Thanks for bringing this up. I am not surprised though. From what I remember, with uranium it is less a matter of if it is there or not and more a matter of how concentrated it is. Wikipedia says ("uranium") "The ultimate supply of uranium is very large. It is estimated that for a ten times increase in price, the supply of uranium that can be economically mined is increased 300 times."

Sweden for example, has uranium but to my knowledge no uranium mines. It is low concentration so instead uranium is imported. Mainly from Canada and Russia if my memory serves. The advantage of having the environmental effects on someone elses backyard is also a factor. There are probably crisis plans in some cold war storage on how to get some uranium mining going quickly in case of a heated situation between east and west.

Anyway, if they are mining their own uranium it does a lot of sense to have their own enrichment. On could probably question the economics of mining their own uranium, but I reccon it is more a political question anyhow.

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