrastructure improvements and salaries for hundreds of employees.
If the net effect of shifting away from Russian uranium and enrichment were to cause as much as a 50% increase in the cost of nuclear fuel, it would increase the retail cost of nuclear power by only 2% - much less than general inflation, according to nuclear power expert Frank von Hippel, a professor emeritus at Princeton University. For national security, we need a secure supply of raw materials, not only uranium but also other vital minerals.
The United States is resource-rich but mining poor. We have only one lithium mine, one for cobalt, one for nickel, one for rare earths, and none for graphite or manganese.
Yet these minerals and metals are essential components of weapons systems and advanced consumer technologies.
Given the urgency of the war in Ukraine and our dangerous dependence on Russia and its partners, strong measures are needed to prevent our dependence from rising much higher. That will take time and resources, with greater emphasis on diversifying our supply chain.
However, if we’re really serious about doing what it takes to prevent Ukraine’s decimation, let’s start by replacing Russian nuclear fuel with uranium mined in the USA.
Jim Constantopoulos is a geology professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Contact him at:
