The revenue from sales of Russian nuclear fuel to the EU and US almost tripled between 2021 and 2023 despite sanctions and the war in Ukraine, a Novaya Europe investigation has revealed.
Between them, the EU and US spent some €2.2 billion on Russian nuclear fuel cells last year, having spent just €800 million in 2021. The huge spike was largely due to uranium prices increasing 3.5 times in the past five years and higher demand for fuel cells for nuclear power plants due to attempts by many European countries to reduce their dependence on hydrocarbons.
Another reason for the increase, according to the investigation, was concern that any attempts to sideline Russian atomic energy corporation Rosatom’s trade in nuclear fuels would send shockwaves through the global uranium market. Rosatom is currently the world leader in terms of uranium enrichment (35–36%), second in terms of uranium mining (14–15%) and third in fuel production (17%).
In May, the US became the first country to impose any form of ban on Russian nuclear fuels, but even then it made room for workarounds, allowing companies to flout the ban if they could prove that no alternative source of enriched uranium was available. As a result, Russia still supplied a quarter of the enriched uranium imported by the US annually, the data showed.
Europe was even more dependent on Russian nuclear fuel than the US, with economic think tank Bruegel estimating that Rosatom currently enjoyed a 30% share of the European enriched uranium market, given that 20 European nuclear power plants still rely on fuel supplies from Russia.
The investigation concluded that Russia would continue to earn foreign revenue from its atomic energy corporation as Rosatom’s construction of two new reactors at the Paks II Nuclear Power Plant in Hungary was approved by the European Commission in 2023, long after the outbreak of the war, which will guarantee it significant revenue for at least the next decade.