U.S. energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said on the 5th that the Department of energy is formulating a strategy to ensure uranium supply, and the United States should not continue to buy uranium from Russia At a hearing on the budget, Republican John balaso, the "second in command" of the Senate Energy and natural resources committee, asked Granholm whether Democratic President Joseph Biden would ban the import of uranium from Russia.
Granholm replied: "the president will make his own statement, but I can say that we have a lot of consensus on this. We should not provide any funds to Russia for American energy or any other reason."
△ old steam boiler at an old uranium mine site in a canyon in southeastern Utah, USA
Granholm said the Department of energy is developing a broad uranium strategy with the goal of ensuring a stable supply of U.S. nuclear demand.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated on February 24. Biden then banned the import of Russian oil, gas and coal in March, but did not ban the import of uranium.
Russia is the third largest uranium supplier to the United States. U.S. nuclear power plants rely on Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to provide about half of the uranium.
Granholm said the United States is working to ensure that there is enough low enriched uranium to fuel existing nuclear reactors. "If we leave Russia immediately, we hope to be able to keep [nuclear power plants] running normally," she said
She also told balaso that the Ministry of energy would set aside about 20 tons of so-called high abundance and low enriched uranium, i.e. uranium enriched at 5% to 20% of uranium-235, which is expected to be used in new reactors to be built in Wyoming and Washington in the future.
The United States relies mainly on imports of uranium raw materials for nuclear reactors. According to the information on the website of the US energy information administration, US nuclear power plant operators purchased about 22200 tons of uranium in 2020, of which 22% were purchased from Canada and Kazakhstan, 16% from Russia, 11% from Australia, 8% from Uzbekistan and 5% from Namibia.
The website said that by the end of 2021, 93 commercial reactors were in operation in 55 nuclear power plants in 28 states. From 1990 to 2021, the proportion of nuclear power in the total power generation of the United States remained stable at about 20%.