Russia dominates nuclear power supply chains — and the West needs to prepare now to be independent in the future

Russia’s conflict in Ukraine has pushed nations round the globe to wean themselves from Russian oil and pure gasoline.

Parallel conversations are imminent in the nuclear power area, too, as a result of Russia can also be a dominant participant in world supply chains of nuclear reactor know-how, as is detailed by a brand new paper revealed Monday from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

There have been 439 nuclear reactors in operation round the globe in 2021, and 38 of them have been in Russia, a further 42 have been made with Russian nuclear reactor know-how, and 15 extra underneath development at the finish of 2021 have been being constructed with Russian know-how.

Reducing or eliminating dependence on nuclear supply chains from Russia will differ by nation and want.

If a rustic has not but constructed nuclear reactors, then they’ll, from the starting, resolve not to contract with Russia. The U.S., France, Korea and China are “viable” provider choices, in accordance to the paper.

Second, if a rustic already has Russian nuclear reactor fashions, VVERs, then most likely seems to Russia for restore elements and companies. (VVER stands for ‘water-water power reactor’ in Russian, which is vodo-vodyanoi enyergeticheskiy reaktor in Russian, ergo the acronym.) In this case, nations can get restore help from Westinghouse, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania, in accordance the the report.

Then there may be the situation of gas. Nuclear fission reactors are fueled with enriched uranium.

Russia mines roughly 6% of the uncooked uranium produced yearly, in accordance to the report. That’s an quantity that may be changed if different nations that mine uranium improve their uranium mining.

However, uranium doesn’t go instantly from a mine right into a nuclear reactor. It has to undergo conversion and enrichment earlier than it may well be used as gas in a nuclear reactor.

Here, Russia is a dominant participant. Russia owned 40% of the complete uranium conversion infrastructure in the world in 2020, and 46% of the complete uranium enrichment capability in the world in 2018, in accordance to the report. (This was the most up-to-date knowledge publicly accessible, in accordance to the report authors.)

This is the place the U.S. and allied nations would want to focus their consideration, in accordance to the report, which was co-authored by Paul Dabbar, a former underneath secretary of Energy for Science at the Department of Energy, and Matthew Bowen, a analysis scholar at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Besides Russia, these uranium conversion and enrichment capabilities exist in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Those capacities “are sufficient to change no less than some” of the conversion and enrichment that Western nuclear reactors want, but it surely’s not clear that the capability will be in a position to absolutely change the Russian capability.

The U.S. additionally needs to be ready for gas that goes into superior reactors, that are at the moment in growth, and require uranium enriched to 15 to19.75%, the place standard mild water reactors which can be at the moment in operation in the United States use uranium enriched to between 3 to 5 %.

This high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) gas is at the moment solely accessible at a industrial scale from Russia, in accordance to the report.

“More funding in mining, conversion, and enrichment services might be obligatory to absolutely extricate Western nuclear gas chains from Russian involvement, Dabbar and Bowen write in their report. “However, including enough new conversion capability and enrichment capability will take years to accomplish.”

But to persuade non-public firms to dedicate cash and sources to uranium infrastructure, they want the authorities to commit to not reverting to Russian provides.

“Their fear will be that in a yr or two, maybe much less, Russian uranium merchandise will be allowed again into nationwide markets and will undercut them, inflicting them to lose out on their investments,” Dabbar and Bowen mentioned.

In the United States, there is just one uranium conversion facility — it is in Metropolis, Illinois — and it has been on standby since November 2017. Its reopening is “pending market enchancment and buyer help,” in accordance to a power point presentation from the partnership between General Atomics and Honeywell that operates the plant, ConverDyn. It will not be in a position to return to operability till 2023, when it may convert 7,000 tons of uranium per yr. To ramp up to 15,000 tons per yr, it should take the one plant longer than 2023.

Therefore, Dabbar and Bowen mentioned it will be prudent for the United States to wean off Russian refinement capability “a interval of years not months.”