Legislation to encourage domestic production of nuclear fuel are on the move this week in Congress, and the movement began Tuesday in House subcommittee, which easily passed a bill to prohibit imports of Russian uranium by Jan. 1, 2028.
Summing up Republican sentiment H.R. 1042, the “Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act,”
Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) told the House Energy and Commerce energy, climate and grid security subcommittee that the best way to encourage a U.S. uranium-fuel industry was to “[p]rovide the certainty that Russian fuel will not be available to the United States for a long time.”
The bill on Tuesday afternoon passed the subcommittee on a barely bipartisan vote of 18-12. A lone Democrat, Rep. Kim Shrier (D-Wash.), broke ranks to support the legislation, which now needs to be approved by the full committee. The full committee had not scheduled a vote on the bill as of Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was set Wednesday to vote on Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2023.
That bill does not ban Russian uranium but calls, among other things, for the Department of Energy to create what Manchin and cosponsors Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) called a “nuclear fuel security program” that will “increase the quantity of LEU [low enriched uranium] and HALEU [high assay low enriched uranium] produced by U.S. nuclear energy companies.”
The latter is low enriched uranium that is about 19.75% uranium-235 by mass, the upper boundary of what is considered low enriched uranium. Some proposed reactor designs that are in the early stages of research and development require such fuel.
The Senate energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Manchin chairs, was scheduled to begin a business meeting at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday. Aside from the bill, the committee planned to consider other legislation and a slate of nominees.
