The Biden administration’s commitment to transitioning to renewable “green” energies such as electric, nuclear, solar, and wind from fossil fuels over the next decade has fostered cart-before-horse disruptions and disconnects across an array of industries.
For instance, initiatives adopted over the past four years, when Democrats ruled both chambers in Congress in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), aggressively promote the development of electric vehicles (EV) despite domestic manufacturers having scarce access to lithium and other key minerals needed to build EV batteries.
As a result, Republicans and energy policy critics say, Biden’s “rush to green energy” is inadvertently making U.S. manufacturers reliant on imports from the People’s Republic of China, which dominates the lithium supply chain, from mineral extraction to battery development.
A similar scenario is unfolding in nuclear power generation with the BIL, the IRA, and other federal directives pushing for expansion of the nation’s nuclear energy capacity even though it has been more than 30 years since enough uranium was enriched in the United States to supply domestic nuclear power plants.
As a result, Republicans and energy policy critics say, the nation’s nuclear power industry must continue importing uranium and rely on a supply chain dominated by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia, from ore extraction to enrichment.
Currently, 95 percent of the ore that fuels 55 U.S. nuclear power plants is imported, including nearly a quarter from Russia.
The momentum to revitalize uranium mining, processing, and enrichment for nonmilitary use to expand domestic commercial nuclear power generation is arousing industry enthusiasm and has bipartisan support.
But some in the industry are also raising concerns about timing because, essentially, the United States is in a race to develop a sustainable uranium supply chain before demand for nuclear energy makes hundreds of millions of Americans even more dependent on imported processed uranium from Russia and Russian-influenced states.
“It is an exciting time. Demand for nuclear is growing,” Uranium Producers of America (UPA) President Scott Melbye told The Epoch Times. “We do have this dirty secret though—our Russian dependency.”
How to build that uranium supply chain independent of Russia—which could take years—while encouraging increased domestic nuclear power development is spurring a great deal of “behind the scenes maneuvering” in Congress, U.S. Nuclear Industry Council (USNIC) President and CEO Todd Abrajano told The Epoch Times.
“There are a lot of things going on ‘The Hill,’” Abrajano said. “I think really they are just trying to figure out where the funding is going to come from.”
The bottom line is that if the United States is serious about increasing its nuclear power capacity, and the Biden administration is sincere about incentivizing carbon-free energy production, industry representatives say it will take more money and need to happen more quickly than current legislative and regulatory approaches permit.
Going Nuclear
About 61 percent of electricity transmitted by “utility-scale” power plants in the United States is generated from fossil fuels, coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).Slightly more than 20 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources, the DOE documented in 2021, and nearly 19 percent is generated by nuclear energy plants.
Despite the loss of nearly half of the operating plants in a decade, nuclear power has retained a steady 20 percent share of the nation’s collective electrical output since 1990.
The 55 nuclear power plants across 28 states include 93 operating reactors and are, on average, 40 years old, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The most recent nuclear plant to come online was in 2016, the first new one since 1996.
As such, it is a popular energy source among those who regard “green energy” development as a key priority and has been provided significant grant potential under the Trump and Biden administrations.
Among initiatives is the creation of a DOE-funded uranium reserve program, a $2 billion DOE Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, and a $700 million IRA allocation to scratch-start high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) production.
Since Congress convened its 2023-2024 session, several significant bills related to the nation’s nuclear power industry have been filed.
Bills filed this year include proposals to ban the import of Russian uranium, establish a national “nuclear fuel program,” and allow the DOE and Commerce Department to develop commercial nuclear energy programs with allied nations under the proposed “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act,” or “ADVANCE Act of 2023.”
Ban Russian Ore
In February, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), filed HR 1042, the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which would ban the importation of the ore from Russia within 90 days of adoption.“I am leading on a bill that aims to eliminate our reliance—which is currently about 24 percent—on Russian nuclear fuels for our nuclear reactors,” Rodgers announced in a Washington committee hearing.
“Expanding our leadership in developing and expanding nuclear energy is going to be one of our top priorities this Congress, and addressing our reliance on Russian fuel is just the beginning.”
