World uranium export: Kazakhstan becomes a key market player

According to Russian media, Russian Energy Minister Novak said that Russia could stop exporting uranium to unfriendly countries. "The issue of imposing a ban on the export of uranium from the country is also on the agenda, it is being studied".

Today the situation in the American uranium market is as follows. More than 90 nuclear power plants generate up to 20% of all US electricity (critical for the entire energy balance) - the country's share in world uranium consumption is the largest, about 27%. As of 2020, Russia accounted for almost a quarter of all supplies of enriched uranium needed to run commercial reactors. Together, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan account for about 50% of US demand for uranium, the Boilernaya channel reports.

According to the Rosatom report for 2020, the regional structure of sales of uranium products was distributed as follows: 50% falls on the American region, 32% on the European region, another 18% on the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa. Deliveries of nuclear fuel abroad reached 17% of the world market (3rd place), now deliveries go to Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Also, Russian fuel is used in reactors in India, China, Ukraine and Finland, and in cooperation with the French Framatome, fuel and components from regenerated uranium produced in Russia are supplied to EU nuclear power plants. At the same time, Rosatom ranks first in the world in uranium enrichment - 36% of the market, which also allows increasing export potential in the future.

In addition, a week ago in the United States, Republican senators introduced a bill according to which America itself refuses Russian uranium.

Russia's refusal to export uranium, as well as the symmetrical step of the United States, will definitely drive up world prices for this fuel, journalist Pavel Pryanikov is sure. But the main thing is that the role of Kazakhstan in the fuel uranium market will increase to a critical one:

“Its global share is the largest in the world – 42%. In fact, Kazakhstan holds almost all the world's nuclear power plants on the hook. France, the USA and Japan, as consumers of a large amount of fuel uranium, will be even more interested in the stability of Kazakhstan and its at least moderate pro-Western course. So that Russia does not dictate terms to him on the same uranium deals.

And in general, now Kazakhstan is becoming an even more important “key” to Russia. Surely we will see a lot of interesting things there soon”.