The US bought it because it was cheap. We were only spending $1B a year, maybe it won’t hurt too much. In any case, I’m down with cutting everything off from Russia, down to the penny.
The United States’ dependence on Russian uranium dates back to a 1993 nuclear disarmament program soon after the Cold War ended. Under the program, dubbed Megatons to Megawatts, the United States bought 500 metric tons of uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads and converted it to nuclear reactor fuel.
At the time, many policymakers in Washington hailed the deal as a win-win: Moscow got desperately needed cash in exchange for giving U.S. utilities cheap fuel and placating arms-control advocates. But today, some experts say the program had the unintended consequence of delivering such inexpensive Russian fuel that U.S. and European companies struggled to compete.
The US bought it because it was cheap. We were only spending $1B a year, maybe it won’t hurt too much. In any case, I’m down with cutting everything off from Russia, down to the penny.
Also: there was a post-cold-war effort to blend down fissionable material from Russian nuclear weapons to use it in reactors.