America’s Nuclear Industry Is So Back

What if I told you that the light in your home—and the heat in your oven and the juice in your laptop—is brought to you by the Russian state?

Since 1993, America has spent billions buying enriched uranium produced by Russia’s state-run nuclear energy company; it helps fuel America’s 54 nuclear power plants, and the 20 percent of our electrical grid powered by nuclear energy.

Days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Biden’s administration imposed sanctions to debilitate Russia’s participation in the global economy—freezing $5 billion of Russian assets in the U.S., seizing the property of oligarchs, and banning the import of coal and fossil fuels from Russia.

But it wasn’t until two years later that the Biden administration announced a ban on Russian uranium, and it isn’t set to take effect until 2028. Why? Because America had become almost wholly dependent on Russia for this fuel.

Since Biden’s announcement early last year, there has been a scramble to figure out how America—once the dominant global force behind nuclear power—can reshore enrichment, the process by which uranium is turned into fuel for use in nuclear reactors. And the federal government has been looking to the private sector for support. In May 2024, as part of a wider effort to “secure a nuclear fuel supply chain,” the Biden administration announced that government contracts worth $3.4 billion in total would be up for grabs. The winners would be private companies that could enrich uranium into fuel, and do it domestically.

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