According to the head of the agency Dan Bruyette, the United States intends to create a reserve of uranium raw materials through domestic mining.
The US is gradually losing its leading position in the nuclear energy sector amid competition from Russia and China and intends to create a reserve of uranium raw materials through domestic production. This was stated in an article by U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Bruyette published in Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune newspaper on Sunday.
“For more than seven decades after America split the atom, it has led the world in nuclear energy and nuclear technology development”, – he said. – “Unfortunately, that vital economic and national security advantage is clearly being lost. Around the world, U.S. nuclear technology companies are facing increasingly fierce and unfair competition from state-owned enterprises, including Russia and China”, – the article argues.
In this regard, the secretary pointed to the need for “immediate and forward-looking measures to expand domestic uranium production. He noted that an important step in this direction has already been taken: in the draft budget for fiscal year 2021, the administration of President Donald Trump requested $150 million to form a uranium reserve. “It will be created by purchasing uranium from U.S. mining companies and U.S. companies involved in uranium enrichment,” Bruyette added. – The uranium reserve will provide strategically important needs of the nuclear fuel cycle and guarantee the availability of uranium in case of supply disruptions”.
In April this year, the U.S. Department of Energy has already proposed to the National Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ban or restrict imports of nuclear fuel produced by Russia and China. The existing regime for supplying Russian uranium products to the US market is limited by certain quotas. These measures regulating the “commercial export of Russian uranium” sold directly or through intermediaries to US companies were defined in 2008 and the quotas under the agreement are valid until the end of 2020.
In 2011, the Russian-American intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy came into force. However, after the sharp deterioration of relations between Moscow and Washington, which began in 2014, plans to deepen cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear energy were actually curtailed.