The US is the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy but relies on Russia for 20% of its enriched uranium. Credit: Christopher Peterson.

Nuclear consumers across the world must shift supply chains away from reliance on Russian nuclear fuel, a US Department of Energy (DOE) official has said.

Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary on nuclear at the DOE, told Reuters at a nuclear summit in Brussels that the countries attending the summit jointly tried to identify the amount of investment needed to support the fuel supply chain.

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“The $2.7bn is the US part of that contribution… It is a historic step in the fuel supply chain but of course we see an opportunity to go further,” she said.

The Biden administration signed a bill this month approving $2.7bn in US funding for domestic fuel production. Domestic fuel production will include uranium fuel enrichment such as high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel that can be used in high-tech nuclear plants.

Huff encouraged other nations that use nuclear to move to these “trusted sources rather than sources that could leverage supply against them, like Russia”.

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The US is currently the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy but relies on Russia for 20% of its enriched uranium. Russia’s state-owned nuclear company, Rosatom, supplies 17% of the world’s nuclear fuel.

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“(It is) a dependency we urgently need to divest ourselves from. We are looking at a way to begin import restrictions from Russia,” said Huff.

Many of the US’s operational nuclear reactors are reaching the end of their 40-year lifespan. So far, only six have been approved to extend operations to 80 years.

The US is already moving to produce domestic nuclear fuel. A pilot programme in Ohio produced HALEU last November.

Congress is also looking to cut imports of Russian uranium, according to the US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, in a ban that would free up funding to develop the domestic nuclear fuel market.