Is Gold about to bounce?, page-451

Hi Infose

You are incorrect in your assertion that the West is not buying uranium from Russia.

"The West is not buying uranium from Russia, but the other way around"

An excerpt from a recent book "The Colder War"

When the USSR collapsed, Russia inherited over 2 million pounds of weapons-grade uranium and vast, underused facilities for handling and fabricating the material. Starting in 1993, the two were brought together under the Megatons to Megawatts agreement between Russia and the United States. Over the 20 years that followed, 1.1 million pounds of Russian warhead-grade uranium (90 percent U-235),equivalent to 20,000 nuclear warheads, was blended down to 33 million pounds of reactor-grade uranium (3 percent U-235) by diluting it with tails—enrichment in reverse. The resulting product was sold to the United States.

Megatons to Megawatts helped to fill the supply gap for two decades but now is history. Its expiration in November 2013 marked the end to 24 million pounds of annual uranium supply, 55 percent of what the United States had been using.

The United States now contributes to secondary supply in a modest way. During the Megatons era, the United States also was converting unwanted warhead material to fuel. But only one American company, WesDyne International, has facilities for downblending weapons-grade uranium to fuel grade, and its capacity is less than 18,000 pounds per year. (Russia’s capacity is more than five times that.)

Russia now ranks sixth in the world for mine production of uranium.On top of that, Putin carries a lot of clout in neighboring Kazakhstan,a member of the Common Economic Space (CES) customs union and the world’s top primary uranium producer, with 38 percent of the total.

So Russia already has its hands on 47 percent of the world’s primary production.Control over so much capacity for mining and enrichment makes Putin the go-to source for countries desperate to secure long-term supplies of reactor fuel. In 2012, for example, Russia signed an agreement with Japan—which, despite Fukushima, can’t afford to give up on nuclear power—that guarantees the availability of uranium enrichment services for Japanese utilities.

Russia will continue supplying the United States as well, but this time on Russian terms. The Megatons agreement didn’t let Russia sell directly to American utilities—only to the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC), at a set, below-market price. And the only product eligible was downblended warhead uranium—nothing from new mine production. It was because of those and other restrictions that Russia made no effort to extend Megatons past 2013.In 2012, Tenex, Russia’s nuclear fuel exporter, reached six-year deals to supply more than $1 billion worth of reactor fuel to four American utilities. It has also contracted to provide enrichment services to USEC for nine years. Annual deliveries under the USEC contract should be about half of those under Megatons. There is no price ceiling,and there are no conditions on where the uranium comes from.

Source:- The full text of chapter 9 is available to read at the bottom of this link

http://www.colderwar.com/book