, Russia’s state-own nuclear corporation, which supplies 20% of the low-enriched uranium that fuels U.S. nuclear reactors.
It’s a supply that America cannot afford to lose because, disturbingly, U.S. uranium production has almost disappeared. Domestic extraction of the mineral, which peaked at 43.7 million pounds in 1980, slid precipitously in subsequent years as government incentives expired and profitability suffered. By 2019, 88% of the uranium consumed by U.S. commercial reactors was imported. More than half originated in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
To boost the odds, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 1 advanced the Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply Act, a bill introduced by Rep. Larry Bucshon, Indiana Republican, that “strengthens America’s critical mineral supply by requiring the Department of Energy to identify resources that are vulnerable to supply disruptions.”
In the Senate, Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, in February joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, to introduce the North American Transatlantic Resource Security Partnership Act. The bill would “identify threats to U.S. supply, transmission, distribution, or use of energy in the U.S. and the impact of those threats on the economy and consumers.
Environmentalists who regard all things nuclear with horror should know that even unhinged utopian Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York conceded while visiting Japan that the earthquake-caused shutdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant has led to rising fossil-fuel emissions.should also acknowledge nuclear power’s potential in the green scheme and encourage Americans to dig the atom again.