Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by legulere 471 days ago
That’s raw uranium ore. Uranium undergoes several refinement steps. In each Russia has an enormous market share.
3 comments

Not true by skimming the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium

> The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Before uranium enrichment comes conversion to Uranium Hexafluoride. For instance the German uranium enrichment facility (biggest one in Europe) gets Uranium Hexafluoride from Russia.

Also a list of countries operating enrichment facilities does not say anything about capacity (Russia 50%) or market share (Russia 44%).

https://www.enerdata.net/publications/executive-briefing/ura...

The reality is that both the US and Europe are dependent on Russian uranium services, with the biggest dependency in Eastern Europe for fuel rods for Soviet-style Reactors. It's slowly changing, but will probably take decades.

So? Refinement doesn't have a dependency on a particular location. This is like saying nuclear energy in Germany is dependent on France and other countries. Currently it is but only because we choose to not do it locally - it doesn't have to be this way.
You know refinement can be done anywhere? We take bauxite and ship it to the other side of the world to make aluminium because electric power is cheaper there.
We still haven't been able to decouple from the Russian nuclear industry. It is one of few industries not yet sanctioned.

On the other hand Germany managed to decouple itself from the Russian fossil gas industry within months.

So tell me again "How it can be done anywhere" when we apparently can't do it without Russia 3 years into the war.