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> Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas. This is very misleading, comparing EU imports on one side and Germany on the other. The bi
by kergonath 4y ago
> Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas.
This is very misleading, comparing EU imports on one side and Germany on the other. The biggest uranium reserves are in Kazakhstan, Canada, and South Africa. At the moment, uranium used in Europe comes from Niger, Russia and Kazakhstan in about the same quantities (2500 tons each), followed by Canada (2300 tons) and Namibia (1600 tons).
Overall, Russian uranium is ~20% of EU imports. For gas it was ~40% (~20% for Germany), and for oil ~30%. Also, both oil and uranium are easily imported by boat, whereas gas was so cheap because of the pipelines. So, not really comparable overall.
Switching uranium suppliers costs nothing. Switching gas suppliers renders huge infrastructure investments worthless.
It has been obvious for quite a while that structural dependency on Russian gas was a huge strategic mistake. Doing without will be much more painful than not doing it in the first place.
- pyuser583 4y agoI thought Germany and Czechia had large supplies of Uranium, is that not the case?
- inglor_cz 4y agoCzech uranium reserves were severely depleted in the 1950s in order to supply Soviet nuclear arms industry. (Political dissenters were forced to work in those mines in horrible conditions.)
- kergonath 4y agoNot that I know of. I came across a more complete picture[1], with probably more accurate numbers than my recollection (Australia turns out to have much, much more uranium than I remembered, for example). They don’t really mention significant resources in Europe, but there might be a discrepancy between resources that can be mined, and just stuff that’s in the ground or something like that. Wikipedia mentions 119000 tonnes in Czechia, but I don’t know how reliable it is[2]. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_reserves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium...