Messages coming from Vladimir Putin’s Russia are nothing if not consistent.
Russian government-owned media outlet RT recently announced that lawmakers have drafted a bill suspending cooperation with U.S. companies in the nuclear, missile, and aircraft-building industries. The draft law comes in response to a series of U.S. sanctions against Russia.
The bill would codify what America’s uranium mining industry has known for decades: Russia has the power to hold hostage our energy and national security, and it won’t hesitate to do so.
For years, we have been sounding an alarm about Russia targeting our energy sector — specifically, nuclear fuel. Gradually, but relentlessly, state enterprises in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and, increasingly, China, have been seizing control of the U.S. and global uranium markets, as well as other critical pieces of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Uranium is the crucial element of nuclear fuel. And carbon-free nuclear energy is the source of 20 percent of our electricity and powers our entire nuclear Navy. In fact, America is the world’s largest consumer of uranium, and uses nearly twice as much of it as the second largest consumer, France.
Despite how critical nuclear power is, America’s uranium mining industry supplies less than 2 percent of the uranium used to power U.S. homes and businesses. Just as Russia’s Duma considers suspending cooperation with the U.S. in the nuclear sphere, the front end of our domestic nuclear fuel cycle is in crisis. Domestic uranium production is dropping to all-time lows.
And it is not legitimate free-market competition undercutting U.S. uranium miners; it is state-owned enterprises in these nations operating with government assets (and far fewer protective safety and environmental regulations) flooding the U.S. and world markets with uranium and nuclear products. These nations orchestrated a plan to capture the global market for their own geopolitical gain.
Now, Russia’s plan will be unleashed.
In 2016, U.S. reactors received about 40 percent of their uranium from Russia and its allies. Historically, the U.S. has been able to rely on allies such as Canada and Australia to meet a large portion of our needs. But uranium production in free-market countries is rapidly declining. If this alarming trend continues, state-sponsored nuclear fuel from Russia, China, and their allies will soon control half of U.S. requirements.
This is a national security crisis. And it is why America’s two primary uranium mining companies jointly submitted a petition to the U.S. Department of Commerce seeking an investigation into the impact of uranium imports on national security pursuant to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Once the department begins its investigation, we expect that it will find that the Russian-American geopolitical relationship isn’t all that different than it was during the Cold War.
The fate of the U.S. uranium and nuclear fuel industry — and with it, our nation’s national and energy security — is in the hands of the Department of Commerce. The department owes it to the country to quickly begin an investigation so the administration can act, thereby sending its own message back to Russia.
Mark Chalmers is president and CEO of Energy Fuels. Jeffrey Klenda is president and CEO of Ur-Energy.
