…with the Russian state-owned Rosatom being the biggest (and cheapest) builder of nuclear plants abroad? Occam’s razor applies here, I think; no need for conspiracy theories.
That is an common misunderstanding. You can't interchange one nuclear fuel for an other. Fuel rods are designed and built explicitly for the kind of plant that will use it, which mean that the fuel mostly used will be for the plant that is mostly built. Guess who holds the patents to the fuel rods design for a specific nuclear power plant design.
Uranium mining however is pretty diversified. about 1/4 come from Canada, 1/4 from Australia, 1/4 from Russia and 1/4 from Africa. It then get processed into a powder, and then shipped to a fuel construction facility. One of the larger site of fuel rod construction is actually Sweden, which has also recently started to expand construction for fuel to Rosatom reactors.
Creating fuel rods from Uranium refined powder is however not the biggest problem that the world has.
I didn't say rods were interchangeable. Also, between powder and tablets lies the most complicated and expensive process - enrichment. I'm not aware of the current way of things, but about 10y ago US was importing fuel, mainly from Russia.
