I find stories in many places for my blog posts. Nuclear power is deeply connected to local politics in debates over siting nuclear power plants, national politics with respect to national sources of power and international politics in treaties and trade. I generally get my stories from news sources that deal with nuclear matters although sometimes stories break into general news coverage.
Uranium One started as a Canadian uranium mining company that was formed in 2005 with the merger of two existing companies. It has international holdings including a uranium mine in Utah. Also in 2005, the head of UrAsia Energy (UE), another Canadian mining company headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. and former U.S. President Bill Clinton traveled to Kazakhstan to meet with the leader of that uranium rich country. Following the visit, UE made substantial investments in Kazakhstan uranium resources with Kazatomprom. Also following the visit, the head of UE made major contributions to the Clinton foundation. In 2007, Uranium One obtained a controlling interest in UE.
In mid-2009, ARMZ Uranium Holding Company, which is part of the Russian government controlled Rosatom company, acquired about seventeen percent of the shares of Uranium One in return for fifty percent ownership of the Karatau uranium mining project which was a joint venture with Kazatomprom. In 2010, Uranium one acquired fifty percent in another Kazakhstan mining project and forty nine percent of a mining project in two ARMZ mines. In return, ARMZ increased its share of Uranium One to fifty one percent.
This deal required the approval of Kazakh regulators, Canadian investment regulators, the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments, and the Toronto and Johannesburg stock exchanges. In early 2013, ARMZ assumed total control of Uranium One. This move also required the approval of the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments. Finally in late 2013, Rosatom carried out a reorganization which removed the involvement of ARMS and Rosatom assumed direct control of Uranium One.
This deal transferred the ownership of huge amounts of uranium resources from North American to Russia. This is part of Russian activities around the globe as they work to acquire control of as much of the world's uranium resources as possible. Their intent is to be able to wield the kind of international political pressure that they now exert over many Europe countries with Russia gas and oil. The European Union recently approved a deal which would allow Russia to supply nuclear fuel to a Hungarian power reactor for the next ten years.
The reason that this story broke into the international media is because of the fact the during the time these transactions were taking place, Hillary Clinton was the U.S. Secretary of State. Critics of Clinton as she runs for U.S. President have suggested that she exerted improper influences on the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments which is part of the U.S. State Department. The critics say that she helped make the Russian takeover of Uranium One possible because of donations to the Clinton foundation. So far, this is all supposition. Clinton has said that all the Uranium One work was done by staffers at the U.S. State department and that she had no involvement at all. These are serious allegations but no proof has been offered by her critics. A review of State Department records with respect to the review of Uranium One deal by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments may shed some light on the validity of the allegations.
In the meantime, it has been reported by people involved with Uranium One that some of the details in the big news story about this matter are incorrect including the claim that Bill Clinton was involved in the Kazakhstan deals in any way. Critics of the story say that there were eight other agencies beside State with representative on the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments and that the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission also approved the deal with the Russians.
