What the Proposed U.S. Ban on Russian Uranium Imports Could Mean for Kazakhstan
On Monday, 11 December 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new bill banning imports of Russian uranium. While the bill would need to pass the U.S. Senate and be signed off by President Joe Biden in order to become law, this first step towards legality raises questions about the future of nuclear energy in the U.S., and which country could provide the resources necessary to facilitate it going forwards. This bill represents a significant opportunity for Kazakhstan, the world’s largest producer of uranium, which could potentially step into the breach and provide the mineral necessary to meet the U.S.' nuclear energy needs. If successfully made into law, the bill entitled the “Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act” will see a complete ban on unirradiated low-enriched uranium (the type used to make nuclear fuel) that is produced in Russia, and annual caps on the amount of low-enriched uranium that can still be imported from the country until 2027. Waivers have been built into the wording of the legislation to allow the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to work around the ban if no feasible alternative is found to sustain the functioning of a nuclear reactor or nuclear company. However, the bill also guides the DOE to submit a report outlining the alternatives to Russian-produced uranium, which could be utilized over the next five years. One country sure to be on their radar is Kazakhstan. A former powerhouse of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons testing program, Kazakhstan was left with significant infrastructure for uranium mining after the collapse of the bloc in 1991. Its nuclear production is currently monopolized by one company, Kazatomprom, which has emerged as a global leader in the field. Although the U.S. mines its own uranium, it does not produce enough to meet its domestic demands for nuclear power, which in the year 2022 was over 20,100 metric tonnes in total. That year, the U.S. produced 75 metric tonnes of uranium ore from its own mines. By comparison, Kazakhstan produced 21,227 metric tonnes in the same time period. Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the former head of Kazatomprom, has spoken about the necessity of increasing the volume of production in Kazakhstan if it were to be a viable candidate for replacing Russia’s supply to the U.S. Greater resources would need to be directed towards mining if the country were to increase its annual uranium yield to make up for the lost volume of Russian uranium. If the U.S. were to seek a trade agreement with Kazakhstan to bolster its nuclear power supplies, it would indicate an alignment with the European Union, which recently expressed a desire to conduct increased trade with countries in Central Asia. Given that the largest exports from Central Asian countries to Europe are of natural resources such as oil, gas and metals, it is safe to assume that energy will be one of the key goals in any trade deals the EU tries to negotiate. These announcements have arisen in the wake of Russia’s war in...
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