As bill heads to White House, senator says ‘dangerous reliance’ on Moscow must come to an end.
The US Senate voted on Tuesday evening, 30 April, to approve legislation banning the import of enriched uranium from Russia, sending the measure to the White House which has said it supports efforts to block the Kremlin’s shipments of the reactor fuel.
The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, approved by unanimous consent, would bar US imports 90 days after enactment while allowing temporary waivers until January 2028.
It would also allow for a waiver if “no alternative viable source of low-enriched uranium is available to sustain the continued operation of a nuclear reactor or a United States nuclear energy company”.
President Joe Biden must sign the bill before it becomes law.
The Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent, meaning that no senators objected to it. The House of Representatives passed the bill in December.
Russia provided almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel the US’s fleet of 94 nuclear plants, making it the number one foreign supplier to the US last year, according to the US Department of Energy.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, Russia has been supplying about 24% of enriched uranium with 12% from Germany and 11% from the UK. The US itself supplies 27%.
Those sales provide an estimated $1bn (€937m) a year to Russia, but Bloomberg reported that replacing that supply could be a challenge and risks raising the costs of enriched uranium by about 20%.
Idaho Republican Jim Risch, one of the bill’s sponsors, said: “America’s dangerous reliance on Russian enriched uranium must come to an end – our national security depends on it.
Helping To ‘Defund Russia’s War Machine’
“With the passage of our legislation, America is taking an important step to spur uranium conversion and enrichment in the US, support advanced nuclear development and energy independence, and end Russian control of the global nuclear fuel supply chain.”
Wyoming Republican John Barrasso, another sponsor, said he has fought for years to end America’s reliance on Russian nuclear fuel.
“Our efforts have finally paid off with passage of our bill to ban these imports once and for all.
“Wyoming has the uranium to replace Russian imports, and we’re ready to use it.
“Our bipartisan legislation will help defund Russia’s war machine, revive American uranium production, and jumpstart investments in America’s nuclear fuel supply chain.”
Russia is also the only commercial source of special highly enriched reactor fuel known as Haleu that is needed for a new breed of advanced nuclear reactors that are under development.
Providers in the US, with federal support, are in the process of producing Haleu. Centrus Energy recently delivered a first batch of Haleu fuel to the US Department of Energy (DOE), finalising the first phase of a domestic manufacturing demonstration process.
@Emil Of course, the work only just begins. Decades of dependence on Russian nuclear fuel has decimated Western industry on this. The ban makes room for Western nuclear fuel companies to exist, especially American ones. It'll take around a decade to build up this industrial infrastructure.