Former Deputy Energy Secretary Mark Menezes said during the same hearing that because energy regardless of generation source is an open-market traded commodity, “our nuclear [power plant] fleet is very sensitive to fuel costs.
“Of course,” he added, “the Russians know this, which is why they continue to provide cheap uranium fuel and a reason why we continue to import enriched uranium from Russia today.”
“Every dollar we give to Russia supports Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine,” Barrasso said when he filed the bill. “America’s nuclear industry is ready to transition away from Russian uranium. Wyoming has the resources we need to boost production at home.”
Abrajano said that Washington-based USNIC, which represents 80 domestic companies engaged in nuclear innovation and supply chain development, supports the proposed Russian uranium ban, as does the UPA, which is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and promotes the interests of more than a dozen U.S. uranium companies.
“What we are seeing is a realization that we shouldn’t be taking Russian uranium and paying Russia $1 billion a year in revenue,” UPA’s Melbye said before expressing reservations about the feasibility of finding alternate sources of uranium within 90 days of banning Russian ore.
He said that he thinks there isn’t “any question that we will ban Russian uranium,” but without a stable, secure supply line, now may not be the time.
Melbye noted that the proposed ban isn’t included in the House GOP’s massive omnibus energy bill, HR 1, indicating that the prohibition measure’s “passage in the Senate is uncertain.”
He said the Trump administration investigated whether to place a Section 242 tariff on Russian uranium the way it did on steel but “decided not to go down that route.”
Instead, a task force of federal agencies was asked to “come up with recommendations” that Melbye said included the creation of a uranium reserve that, once enacted and funded, would make a ban on Russian ore more actionable.
Double Uranium Reserve Funding
In December 2020, Congress allocated $75 million to establish the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) uranium reserve to ensure a backup supply in the event of a significant market disruption and to support the operation of U.S. uranium mines.Last year, the NNSA solicited bids to purchase up to 1 million pounds of U3O8 (uranium oxide) from vendors that had “produced uranium at a domestic uranium recovery facility at any time” since Jan. 1, 2009, from “inventory already in storage in the USA.”
In December 2022, NNSA announced sales agreements with five companies to supply the uranium reserve program: Energy Fuels Inc., Peninsula Energy, enCore Energy, Ur-Energy, and Uranium Energy Corp.
There was industry criticism about delays in awarding the bids, but, Melbye said, the program “is good policy for a couple of reasons,” primarily because it “seeds” a domestic market for companies to sell uranium to the federal government, which can then stockpile it for sale to commercial plants.
“As opposed to grants or tax credits, we think the uranium reserve takes taxpayer dollars and taxpayers get a hard asset for it,” he said.
But Melbye, Abrajano, and others criticized the DOE and Biden administration for awarding the contracts nearly two years after they were authorized, “losing valuable time as the Russian war in Ukraine escalated.”
Plus, both agreed, $75 million is “half of what was needed” with the UPA, USNIC, Nuclear Energy Institute, and United Coalition for Advanced Nuclear Power among industry groups lobbying Congress to boost reserve funding in the fiscal 2024 budget to $150 million.
Abrajano said, “I don’t know where [the $150 million request] is in the process.” He noted that there is solid bipartisan support for doubling the funding to ensure “the program is successful.”
“Under various bills going forward, we believe it is very that likely that the uranium reserve gets fully funded,” Melbye said.
Hustle HALEU Development
The Energy Act of 2020 authorized a HALEU Availability Program that received $700 million from the IRA to get it up and running. Essentially, there is no current capacity in the United States to make HALEU, a fuel mostly produced on the global market by Russia.The DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy issued a request for bids in October 2022 with contracts expected to be issued soon.
In December 2022, the DOE opened a HALEU Consortium to “any U.S. entity, association, and government organization involved in the nuclear fuel cycle,” and—at the DOE’s discretion—“organizations whose facilities are in ally or partner nations.”
HALEU development is key to capitalizing on innovations such as advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) that could revolutionize the delivery of nuclear-generated power through the availability of relatively inexpensive, transportable reactors.
