Why EU sanctions don’t include Russian nuclear industry

DW, Ashutosh Pandey 19 Jul 23

While the EU is on course to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels, it’s struggling to kick its nuclear habit. That’s because Russia’s nuclear industry still wields huge clout.

Less than a week after the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo aircraft, belonging to Russian cargo airline Volga-Dnepr, flew across Belarus and Poland before landing in Slovakia.

The mysterious jet taking off from Russia took flight trackers by surprise as only a day ago the European Union had closed its airspace to Russian airlines and private jets in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Soon, it became clear that the plane was exempted from the ban as it was shipping critical nuclear fuel for Slovakia’s four Russian-designed nuclear reactors.

About a month later, a Russian aircraft of the same make flew even further into neighboring Hungary again to deliver nuclear fuel. Much like Slovakia, Hungary is fully dependent on atomic fuel from Russia to power its nuclear power plants.

The twin flights were yet another symptom of Europe’s decadeslong binge on Russian energy. Nuclear fuel sourced from Russia’s state-owned nuclear agency Rosatom and its units helps generate nearly half the total electricity produced in Slovakia and Hungary and more than a third in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

While the EU is on course to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels, it’s struggling to kick its Russian nuclear habit. As a result, hundreds of millions of euros continue to flow into Moscow’s coffers.

The bloc has found it politically unpalatable to impose sanctions on the Russian civil nuclear industry……………………….

The Rosatom leverage

The EU’s foot-dragging stems from the outsized influence the Russian nuclear industry enjoys globally. Russia accounts for more than 45% of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity, delivering atomic fuel to nuclear power plants in several countries, including in the US, which despite its harsh sanctions regime against Moscow continues to pay $1 billion (€912 million) a year to source fuel from Rosatom.

Almost 20% of raw uranium imported by the EU comes from Russia, Euratom Supply Agency data shows, with another 23% coming from Kazakhstan, where Rosatom is a major player. Russia also supplies a large proportion of the fuel rods for European nuclear power plants.

“Rosatom is one of the few companies in the world that has mastered the entire nuclear fuel cycle, i.e. enrichment, fuel production and also reprocessing,” said Sonja Schmid, professor of science and technology studies at Virginia Tech University and the author of “Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry.”

Central and Eastern European countries are particularly reliant on Russian fuel. There are a total of 18 Russian-designed nuclear reactors — in Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Finland — that currently run exclusively on Russian fuel and rely on Russian technologies.

Additionally, Rosatom has had a long association with French utility EDF with the two signing a “long-term cooperation agreement” in 2021 to further boost ties……………………………………………………………… more https://www.dw.com/en/why-eu-sanctions-dont-include-russian-nuclear-industry/a-66275352