Like the bees need the flowers, like the plants need the showers, so too do nuclear reactors need uranium, but unfortunately, most of that uranium comes from Russia. On today's Parts Pervilion, we talk about how the nuclear power industry is going to meet its needs now that Russian uranium is off the table. Hello, and welcome back once again to Parts Pervilion, the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz.
Is nuclear power good for the environment. That's a very complicated question that we won't even come close to definitively answering today, but it is interesting to think about. On the one hand, it's a source of energy with few to no carbon emissions, and given how desperately we need that in order to have a chance against climate change,
that's a pretty big plus. But on the other hand, the fuel that goes into nuclear power plants and the fuel waste that comes out is dangerously radioactive, and as we all know, the environmental consequences of an accident at
one of these plants are incalculably high. So, given these pluses and minuses, if you're an environmental activists and you read Daniel Moore's recent story, it's not clear whether you should hang your head or jump for joy More is an environmental reporter with Bloomberg Law, and he reported that the Biden administration is scrambling to find a new source of uranium for the country's nuclear power plants because before last month, a huge percentage of that uranium came from
you guessed it, Russia, since the country invaded its neighbor Ukraine. Sourcing anything from Russia, whether it's crude oil, uranium, or anything, is fraught, to put it mildly. In a bit, we'll get into exactly what the Biden administration is trying to do about this, but first I asked Daniel to quantify exactly how reliant the US nuclear power energy is on Russian uranium. Yeah. So Russia and its allies account for nearly half of all US imports of uranium, So the
US is quite dependent on USA and its allies. The other half comes from more US friendly allies like Canada and Australia and some other countries. But the US doesn't produce virtually any uranium today, so it is it is a country that is entirely dependent. The nuclear industry is entirely dependent on imports of uranium, and almost half of
those come from Russia or countries allied with Russia. And that's one of the reasons why I thought your story was so interesting is that we've been hearing about, you know, the Biden administration cut off imports of Russian oil, but that it wouldn't make much of a difference because you know that only accounts for oil from Russia, only accounts for like three percent of our oil intake. We need
fifty percent of our uranium comes from Russia. You can't just have a fifty percent drop in your supply and have things go on as normal, right correct, Yeah, Yeah, And there's another layer to the challenge, which is the future of nuclear which is advanced reactors, these smaller reactors. The nuclear industry trying to scale up. The Energy Department supporting ten different pilot projects right now to try to
demonstrate that technology. And right now, all of that fuel, which is a different type of fuel from the current supply, comes from Russia as well, and that's one hundred percent of that fuel. So the nuclear industry is facing this big supply crunch right now with its fuel supplies, and something will have to be done. So what's the Biden administration doing about this? I mean, I don't think there's an easier quick fix, but what are what is the
Energy Department and the broader administration trying to do? Right? So one approach is to create something like a strategic uranium Reserve. I think a lot of people have heard news about this Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has been releasing oil to try to handle high gas prices and lower those. This would be where the government buy supplies if uranium, keeps them on hand, so if the nuclear industry needs
supplies in a crunch, they can access them. There's another program where the Energy Department would try to scale up production of this more energy dense fuel that advanced reactors need. And it's another type of program where the Energy Department would buy these supplies, keep them on hand, try to provide an incentive for fuel companies to produce this fuel, which again isn't produced at all in the United States right now. So let's talk about that fifty percent number again.
You know this, has that number been going up or down? And what I mean by that is has the nuclear industry been trying to move away from Russia for a long time and now this could accelerate that or is this a situation where we've been becoming more reliant and this is just going to be falling off a cliff. Yeah, it's more the second one. I mean, these programs that the Energy Department to try to increase uranium supply, we're created just a few years ago by Congress and they're
just getting them up and going. So it's recognized as a problem. And these imports coming from Russia is you know, has been recognized as a national security concern. But I'd say the invasion of Ukraine last month really put more pressure on the Department to act more quickly and right there trying to do now is accelerate these efforts around these field supply programs. Let's talk about some of the environmental aspects here. You mentioned that we don't get any
uranium domestically, what if we did? What if we started mining uranium here in the US? First off, is that even possible? And secondly, what would be the environmental concerns if that were to happen. Yeah, So at one point we did mind uranium here. I mean, uranium mining has this legacy in the American Southwest on tribal lands, and around tribal lands and around national parks that you know, these big open pit mines. You can see them from very high up in the air. They don't look very great.
