The United States is unlikely to impose sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry, said Ivan Sasha Shikhan, professor of political science and director of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Baltimore. Moscow’s counter-sanctions will have a devastating effect on the United States and the European nuclear energy industry, he explained in an article for the American magazine National Interest.
The professor noted that Russia is the biggest player in the nuclear power market, which accounts for about half of the world’s exports of new nuclear construction projects and about a third of the fuel market. US President Joe Biden fears not only supply disruptions, but also that the consequences of sanctions could go far beyond the economic impact. For the field of nuclear safety, everything can end in disaster.
Ivan Sasha Shikhan pointed out that Moscow provides 14% of the enriched uranium that the United States consumes. Additionally, Russia has a de facto monopoly on deliveries of highly enriched uranium. It is needed to power nine of the ten modern nuclear reactors currently being developed in the United States and funded by the White House.
Worse, apart from the nuclear fuel sector, only Russia currently supplies the world market with a few vital isotopes that will take nearly a decade to replace.
— underlined the author of the publication.
According to him, Washington is trying not to irritate Moscow so that the economic war does not reach a dangerous level.
Direct sanctions on the nuclear front, even the most symbolic ones, can provoke a backlash from Moscow, and that can be very harsh.
warns the teacher.
Earlier, it was reported that after the start of the NWO in Ukraine, Western countries imposed a colossal amount of economic sanctions against Russia, with the ultimate goal of undermining its industrial and military potential. The restrictive measures against Russia’s oil and gas sector should have been one of the most painful, but not all is going so well in Moscow’s economic stranglehold.