Nuclear fuel suffers from a geographical supply imbalance. Here's why that's a concern

Uranium was discovered more than two centuries ago on the fringes of the Habsburg Empire, and proved useful for tinting photos and colouring vases. Now, many people think it can help solve the climate crisis. The EU for example, despite internal divides, is moving to label nuclear energy sustainable if it meets certain criteria.

After the radioactive metal is mined and processed, a controlled splitting of uranium atoms can power nuclear reactors – and produce an energy alternative to fossil fuels. One report found that the nuclear sector helped avert the emission of 74 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1971 and 2018. But the sector’s primary form of sustenance suffers from an imbalance.

Kazakhstan, the “Saudi Arabia of uranium,” has been providing about 40% of the global supply; in 2020, it delivered more than three times the output of the next-largest producer, Australia.

When Kazakhstan was convulsed by social unrest last month, uranium prices surged. That stirred speculation about a “global crunch.”

It also underlined the reliance of some nuclear-focused countries (France uses 8,200 tonnes per year to generate electricity, for example), and drew attention to emerging nuclear-power technologies that could enable more efficient use of uranium – or even make it possible to one day avoid using it at all.

For now, one option for balancing supply might be to ramp up production in other locations. Australia is estimated to have the largest share of uranium deposits, followed by Kazakhstan and a few countries with relatively equal amounts including Canada, Russia, and Namibia.

A particularly massive repository that spans the globe remains largely untapped; scientists have been working on ways to absorb uranium from the ocean, including by using a material inspired by blood vessels.

Uranium extraction has had serious health and environmental consequences – though efforts have been made to make it more sustainable.

In the same part of the world where it was discovered in 1789, uranium mining eventually became a form of punishment for political prisoners in communist Czechoslovakia. In 2017, what is now the Czech Republic closed its last uranium mine.

Yet, the Czech Republic is one of a number of European Union member states in favour of classifying nuclear power as a green investment that will help the bloc transition to an emissions-free future. Other members, like Germany and Spain, are less enthusiastic.

Plans for a new uranium mine in western Spain were met with well-attended protests, and the project was blocked last year.

The US has also been home to heated debate over uranium mining and nuclear energy. The largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the country, in southern Virginia, has been the subject of a longstanding fight over the right to extract it.

China has ambitious plans to expand its nuclear-power capacity, and its intention disclosed late last year to build at least 150 new reactors in the next decade-and-a-half helped send uranium prices higher.

China is also making closely-watched efforts to develop nuclear reactors that run on thorium instead of uranium – which could be cleaner and safer.

“It is much more democratic than uranium,” the co-founder of a Swiss startup developing a thorium reactor told a reporter last month, because the metal named after the god of thunder is relatively evenly distributed.

Limiting the role of uranium might also help address a chief concern of nuclear-energy opponents: the long-lasting radioactive waste generated by uranium-powered reactors.

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