The current dependence on Russia was a long time in the making, cemented by several deals signed by the Clinton and Obama administrations that hooked the United States on Moscow's uranium supply, according to the 2020 book “Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies, and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties.” “[The] United States used to produce its own nuclear materials for bombs and then for nuclear energy, and it was the Clinton administration they made this deal with the Russians way back in the 90s to purchase all of this down blended material from, you know, the decommission nuclear warheads from Russia,” Seamus Bruner, co-author of the book, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday.
Shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Congress passed and Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act ostensibly to free the U.S. nuclear industry from dependence on Russia.
The U.S. nuclear energy sector’s dependence on Russian uranium created during a failed Obama-era reset with Moscow is coming back to bite Americans as the Kremlin moves to block future exports of the vital fuel.
“They should have been stockpiling enriched uranium in anticipation of this happening.” Fleitz gave a starker warning, saying the fuel shortage could lead to brownouts by next summer in states with a higher reliance on nuclear power.
Now we do have domestic producers, who are, you know, producing uranium for our energy needs, but there are no way, there's no way they're going to catch up.” As part of the flurry of diplomacy between the former Cold War rivals, the Obama administration penned the new 123 Agreement with the Kremlin, which was designed to increase cooperation on civil nuclear energy and further commercial opportunities between the two economies.
Enriched uranium is a vital component of nuclear power plants in the United States, which account for a fifth of electricity production across the nation.
“The the Uranium One deal was about shuttering our domestic mines, we had all of these uranium mines across…the Rocky Mountains…and closer towards the west, Midwest, that shut down the domestic production there, which was a boon to Putin, who had purchased, in addition to the mines in the United States, a bunch of mines in Kazakhstan,” Bruner said.
Its facilities in Wyoming, Utah, and other states accounted for approximately 20% of U.S. uranium capacity at the time, necessitating a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to approve an acquisition by the Russia state-backed company.
They made the famous deals with Russia, the [123 Agreement]; everybody remembers the uranium one deal, which was about nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons,” Bruner said.
Two deals, which took place during Obama’s vaunted "Russian Reset" that began in 2009, cemented the United States’ dependence on Russia nuclear fuel, Bruner said.
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