The state owned Rosatom Corp’s purchase of 51% of the Canadian company Uranium One Inc will put it in a position to control about half of the U.S. uranium production. The Russian company which recently took charge of uranium mines in Wyoming is barred from exporting produced material.
The sale of the majority stake in Oranium One was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. in the month of October and by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the month of November.
Nick Carter the vice president for Uranium of Ux Consulting said that the federal oversight of the nuclear industry should not be cause for concern. He did not think that the Russian company controlling the uranium production would cause any trouble for national security.
His opinion seems to be backed by the statistics that America is currently importing about 80% of the uranium that it uses and that Russia is actually one of its largest supplying nations.
The Wyoming mine is not the reason why the Russian company sought to buy Uranium One. As per Julian Steyn from Energy Resources International Inc it was the assets in Kazakhstan which made the deal more attractive for the Russians. The price of the element has risen from $40 a pound to $60 a pound in the last six months.