> And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.
Not true at all. Russia is producing 5% of the world Uranium, and they probably use quite a lot of that domestically given they produce 8% of all nuclear power in the world with their own plant.
Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan is 50% of the word production. Canada is second and will be happy to start selling to the EU. Namibia and Australia both produce twice as much as Russia.
Not to say that supply of natural Uranium is not a concern because you do depends of a small list of countries but we don't need to buy any from Russia.
> The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Before uranium enrichment comes conversion to Uranium Hexafluoride. For instance the German uranium enrichment facility (biggest one in Europe) gets Uranium Hexafluoride from Russia.
Also a list of countries operating enrichment facilities does not say anything about capacity (Russia 50%) or market share (Russia 44%).
The reality is that both the US and Europe are dependent on Russian uranium services, with the biggest dependency in Eastern Europe for fuel rods for Soviet-style Reactors. It's slowly changing, but will probably take decades.
So? Refinement doesn't have a dependency on a particular location. This is like saying nuclear energy in Germany is dependent on France and other countries. Currently it is but only because we choose to not do it locally - it doesn't have to be this way.
You know refinement can be done anywhere? We take bauxite and ship it to the other side of the world to make aluminium because electric power is cheaper there.
Not true at all. Russia is producing 5% of the world Uranium, and they probably use quite a lot of that domestically given they produce 8% of all nuclear power in the world with their own plant.
Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan is 50% of the word production. Canada is second and will be happy to start selling to the EU. Namibia and Australia both produce twice as much as Russia.
Not to say that supply of natural Uranium is not a concern because you do depends of a small list of countries but we don't need to buy any from Russia.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country