White House Seeks “Large Amount” Of Funding For Domestic Uranium Strategy

Our view from December 2020 was that sooner or later, nuclear would be included in the ESG basket (see “Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze“). There have been multiple signals from the US Energy Department to develop a domestic uranium strategy. 

We first pointed this out in March in a note titled “Uranium Stocks Soar After US Signals Aid For Nuclear Power.” Then in June, in a note titled “Uranium Stocks Soar On Report US Seeking Billions To End Reliance On Russian Enriched Uranium.”

On Wednesday, Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, gave even more clues about a domestic uranium strategy that would eventually eliminate the US reliance on Russia and its allies Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for about 50% of its uranium needs, according to Reuters. 

“The United States wants to be able to source its own fuel from ourselves and that’s why we are developing a uranium strategy,” Granholm told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency conference in Washington. 

“We’ll be working on … enhancing that and making sure that we can fuel our own reactors as well as the partners to those who also have those ambitions,” she added.

In August, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which helps pave the way for nuclear energy to reduce US emissions before the decade’s end. 

Momentum is certainly building for expanding zero-emission nuclear power production and sourcing uranium domestically, outlined in the IRA via increased investments and tax incentives. 

IRA contained $700 million to produce a high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) supply for advanced nuclear power plants. Then in September, the White House requested Congress to allocate $1.5 billion in a temporary government funding bill to boost domestic HALEU supply. 

Granholm said the White House will “seek an additional large amount by the year-end for a more fulsome strategy.”

The move by the Energy Department is to remove Russia’s critical leverage to throttle US nuclear power. There’s a big push to increase US mining and processing of uranium to ensure US energy security. 

The broader Uranium space has been on an upswing for the last two years. 

Like the US, other countries around the world, including Germany and Japan, are developing plans or implementing strategies to revamp their nuclear power plants after years of neglect. It seems like climate alarmist Greta Thunberg’s war against nuclear is finally being ignored.