You know, in the forties, fifties and sixties, during nuclear weapons production and during the civilian nuclear program boom, you know, we saw a lot of contamination, a lot of radioactive poisoning, just a lot of pollution concerns, and so that contributed to the drop off and uranium mining in recent decades and kind of this loss of support for that type of industry here, and so you know, certainly environmental justice advocates tribal nations are expressing concerns about something like a
strategic uranium reserve because they say this is going in completely the wrong direction given the environmental liability that the government has. Would there be anywhere you could put it that would be safe or remotely safe? I mean, this is we're talking about a radioactive or yeah. I mean the nuclear industry would say, yes, there are places, There are uranium mills. There are different facilities out west that
are far from populated areas. I mean, most people have heard of Yuckam out in in Nevada as being a geologic repository for waste. There are places where people would be at a distance from this material. But again, just the whole nuclear fuel supply chain is something that is a concern for people because it's the zero emissions power, but it has this environmental footprint, particularly near tribal lands
and environmental justice communities. I'm glad you brought up the zero emissions angle because now I want to get into how this plays into climate change and specifically fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is very expensive. It was already having a hard time competing against natural gas and other fossil fuels on price. I have to imagine that a massive supply chain disruption of uranium isn't going to help that. If nuclear becomes even more expensive, what takes its place? Is
it fossil fuels. Yeah, that's certainly what the nuclear industry would argue. It's kind of hard to say what would happen. But as of now, gas has been the predominant source
of electricity growth in this country. Gass, you know, the abundance of natural gas domestically has lowered the prices and caused a lot of utilities to switch to natural gas instead of coal and so as coal has dropped to natural gas has gone up, and you're right, that's what's put pressure in the market on nuclear energy and caused a lot of nuclear plants to end up shutting down
and decommission. So yeah, I mean a fuel supply crunch of fuel prices would go up because you're developing this domestically, or you're getting more developing a mine in Canada or Australia or some of these other countries that we're friendly to the US though, you know, nuclear operates on a pretty tight margin right now, so those increased fuel costs would be pretty damaging. Yeah, And finally, I want to
get into the broader kind of implications here. And I love talking about nuclear because I think that it highlights this really fascinating divide within the environmental movement itself. You know, for a long long time, anti nuclear protests were sort of a huge part of the environmental movement. But now the calculus has changed that we have climate change, which is, you know, maybe overrides everything else according to some people.
And as you mentioned, nuclear power is zero emissions. If nuclear power and uranium becomes hard to find and nuclear power, you know, wanes even further is that a good thing for the environmental movement or a bad thing? I genuinely don't know. It's it's kind of a split right now. It's the debate is definitely real between different environmental groups. I would say in Congress, you're seeing largely bipartisan support for nuclear. We should also point out there's also bipartisan
location of nuclear power plants. There's a lot of nuclear power plants in a lot of districts across the country. We should also point out that nobody wants to waste. Partisan gridlock has led to this waste issue where there's you know, ways there is no central repository. But yeah, there's there's support for nuclear for its climate attributes, for the fact that it's it can get the power sector to zero emissions by twenty thirty five, which is the
Biden administration's goal. But nobody seems to want to address in Congress this this this waste issue and the environmental footprint of the mining and the demand that this would
create for new mining. There are some states that have rolled back bands on new nuclear, like West Virginia, So there seems to be generally this thaw on anti nuclear activity, but there's still again with environmental justice groups, tribal groups, particularly in the American West, there's this staunch opposition to nuclear is still and it'll be interesting to see what happens if you know, you have all these taxpayer subsidies going to uranium mining or subsidies to prop up nuclear plants,
kind of how that plays out politically. So fascinating. Well, that was Daniel Moore speaking with us. Daniel, thank you so much, Always happy to talk about nuclear waste. And that's it for today's episode of Parts pervillion. If you want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter. We use the handle at environment. Just that at environment, I'm at David B. Schultz. That's b as in, get your brackets in their due on Thursday at New and Eastern.
Don't forget brackets at New. Today's episode of Parts for Billion was produced by myself, David Schultz. Parts for Billion was created by Jessic Coombs and Rachel Dagle and is edited by Zach Sherwood and Chuck McCutcheon. Our executive producer is Josh Block. Thanks for listening everyone. You don't need to be a judge to be interested in our nation's laws and legal institutions, just like you don't need to have a law degree to be curious about the inner
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