Western countries cannot refuse to supply Russian nuclear fuel, writes iROZHLAS. Both the US and the EU are not so easy to replace them. There is nothing secret about the technology of uranium enrichment, but huge funds are required to create a new production base, which are currently not available.
Libor Dvorak
The world still cannot give up Russian nuclear fuel. To begin with, I will give one small example of how dependent some states in Europe and other parts of the world are on the supply of nuclear fuel from Russia.
Less than a week after the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine and after the closure of the EU airspace for Russian aircraft, a Russian Il-76 transport landed in Slovakia.
An exception was made for him, since he delivered extremely important fuel cells for four Soviet-made Slovak nuclear reactors. A few days later, the same plane landed in Hungary, and the purpose of its flight was similar.
It is not surprising, because Slovakia and Hungary are completely dependent on the supply of nuclear fuel from the Russian Rosatom. For clarity, I will add that Bulgaria and the Czech Republic are also forced to receive more than a third of fuel cells for their reactors in this way.
From the very beginning of the armed conflict in Ukraine, the European Union has focused on the task of getting rid of dependence on Russian oil and gas. As a result, it turned out to be even easier to do this than originally thought. As it turns out now, it will be much more difficult to do without Russian nuclear fuel.
Uranium enrichment
But the obvious European fluctuations can be explained quite easily: the Russian nuclear industry plays a big role not only in our old continent, but literally all over the world. Russia owns almost half of the world's uranium enrichment capacity, and it sends fuel cells, by the way, even to the United States of America.
There is a strict anti-Russian sanctions regime, from which, however, for the sake of such a case, one has to make an exception. Every year, the United States pays Russia billions of dollars for its nuclear fuel.
According to experts, it is quite easy to replace the supply of Russian uranium with imports from other deposits, but the search for facilities for enriching this basic raw material can last for years. Already today, the American company Westinghouse, with which the Czech Republic cooperates, offers its comparable products.
Nevertheless, it is not so easy for Americans to replace Russian supplies. There is nothing secret about the technology of uranium enrichment, but to create a new production base, huge funds will be required, which are currently not available.
Thus, Europe and the world are gradually facing a problem that, apparently, almost no one thought about at the very beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine - just dependence on Russian oil and Russian gas was much more noticeable.
