The US Senate on Tuesday gave the green light to legislation banning enriched uranium imports from Russia. The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act was approved unanimously and has now been sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
\nAccording to the US Energy Department, in 2022, Russia supplied 24% of all enriched uranium shipped to the country, thus becoming the top importer of the crucial fuel. While the US has its own deposits of uranium, they are not sufficient to satisfy demand. Russia accounts for nearly half of global capacity.
\nCommenting on the act, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, a Republican, said: \u201cour bipartisan legislation will help defund Russia\u2019s war machine, revive American uranium production, and jump-start investments in America\u2019s nuclear fuel supply chain.\u201d
\nThe bill envisages a ban on Russian enriched uranium imports, allowing temporary waivers until January 2028. It also frees up $2.7 billion passed in previous legislation to develop America\u2019s own uranium processing industry.
\nBloomberg quoted Jonathan Hinze, the president of nuclear fuel market research firm UxC, as warning that the ban could see enriched uranium prices go up by 20%, with one SWU (a standard unit of measurement in the industry) costing as much as $200.
\nThe media outlet also said Moscow could halt all exports to the US on its own, depriving Washington of a large chunk of the uranium it needs overnight.
\nThe US House of Representatives backed the bill last December, and there is little doubt that Biden will give his approval as well.
\nIn October 2023, the White House called for a long-term ban on enriched uranium imports from Russia, describing it as a \u201cnational security priority.\u201d In a fact sheet at the time, the Biden administration argued that \u201cdependence on Russian sources of uranium creates risk to the US economy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Senate on Tuesday gave the green light to legislation banning enriched uranium imports from Russia. The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act was approved unanimously and has now been sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law. According to the US Energy Department, in 2022, Russia supplied 24% of all enriched uranium shipped …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64169,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64146\/revisions\/64169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}