US to start $3.4B buy-up of domestic nuclear reactor fuel

The US will ask suppliers next month to bid on contracts for as much as $3.4 billion of domestically produced nuclear reactor fuel, according to a government notice,  reported from Bloomberg.

Around $2.7 billion of the funding comes from a broader plan to wean the nation off nuclear fuel imported from Russia and forms part of a strategy to help restart domestic nuclear fuel production by making direct purchases of the low-enriched uranium used in reactors.

That cash was unlocked after President Joe Biden signed a ban on imports of enriched uranium from Russia, which provides about a quarter of the reactor fuel in the US, making it the country’s top supplier.

The US was once a leading supplier of enriched uranium but lost its edge in the industry decades ago. The country now has just one commercial enrichment facility in New Mexico, owned by Urenco Ltd., a British, Dutch and German consortium

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