The program “takes steps to revitalize our fuel sector more quickly than market conditions would achieve,” Melbye said. “There is a lot of opportunity right now [in SMRs], which can be something the U.S. excels at” and could be pursued with “export initiatives” in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
“We have to get out in front of the Russians and Chinese [in SMRs],” he said. “[But] we cannot rely on Russia for HALEU.”
As with the $75 million for the uranium reserve, industry representatives say the $700 million for HALEU development is too little and will come too late unless funding is boosted.
“The program is not being funded to the totality that it needs to be,” Abrajano said, noting Congress needs to earmark between $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion to drive HALEU development more quickly.
Enrichment and conversion are the “heavier lifts” for industry operators to develop, Melbye said. To develop a HALEU supply chain, it “will require at least $2 billion to $3 billion in investment” from government to incentivize.
It’s a big ticket, but, as background sources with the United Coalition for Advanced Nuclear Power told The Epoch Times, there is a successful precedent in the federal government of doing just that with nuclear energy.
In 1955, the Eisenhower administration created a $1 billion fund to induce the development of a light-water nuclear power industry. By 1980, U.S. producers were providing more than 90 percent of the uranium needed to fuel commercial nuclear power plants.
Melbye said that the United States started dialing back its uranium industry beginning in the 1980s when the country was self-sufficient, noting that the United States may never be able to produce more than half the uranium the nation’s nuclear plants need but can be self-sufficient if Western European and Canadian sources are included in the calculation.
“We have an industry that can be competitive on a global scale,” he said. “Ultimately, markets are going to dictate these things.”
Nuclear Fuel Security Program
With some grumbling about slow-funding the uranium reserve and underfunding HALEU development, a companion bill in Congress would merge the uranium reserve into a larger Nuclear Fuel Security Program that would also encourage production of both HALEU and low-enriched uranium (LEU).The proposed NFSA directs the DOE to accelerate “on-shoring nuclear fuel production to ensure a disruption in Russian uranium supply [that] would not impact the development of advanced reactors or the operation of the United States’ light-water reactor fleet.”
Melbye said if the Manchin-Barrasso measure is adopted as proposed, the $75 million uranium reserve and $700 million HALEU programs would evolve into “a down payment [to] help kick-start uranium capacity that has been idled due to the market tactics of state-owned uranium entities in Russia and elsewhere.”
The NFSA would authorize the DOE to establish a Nuclear Fuel Security Program to “ensure a disruption in Russian uranium supply would not impact the development of advanced reactors or the operation of the United States’ light water reactor fleet.”
The NFSA calls for the DOE to “expeditiously increase domestic production” of LEU and HALEU to “ensure the availability of domestically produced, converted, enriched, de-converted, and reduced uranium,” and to address “gaps and deficiencies” in that front end of the nuclear fuel cycle by “partnering with countries that are allies or partners of the United States if domestic options are not practicable.”
The bill authorizes $3.5 billion over 10 years for nuclear fuel development but specifies that up to $1 billion go to HALEU purchases made by the end of fiscal 2028.
Melbye said adoption of the NFSA and a $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program approved in the BIL to upgrade nuclear power plants that use uranium “produced, converted, enriched, and fabricated into fuel assemblies in the United States” are regarded as must-pass by the industry.
And those prospects are, suddenly, radiantly bright.
Melbye said he has been in the nuclear power industry for close to 40 years and “is used to the political right supporting nuclear energy as part of an ‘all of the above’ strategy,” but all that is changing.
“What I am seeing—we’ve always been opposed by the left—what I am seeing now is Democrats coming around,” he said, noting that “green energy” proponents are “going to have to embrace nuclear as a key component.”
Nuclear power makes sense regardless of how you analyze it, Melbye said. “Energy policy is not virtue signaling like banning plastic utensils and plastic straws. We’ve got to get it right.”
Although clean energy is a fine objective, the industry prefers doing it with “more math and science and less ideology” than constitutes much of the energy discussions in Congress, he said.
But for now, he’s basking in bipartisan support.
“There are not many other things that Republicans and Democrats agree on today but, it seems, nuclear power—and China.”
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