Russia and economic war by the west #3

Arrow wrote:
Why is the US not self-sufficient in enriched Uranium? They produce so little of it. They made large quantities of enriched Uranium for thermonuclear warheads during the Cold War? They have no centrifuges, poor technology?

Because ultimately the US is a conquered nation and nukes are the ultimate expression of sovereignty there is.

America spends trillions fighting useless wars, do you really think they can't brute force their way to a bajillion warheads if they really wanted to?

lyle6 wrote:America spends trillions fighting useless wars, do you really think they can't brute force their way to a bajillion warheads if they really wanted to?

You underestimate the industrial rot plaguing the US. It is quite telling that the only significant uranium enrichment facility they have is designed and operated by URENCO. A European company.

Amid global backlash over its war in Ukraine, Russia continues leveraging energy as a geopolitical tool, also cutting gas supplies to Austria—ending a 60-year agreement that fulfills 80% of its demand—citing a legal dispute.

Russia has a long history of honouring contracts... even when they did not benefit from doing so... this situation with Austria is a case where an Austrian company took Russia to a European court... and won. The compensation they were awarded by the biased one eyed European court the Austrian company decided to deduct from the money they were paying for their gas supplies.

Russia never agreed to that and are stopping gas supplies simply because Austria stopped paying for the gas being delivered.

Hardly Russia using energy as a geopolitical tool... like the west has done for the last 200 odd years...

Bloomberg noted that Russia's move targets a key U.S. vulnerability in the nuclear fuel cycle, as it controls nearly half of global uranium enrichment capacity and supplied over a quarter of U.S. enriched fuel last year.

The US has said it wants to stop buying Russian resources and has set 2028 for the date when they completely stop buying, so all Russia is doing is helping them move that date of independence day forward for them a little... the US should be thanking them.

Urenco plans a 15% capacity increase by 2027, citing the urgency of reducing reliance on unstable foreign sources.

Russian supply has been completely stable until the US started fucking with them and supporting a nazi power on their border and a conflict for the last three years.

Major U.S. nuclear operators, including Constellation Energy and Centrus Energy, have waivers to import Russian fuel, but Centrus, the top U.S. trader of Russian uranium, is exploring alternatives in case Russia's supplier, Tenex, fails to meet its obligations.

Why do they word it like that? Fails to meet its obligations. Can all of US sanctions be worded that way too?

America is an unreliable business partner because they violate contracts and bully other allies to do the same.

America spends trillions fighting useless wars, do you really think they can't brute force their way to a bajillion warheads if they really wanted to?

It is not a question of will or money. They outsourced a capacity they had and now it is gone and to get it back takes time and lots of money.

Not impossible but it is going to hurt for a while... a little like the pain they have been trying to inflict on Russia the last decade or so.

lancelot wrote:
You underestimate the industrial rot plaguing the US. It is quite telling that the only significant uranium enrichment facility they have is designed and operated by URENCO. A European company.

America pumped hundreds of billions into SpaceX and grew its space capabilities immensely seemingly overnight.

When money is not an object a lot of things become possible. Sure it will come around to bite them in the ass, eventually, but not soon enough.

No way it is that easy. SpaceX is using NASA experience and highly qualified personnel. Musk did not develop the tech and did not train the workforce.
Everything was set up by NASA and the government. Basically, SpaceX is a privatization of this government activity.

When it comes to nuclear reprocessing the US simply lost its capability as HQP drifted away (died from old age, retired and never trained). France
maintained reprocessing and is thus stepping in to carry the load. America's neoliberal market ideology is lunatic grade nonsense. It follows the
insane asylum "logic" of one typical economist who claimed that "if we run out of some element (e.g. copper) we will make some more". Maybe
in picogram amounts in particle accelerators making the cost simply beyond the reach of any civilization and any amount of money printing.
This "economics" speaks for itself.