Nuclear Power Has A Dark Secret

Our clean nuclear energy is fueling a catastrophic war and mob-boss-like international politics.

Nuclear energy is incredible. If you actually look at the data, you will find that it is one of the safest and most climate-friendly energy sources we have. Moreover, it will play a pivotal part in our future net-zero energy grids as its ability to produce copious amounts of ultra-low carbon power no matter the weather will offer a crucial increase in energy security. But the war in Ukraine has shown something worrying. The West’s need for reactor-grade uranium is fueling the Russian war machine. That’s right, your energy bills are partly paying for Putin’s horrific acts. But how? And is there anything we can do to reverse this brutal state of affairs?

Russia only mines 5.4% of the world’s uranium. But natural uranium is useless in a reactor as it needs to be enriched. This is because the only isotope (a type of element with a certain number of neutrons per atom) of uranium that can actually undergo fission (the nuclear chain reaction that nuclear power plants use) is U235, which only makes up about 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium. This percentage is far too low to allow for the necessary chain reaction to take place.

So it gets enriched. This is a process where the other isotopes of uranium are removed until the uranium reaches about a 5% U235 concentration. Unfortunately, it is incredibly hard and insanely expensive to separate isotopes. After all, isotopes are the same element, just with slightly different atomic masses.

Moreover, not every country has the ability to enrich uranium. So, in their place, Russia supplies 35% of the world’s enrichment services, which is a considerable slice of the pie! Additionally, it isn’t like Russia only supplies enriched uranium to its allied countries like China. In fact, they actually supply enriched uranium to the EU and the US and are essential to these countries’ meeting their uranium needs.

But the vast majority of the world’s nuclear reactors are in NATO countries, and they heavily rely on their nuclear power. For example, nuclear power supplies the US with 20% of its energy and the EU with 24.6% of its energy. As such, Russia holds a mafia-like grip over the entire global nuclear power industry and, therefore, almost all of NATO’s energy grids.

So, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the West sanctioned them as much as possible and ceased to import many Russian goods. But we couldn’t ban the import of Russian uranium because it would cause a massive increase in the price of enriched uranium and therefore an increase in the cost of nuclear power. Due to the fact that nuclear power makes up a significant portion of NATO’s energy mix, this price increase could cause an energy crisis. This leaves us in a dilemma.

If we continue using Russian uranium, we can keep the price of nuclear energy down and avoid an energy crisis. But we will be funding Putin’s war machine, as the enrichment plants are 100% owned by the Russian state body, Rosatom. However, using this Russian uranium might still put our energy security at risk as Putin could terminate exports at any moment, causing a catastrophic energy crisis in NATO. This, in turn, could cripple NATO economies and leave NATO countries in tatters. So Putin can weaponise his position in the uranium business as a deterrent to prevent NATO from supporting Ukraine any further.

There is another option; we can start enriching uranium ourselves. After all, during the Cold War, the West’s nuclear industry (in relation to both power and weapons) was completely independent of Russia. The only reason we now depend on Russian enrichment is because their enrichment services were cheaper, so we closed our enrichment plants down years ago.

Inconveniently, setting up new enrichment plants is easier said than done. The US Department of Energy (DoE) estimates it will cost a whopping $1 billion to expand US enrichment enough to take over from Russia. That bill is only accounting for the replacement of the US’s import of Russian uranium, not for the entirety of NATO, which will predictably be much more expensive. What’s more, setting up the plants could take years!

And there’s another issue. Enriched uranium currently costs up to $400 per kg; a 1000 MW nuclear plant gets through about 27 tonnes of the stuff each year; and the US has about 954,900 MW of nuclear capacity. That means the United States spends a whopping $103.129 billion on nuclear fuel each year to generate its 843 billion kWh of nuclear energy. This works out to a nuclear fuel cost of 12 cents per kWh, and the average US cost per kWh is 15.42 cents.

While these are very rough calculations, they show that any action that increases the cost of enriched uranium could skyrocket the cost of energy! This post-COVID world is also already teetering on the brink of recession, and massively increasing energy bills, coupled with an increased uranium cost, could leave a country in disarray. (After all, just look at the UK).

So governments are stuck. They can’t spend the money on expanding their own enrichment plants, as the set-up costs would make their enriched uranium cost far more than Russian enriched uranium, risking an energy crisis and impending recession. But they can’t continue using Russian uranium as it gives Putin a political advantage and funds his horrendous wars.

Sadly, it looks like the entirety of NATO has settled for the second option and are currently praying that Putin continues to deliver them uranium without using it against them.

Is that the wrong move? I will let you decide.

Ultimately, this is a shame. Nuclear technology itself isn’t to blame here, but rather the West’s complacency over the past few decades. If we had kept our entire nuclear industry independent of Russia, then we wouldn’t be in this horrific conundrum. But instead, we practically handed Putin this power over us, and now one of the best technologies we have to fight climate change has been severely corrupted. Nuclear energy is on the cusp of becoming revolutionary, with fast reactors, SMRs, and deep borehole long-term nuclear waste storage making it cheaper, cleaner, more flexible, and safer than ever before. We could have had a future of mighty carbon-neutral atomic power ahead of us. But how can you legitimise expanding nuclear power under these terrible circumstances?