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About a third of all Uranium is either mined or at least refined in Russia.

masklinn 5y ago
That's complete nonsense, unless you're asserting that Kazakstan is in Russia. Russia produces about 5% of uranium, and uranium is reduced to yellowcake on site but it is generally enriched by the country using the fuel (eurodif being a pretty significant exception). Furthermore uranium has a bunch of advantages — aside from most of the known reserves being in advanced economies (namely Australia and Canada): - because it's dense and stable (unlike gasoline or natural gas), countries can have years of enriched fuel in storage, meaning in case of supply issue they can easily wait out - ramp up of existing mines (or opening out of new mines) to compensate for one supplier shutting down or being blackballed, because - uranium requires very little infrastructure between the mine (which ships yellowcake) and the enrichment plant, yellowcake is transported in 400kg drums packed into standard shipping containers
- PinguTS 5y ago
  That's just the imports of natural Uranium. In addition there are the imports of processed Uranium from Russia. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1147442/imports-of-uranium-to-eu-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1147442/imports-of-urani...
- danans 5y ago
  > That's complete nonsense, unless you're asserting that Kazakstan is in Russia. If the West became dependent on Kazakh uranium because they shifted their entire fossil fuel generation capacity to nuclear, it would be in Russia's strategic interest to exert control over Kazakhstan's uranium, one way or another. There may be sensible ways to replace some base load on the grid with nuclear, but not by introducing a resource dependency on the vassal of a major adversary. The thing we can do right now is focus on electrification of end uses that are still fossil fuel powered. That way the end uses are mostly agnostic of the method of generation.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
Mostly because as it stands (stood), it's (was) the most economically sensible thing to do. France also gets a ton from Niger, Australia is known to have stupid amounts in their reserves (and they can't really pull the "mines are bad" argument considering just how many coal mines they have), and pretty much every country has the ability to open mines. It's just a matter of how expensive it is. The good thing with nuclear fuel is that you don't really need that much, and much of the cost of nuclear energy is in operating costs, not fuel. Additionally, had we continued research on nuclear, we might have the ability to reuse spent fuel today, which still holds a _ton_ of energy in it.

That's complete nonsense, unless you're asserting that Kazakstan is in Russia. Russia produces about 5% of uranium, and uranium is reduced to yellowcake on site but it is generally enriched by the country using the fuel (eurodif being a pretty significant exception). Furthermore uranium has a bunch of advantages — aside from most of the known reserves being in advanced economies (namely Australia and Canada): - because it's dense and stable (unlike gasoline or natural gas), countries can have years of enriched fuel in storage, meaning in case of supply issue they can easily wait out - ramp up of existing mines (or opening out of new mines) to compensate for one supplier shutting down or being blackballed, because - uranium requires very little infrastructure between the mine (which ships yellowcake) and the enrichment plant, yellowcake is transported in 400kg drums packed into standard shipping containers

PinguTS 5y ago
That's just the imports of natural Uranium. In addition there are the imports of processed Uranium from Russia. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1147442/imports-of-uranium-to-eu-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1147442/imports-of-urani...
danans 5y ago
> That's complete nonsense, unless you're asserting that Kazakstan is in Russia. If the West became dependent on Kazakh uranium because they shifted their entire fossil fuel generation capacity to nuclear, it would be in Russia's strategic interest to exert control over Kazakhstan's uranium, one way or another. There may be sensible ways to replace some base load on the grid with nuclear, but not by introducing a resource dependency on the vassal of a major adversary. The thing we can do right now is focus on electrification of end uses that are still fossil fuel powered. That way the end uses are mostly agnostic of the method of generation.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

Mostly because as it stands (stood), it's (was) the most economically sensible thing to do. France also gets a ton from Niger, Australia is known to have stupid amounts in their reserves (and they can't really pull the "mines are bad" argument considering just how many coal mines they have), and pretty much every country has the ability to open mines. It's just a matter of how expensive it is. The good thing with nuclear fuel is that you don't really need that much, and much of the cost of nuclear energy is in operating costs, not fuel. Additionally, had we continued research on nuclear, we might have the ability to reuse spent fuel today, which still holds a _ton_ of energy in it.