needed to fuel the nexgen of nuclear reactors. Nobody will build the reactors without guaranteed fuel supply and nobody will produce fuel without demand. US has known about this for a year or more but seems to be moving slowly. Options are to lend sufficient material from US stockpile (for weapons) for quick fix and then subsidize production facilities to create a national stockpile for nexgen reactor companies to buy from America's new nuclear power industry has a Russian problem | Reuters The fact that Russia has a monopoly on HALEU has long been a concern for Washington but the war in Ukraine has changed the game, as neither the government nor the companies developing the new advanced reactors want to rely on Moscow. HALEU is enriched to levels of up to 20%, rather than around 5% for the uranium that powers most nuclear plants. But only TENEX, which is part of Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, sells HALEU commercially at the moment. While no Western countries have sanctioned Rosatom over Ukraine, mainly because of its importance to the global nuclear industry, U.S. power plant developers such as X-energy and TerraPower don't want to be dependent on a Russian supply chain. "We didn't have a fuel problem until a few months ago," said Jeff Navin, director of external affairs at TerraPower, whose chairman is billionaire Bill Gates. "After the invasion of Ukraine, we were not comfortable doing business with Russia." Background and Policy Issues – HALEU Fuel Supply – Third Way
We must rapidly develop domestic HALEU production facilities while securing the base uranium supply. Nexgen nuclear portends to be significant in efforts to decarbonize our fuel and industry demands.
I believe the military has production capacity but they do not do any commercial sales so the rules need to be amended to allow the national stockpile to be used for these first few reactors to jump start the commercial production or increase the military production volumes and ahve the gubmnt sell into the US market
