The United Kingdom has stepped up efforts to overcome Russia's monopoly on the uranium fuel market, which is expected to play a key role in providing energy for a new generation of small factory-built reactors. Bloomberg reports UNN.
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The Kremlin's nuclear giant Rosatom is currently the world's only commercial supplier of high assay low enriched uranium, known as HALEU. This fuel blend contains a higher concentration of uranium isotopes needed to support fission, requiring plants to refuel less frequently and potentially lowering operating costs.
The UK government will allocate £196 million ($246 million) to Urenco Ltd., a British-Dutch-German consortium that is the world's second largest producer of enriched uranium, to build a HALEU production line at its Capenhurst facility.
Supporting Urenco to build a uranium enrichment plant here in the UK means we will be the first European country outside of Russia to produce modern nuclear fuel
Since the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine, efforts to diversify uranium supply chains have intensified. Although Rosatom remains the world's largest supplier of nuclear fuel and technology, more and more countries are investing in developing their own capacities.