The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - America's Nuclear Supply Chain (Ditching Russian Uranium) || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

We're finally seeing signs of life in Congress with the recent progress made on the establishment of a domestic uranium supply chain. This move aims to cut dependence on the Russians - who dominate global uranium processing. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/americas-nuclear-supply-chain

Hey, everybody, Peter Zine, coming to you from Colorado. The news at the moment is that late last week, we finally got the first functional laws through committee and actually getting action on the congressional floors for building out a domestic uranium supply chain system. The idea is that if we can refine enough fuel or enrich enough fuel being the technical term, we will be able to cut the Russians out of the mix. It's altogether. The Russians are the world's single largest producer of enriched uranium. uranium, and they are responsible for nearly half of the global market in about one quarter of

hours. The process is you take raw uranium from somewhere, with Kazakhstan being the single biggest player and the Australians being the biggest up-and-comers, you then it spin it up so that the fissile component makes up somewhere between three and five and a half percent of the mix. And you take that enriched uranium and build it into a fuel rod that eventually ends up in a nuclear power reactor. The issue that we have is, piece, ironically at the end of the Cold War the Americans and the Russians were left with

literally tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and we collectively decided that we were going to get rid of them so the question was what do you do with all the enriched uranium that is in a bomb now the enriched uranium that's in a bomb isn't three to six percent enriched it's like 90 to 95 percent in rich because you want it to go Kavum and so we basically spin that stuff down instead of up and used it to make fuel rods going from the other direction well you do that for 25 years, which is what it took to get rid of all those weapons, and there really wasn't much of an economic impetus for any company in the United States to do the more normal

type of enrichment up from uranium ore. So we basically stopped doing it all together in the United States. It was only in places like Russia or China, where it was a national security issue to build this stuff up where they kept producing it. And so now we have to rebuild an enrichment system at the civilian level, and that's what these new laws are about. Now, right now, nuclear power provides about 20% of the American electricity mix. I think we've got 95 reactors out right there right now. The issue is there's only so much flexibility in that system, because with a couple of exceptions, all of these reactors are more than 40 years old. Most of them are 50 years old, actually. Three Mile Island. Was that, 1973 or 1979? Can't remember. Anyway,

they all predate Three Mile Island. with two exceptions. So the idea that you can really update these things to more modern technology, and there's not a lot of modern technology to do. So we have to go back to the old system to keep these online. On the upside, everyone has seen this coming and they've been stockpiling for some time. So we probably have about two years of fuel supply here in the United States for a reactor system.

And that should be plenty of time to basically replicate technology that dates back to the 50s in order to build out domestic supply system, and we'll also be getting some help from the Canadians and the Australians who are in the process of building out their own system for very similar reasons. So this Congress, while it has been difficult for it to do anything, has seemingly found an issue that is both energy-related and national security-related and seems to be actually progressing forward.

So, you know, one miracle at a time, that I take my good news where I can these days. Take care.