Brussels will this week set out legal measures to put a complete stop to Russian fossil fuel imports into the EU.
But it has delayed plans to wean the bloc off a smaller but far more tricky reliance: Russian nuclear technology.
Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, EU countries have paid more than €200bn to Russia for fuel. Coal and oil imports have been sanctioned and gas should be phased out by 2027. Nuclear fuel accounted for only about €700mn of the €22bn paid to Russia in 2024, according to the think-tank Bruegel. But officials have warned that the risk to EU energy security is huge if Moscow suddenly cut off supplies.
Tackling Russian nuclear imports is far more complicated.
“Technically speaking the uranium supply chain is very complex”, said Ben McWilliams, affiliate fellow in climate and energy at Bruegel. Therefore a gradual phaseout would be needed, he said.
The EU has 101 nuclear reactors of which 19 are Soviet “VVER” designs. The bloc relies on Russia for about 20-25 per cent of its natural, converted and enriched uranium. Reactors across the EU often buy in Russian spare parts or require maintenance expertise.
The European Commission ideally would like the European nuclear sector to be free of Russian imports by the 2030s, EU officials have said. But in a document published on Friday it warned that €241bn of investment was needed to build out the domestic nuclear supply chain.
EU ministers will discuss nuclear investments at a meeting on Monday.
The move to phase out Russian imports is in line with efforts in other western countries. Canada has banned all Russian uranium imports and the UK has put 35 per cent tariffs on Russian enriched uranium. The US last May passed a law to stop Russian uranium imports from 2028. In April 2023, G7 countries agreed to develop nuclear capacities in order to move away from Russian fuel.
But Russia’s dominance of the sector poses a severe challenge. “[Russian state nuclear company] Rosatom is one of the biggest companies in all sectors of nuclear markets,” said Dmitry Gorchakov, nuclear adviser at the non-governmental organisation Bellona.
The move also coincides with a renaissance in interest in nuclear power in Europe to reach stretching climate targets, adding to pressure on supply chains.
Phaseout plans face strong opposition from Hungary and Slovakia, two of the five member states with VVER reactors, alongside the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Finland.
In a joint statement, Hungary and Slovakia’s ministers for EU affairs said that the 2030s phaseout ambition would lead to “higher and more volatile prices” and threatened the security of their energy supplies.
Officials in Brussels say that with a slow phaseout, jumps in prices throughout the fuel cycle should be avoided.
The EU has been working since 2022 on diversifying its sources of uranium to countries such as Kazakhstan, Canada and Niger.
But instability in Niger, the world’s seventh-biggest uranium producer, has raised some concerns among EU officials about security of imports and competition from other players.
More troubling is the conversion of mined uranium into a more easily handled gas, a relatively low-margin and dirty business that EU countries have been happy to outsource.
The challenge would be building up an EU conversion industry that could compete with Rosatom’s vastly lower prices, EU officials said. Investments into conversion capacities were “lagging”, Friday’s document said.
Russia also dominates 55 per cent of the global enrichment market, the next step after conversion in which the number of reactive uranium-235 isotopes is increased.
Orano and Urenco, two European companies, make up about 40 per cent of global enrichment capacity, alongside the Russians and Chinese.
Boris Schucht, chief executive of Urenco, said that the company had already started refurbishing existing enrichment centrifuges in the EU “which was originally not intended” to meet increased demand.
He is most concerned about circumvention of any potential trade measures. “We can already see here and there Russia selling volumes to China and China selling volumes that would not otherwise have been available in the rest of the world,” he said.
The parts and knowledge needed to maintain the remaining Soviet reactors, the earliest of which went into use in 1977, is another problem. Building up the skills and confidence among smaller businesses such as welders or pipe manufacturers to produce for the nuclear sector, with its steep safety requirements, is a long process.
The biggest “elephant in the room”, said Bruegel’s McWilliams, were Hungary’s plants in Paks, 100km south of Budapest.
Hungary has long doubled down on Russian nuclear technology, opting in 2014 to build two new Rosatom-designed power blocks, doubling the capacity of its 1980s four-unit nuclear plant at Paks. The two plants together should supply up to three-quarters of the country’s electricity needs.
Despite pressure from the EU and talks with French and US suppliers, Hungary has yet to attempt a switch away from Russian nuclear fuel and parts. EU officials say this is the most sensitive issue to deal with, particularly given Hungary’s typically pro-Russia stance.
The commission has indicated that it would use trade measures to phase out Russian nuclear supplies. These would only require a weighted majority of member states to approve, rather than sanctions which need unanimous approval and risk being vetoed by Hungary and Slovakia.
Sama Bilbao y León, director-general of the World Nuclear Association, said that revenue raised from tariffs should be funnelled back into the industry as an incentive to build up the supply chain.
Frédéric Lelièvre, a senior executive vice-president at Framatome, a subsidiary of state-controlled power utility EDF, told a conference last week that Europe must speed up its domestic industry: “We need to have these facilities and with the IP [intellectual property] in Europe to make sure we can deploy the programmes we want to deploy and not rely on anybody else.”
Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.
Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here
