> As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply.
It's not taboo, the answer is just extremely simple: mining needs people willing to work in a dangerous and exhausting field, so when practical, rich countries tend to prefer outsourcing this (capitalism does not tend to reward ethics). It's very practical for uranium because nuclear reactors need a tiny volume which is trivial to ship and to store. Most countries with a nuclear program keep a stockpile of multiple years.
Mining uranium in other places is very feasible, as are other more expensive options like extracting it out of the ocean. After all, with nuclear the cost of the fuel is a tiny amount of the actual cost of power generation. This is not happening because there's really no need to. In the past, there have been uranium mines in pretty much every european country, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country#Euro...
(Refining/processing is a different story. But that's more obviously a "money/care" problem - there's no possible physical constraint for refining/processing as there could be for mining.)
It's not taboo, the answer is just extremely simple: mining needs people willing to work in a dangerous and exhausting field, so when practical, rich countries tend to prefer outsourcing this (capitalism does not tend to reward ethics). It's very practical for uranium because nuclear reactors need a tiny volume which is trivial to ship and to store. Most countries with a nuclear program keep a stockpile of multiple years.
Mining uranium in other places is very feasible, as are other more expensive options like extracting it out of the ocean. After all, with nuclear the cost of the fuel is a tiny amount of the actual cost of power generation. This is not happening because there's really no need to. In the past, there have been uranium mines in pretty much every european country, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country#Euro...
(Refining/processing is a different story. But that's more obviously a "money/care" problem - there's no possible physical constraint for refining/processing as there could be for mining.)