Lawmakers are upping calls to sanction uranium imports from Russia, hoping to see the U.S. nuclear fleet advance without relying on the Kremlin. But one major question looming over the effort is how supply would be maintained if such a ban were put in place. 

Several members of Congress have introduced legislation on the matter. Most recently, House Foreign Affairs subcommittee Chairman Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) said during a Tuesday hearing that he’s drafting a bill mandating the administration to decouple the United States and its allies from Rosatom, a Russian state-owned corporation that specializes in nuclear energy. 

The need for more uranium comes as the U.S. and other countries have moved in recent years to embrace nuclear as a reliable, carbon-free source of power that can help them meet their emissions reduction targets. But as the federal government ramps up its investment into nuclear technologies, the question of how to power the reactors becomes ever more pressing, as most of the uranium used in reactors is imported from foreign sources, 48% from Russia and its allies, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. 

These supply concerns put the U.S. in an uncomfortable position of relying on Russia while also denouncing the country for its invasion of Ukraine. 

“We are not yet in a position to meet all of our domestic nuclear fuel needs; we are definitely not in the position to extend nuclear energy supply security to our allies,” Theresa Sabonis-Helf, a professor at Georgetown University, said Tuesday during a hearing examining the U.S.’s reliance on Russian nuclear. 

Domestic uranium supplies accounted for just 5% of reactor fuel used by U.S. nuclear power plants in 2022, according to the most recently available data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

While the 1950s saw a boon in U.S. nuclear power, momentum began to fade in the decades that followed, the result of growing environmental and safety concerns, prompting the U.S. to scale down its activities and exit trade agreements with uranium-producing countries. 

However, the U.S. is now attempting to breathe new life and momentum into its own commercial uranium recovery and enrichment industry. The federal government has dedicated billions in funds to uranium enrichment and the production of both high assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALEU and LEU, which are used for nuclear reactor fuel and medical isotope production. HALEU, specifically, is needed to power small modular reactors, newer technologies that are smaller and safer than traditional nuclear sources. 

Still, experts say it could take years for the U.S. to achieve HALEU production at a commercial scale, or at a level sufficient to meet current demand. That’s due primarily to lack of a “clear demand signal from the market,” Adam Stein, the head of the Nuclear Energy Innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute, told the Washington Examiner in an interview.

As Stein explained, it’s something of a catch-22: The U.S. lacks advanced nuclear reactors, which in turn face a lack of demand from utility providers, which are concerned about purchasing the advanced reactors due to fears that they will not be able to obtain sufficient amounts of HALEU to supply them in the coming years.

“We need the fuel to be on its way to being available so that utilities will have the confidence to buy the reactors and [confidence] that they will be able to fuel them,” Stein said.

Currently, Russia and China are the only countries to produce HALEU at scale, according to the World Nuclear Association.

In November, the Department of Energy announced that Centrus Energy, a nuclear fuel supplier, had produced the nation’s first demonstration-scale HALEU at its Ohio facility. It’s expected to produce roughly one metric ton of HALEU per year, far below the DOE’s estimated need of 40 metric tons of HALEU by the end of the decade. It’s also the only federally licensed HALEU plant in the country, illustrating the magnitude of the challenge.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has underscored the need for more U.S. uranium production and enrichment, but it also reflects growing demand for the mineral as leaders on both sides of the political aisle begin to embrace nuclear as a reliable, carbon-free source of power. President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, provided incentives and investments to support existing reactors while building newer ones, and the funds are continuing to roll in. The White House recently signed an appropriations bill that provided $2.7 billion to support the production of HALEU. 

But even with the acknowledgment that it will take years for the production of HALEU to take off, the efforts to sanction Russian-aligned nuclear entities are still taking place: The Biden administration targeted nuclear and Rosatom-linked groups in February of last year. Still, the White House has yet to sanction the company’s senior leadership. 

“We need a coordinated strategy, an effort to reinforce that Washington and our allies won’t return to business as usual with Russia when the war in Ukraine ends,” Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe Tuesday. Ruggiero recommended that if the White House fails to act, Congress should mandate the move through legislation. 

Kean said his legislation would address nuclear dependencies relating to medical and industrial isotopes, which he said would take longer to unwind from. Kean, though, said that the bill’s authority is narrow, and would instead complement legislation introduced by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).

Rodgers’s bill, which passed the House unanimously last December, would ban imports of unirradiated, low-enriched uranium produced by Russia or a Russian entity. The measure would allow a waiver of the ban if there were no alternative sources to continue nuclear operations in the U.S. or if the importation of uranium became a national interest. Any waiver, however, must be terminated by 2028. 

“These two bills together would send a much-needed market signal to the civil nuclear industry,” Kean said during Tuesday’s hearing. “The result will be a safer supply of nuclear fuel for the U.S. and its allies.” 

However, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blocked Rodgers’s bill from passing unanimously in the Senate over unrelated procedural matters.  

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Sabonis-Helf warned in her testimony that although sanctions against Rosatom may seem appealing, the effects on the market could be dire, going so far as to threaten the security of nuclear power plants in Europe. 

“Most sanctions against Rosatom, however intuitively appealing, will neither constrain Russia significantly nor will they address the current nuclear fuel imbalance that the world faces,” Sabonis-Helf said in her opening remarks. “Sanctions could disrupt markets in ways that could boost Rosatom’s revenue while disadvantaging ourselves and our allies.”