Nuclear dependence

Europe must cut off Russian nuclear supply routes, From Ecodefense, Russia, Beyond Nuclear 30 May 22

Europe needs a plan in place for cutting ties with Russia’s nuclear giant Rosatom, says 2021 Right Livelihood Award winner and co-chairman of Ecodefense Vladimir Slivyak.

With the European Union tightening its sanctions against Russia, banning Russian imports of oil, gas, and coal has emerged as one powerful tool to starve the Kremlin’s war machine of funding it needs to continue its brutal aggression in Ukraine.

But one other major source of Russia’s revenue in Europe has largely remained unnoticed: Russia’s supplies of nuclear fuel and services to European nuclear power plants.

Seeking to close this gap in Europe’s concerted action against the war in Ukraine and to provide a comprehensive picture of the union’s reliance on Russian nuclear technology, environmentalists Patricia Lorenz, of Friends of the Earth Europe, and Vladimir Slivyak, a 2021 Right Livelihood Award laureate and co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ecodefense, jointly presented over Zoom Russian Grip on EU Nuclear Power – an overview of Russia’s businesses and supply chains serving the European nuclear market.

The report comes on the heels of the European Parliament’s resolution demanding a full embargo on Russian nuclear fuel as well as oil, gas, and coal, and as Moscow’s war reveals the terrifyingly irresponsible actions at the hands of Russian troops at or near the sites of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.

Through its uranium-producing mines, the fuel manufacturing subsidiary TVEL, and a number of other enterprises – including the German firm NUKEM and the Czech-based Škoda JS – as well as ties with France’s Framatome, Russia’s nuclear giant Rosatom earns billions supplying uranium, fuel assemblies, and maintenance, storage and transport services to nuclear companies and power plants in European countries. This includes fuel deliveries to Soviet-built nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

According to a late April report carried by Rosatom’s corporate outlet Strana Rosatom, the corporation’s total foreign revenue in 2021 rose 20.3% year on year, reaching $8.9 bn. In the first three months of 2022, Rosatom’s foreign earnings grew by 13%. TVEL’s revenue from nuclear fuel exports stood at $0.7 bn in 2020, said the corporation’s annual report for that year.…………………………………..

……….. Ecodefense’s Slivyak:

“Europe must stop its cooperation with Rosatom – stop participating in joint projects, including building nuclear power plants. Stop buying nuclear fuel from Rosatom,” he said.

…………. “A plan to replace nuclear energy with energy from other sources must be created, and the [Russia-dependent] operating reactors must be shut down,” Slivyak said. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/05/29/nuclear-dependence/