America’s Nuclear Revival Is Running Into a Fuel Supply Wall

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The United States boasts the largest nuclear power production capacity in the world, but decades of insufficient funding and policy support is now posing an existential threat to…

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Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and…

The United States boasts the largest nuclear power production capacity in the world, but decades of insufficient funding and policy support is now posing an existential threat to the ageing sector. In the past decade, the United States has added just one new nuclear power plant to its fleet, while many more plants are drawing close to being decommissioned, at a time when clean, round-the-clock energy production has never been more needed. The Trump administration has been bullish about restoring the country’s nuclear energy sector to its former glory, but growing the country’s nuclear energy capacity raises a new problem – where to source the nuclear fuel to power it.

Countries around the world are racing to build up nuclear power capacity as the artificial intelligence boom places unprecedented strain on global power supplies, the war in Iran sustains volatility in oil and gas markets, and decarbonization deadlines draw nearer. As a result, competition over scarce enriched uranium supplies has ramped up at a rapid pace. As a result, U.S. nuclear energy now “faces fuel supply chain vulnerabilities, with tight uranium supplies, geopolitical risks, and rising costs,” threatening both existing reactors and advanced reactor development, according to a January report from Stanford Energy.

The geopolitical risks inherent to current nuclear fuel supply chains represent a key and growing concern. The world’s nuclear energy fuel supply chains are extremely geopolitically fraught. At present, just five plants in the entire world operate large-scale uranium conversion, and nearly half of global enrichment capacity is controlled by Russia. And if Russia decides to cut the United States off, or vice versa, the alternative could be even worse.

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