Russia limiting exports of enriched uranium to US, potentially endangering nuclear industry

“We don’t have enough enriched uranium here,” Gadomski said in an interview. “They should have been stockpiling enriched uranium in anticipation of this happening.”

@Bob Sykes: Preach, brother.

@VXXC, @Freddo: Sad but true.

GDP

…Is a contorted metric weakly related to reality.

According to open-source researchers using video documentation

Well… one needs more than a single grain of salt with that.

Russia has been losing more than 100 tanks and roughly 220 artillery pieces per month on average.

And 100,000 soldiers, the same stories used to tell. Yet somehow it did not add up to the observable results.

In 1803, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ended 14 months of peace in Europe because he could not afford to fund his military based on French revenues alone

Oh dear. This only lacks the spooky story of Spanish Armada being a crusade of Spanish Inquisition to conquer and purge poor innocent Puritan England for heroically protecting the Dutch… or Hitler’s secret plans for conquest of Brazil (after of failing to occupy the entire France).

Yes, Russia has only 2 Rotary Forges. But America only has one at Watervliet Arsenal. It’s old and due to be replaced in 2026. Now, as it happens, Watervliet is in the midst of a stunning modernization set to be ready in…2038. Truly we can move so fast when we need…but Russia of course can move faster.

Here, have a study of the known shortfalls of our cannon manufacturing as of May 2023.

Mirage of conquest indeed.

Russia’s real economy, the production of things like electricity, steel, food… is at least 70% that of the US. It is 4 to 5 times larger than Germany’s, and 10 times larger than UK’s. For the data see,

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1549554660184231936.html

From another viewpoint, Russia has more engineers and scientists than does the US. Engineers work in manufacturing and infrastructure. So that nugget of information suggests that Russia’s real economy might be larger than the US’.

Russia has the fourth largest economy in the world. It is nearly autarkic: all critical components are made in Russia. It makes its own chips and computers, gun barrels, tanks, commercial airliners, etc., from scratch.

And then, of course, there is China, whose economy dwarfs the US’. Go to YouTube and look up the channel “Inside China Business.” Listen, and weep for the US and Europe. The party is over. Time to go home.

I don’t trust the people who write for FP, but I notice that they sometimes stumble across the facts. Usually they pick themselves up and proceed as if nothing had happened.

From U.S. Reactors Still Run on Russian Uranium:

• [Russia] continues to be the biggest player globally in providing nuclear fuel, accounting for over 40 percent of the global market, including to Europe and especially to the United States, the biggest single buyer of enriched Russian uranium.
• What’s more, Russia has a complete monopoly on the production of advanced nuclear fuel that will be needed to power the next generation of nuclear reactors,

[The article goes on to say that the Morally Virtuous West is already Taking Concrete Steps to save the world from the orc-like Russians.]

I doubt that Russia needs to resort to conquest. Russia has a lot of valuable resource. They can figure out how to trade them, with or without Western help.

I think the Russians are hard-nosed chess-players. I don’t have to like them, but I do have to respect them. I also have some hope that Putin will stand up before the world and give a Russian version of the 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech.

That seemed like a slow rate, so I went googling. This CIA document, Transfer of Austrian Gun-Barrel Forging Technology to the USSR, says “For example, a tank or artillery barrel can be forged in 10 minutes or less.”