Russia’s Rosatom is the world’s largest exporter of nuclear reactors and maintains an almost monopoly position on the fuel used to generate electricity. The company has not yet been sanctioned by the United States or Europe.
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In Ukraine, these reactors provide more than half of all electricity and also about two-fifths of electricity production in the area from Finland to Bulgaria. Fuel supply for these power plants was quite a routine matter. However, this ended when President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reported.
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European countries are thus facing another energy challenge. The continent is now trying to ban Russian fossil fuels, but it is also necessary to find a way to reduce its dependence on trade in nuclear fuel from Russia, which has been severely sanctioned and many in the region want to isolate it even more.
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For Moscow, nuclear exports are an important geopolitical tool. It uses state money to expand Rosatom’s operations to include new reactors in China, India, Iran and Turkey. None of these countries has yet imposed sanctions on Russia.
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Nuclear fuel differs from commodities such as gas or coal. It must conform to the prescribed shape with high accuracy, according to the licensing requirements set by the safety authorities. Efforts to sever relations with Russia could jeopardize the supply of electricity to almost 100 million Europeans in countries that rely on nuclear power plants as their largest source of clean energy.
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The Czechia also has a partial problem
There are two nuclear power plants in the Czech Republic, Temelín and Dukovany. Temelín takes fuel from the Russian company AO TVEL and currently has stocks for two years of operation. However, the articles used here are also manufactured by suppliers elsewhere in the world. But the problem is with Dukovany. The fuel for its reactors is produced in the world only by the Russian state Tvel. However, this power plant has reserves for three years.
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Last year, nuclear power plants accounted for 36.6 percent of electricity generation in the Czech Republic. They were thus the largest domestic producer. In second place were lignite-fired power plants, which produced 35.1 percent of electricity.
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Finding a replacement for a Russian fuel supplier is not easy at all and can take years. Finland, where Fortum Oyj operates two Soviet-made reactors 90 kilometers east of Helsinki, is trying to find an alternative to Russia. In the 1990s, it signed an agreement with British Nuclear Fuel, now owned by Westinghouse Electric. In the end, however, it remained at more favorable Rosatom prices.
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Recently, the US Department of Energy and Ukraine began working with Westinghouse to remove Rosatom’s fuel from 15 reactors in Ukraine, which still produce more than half of the country’s electricity. Westinghouse’s fuel now generates electricity in six Ukrainian reactors.
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Nuclear engineer José Emeterio Gutiérrez, who previously led Westinghouse’s efforts to compete with Rosatom, said the company’s activities in Ukraine began thanks to government agreements. According to him, however, the peculiarities of the nuclear fuel market, together with the legacy of Soviet technology, make it difficult to diversify.
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Billions of crowns and years of waiting
Few countries have the extensive infrastructure needed to convert and enrich uranium ore into metal, which must then be pelletized and embedded in zirconium fuel rods with a safety tolerance measured in millimeters. The catalog of international regulations ensures that the material is not misused for the production of weapons.
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It takes at least five years for a country to obtain a new supplier’s license. And up to ten years before he can start accepting custom-made fuel, Gutiérrez said. Licensed fuel in one country cannot be automatically transferred to another country due to regulations and differences in reactor design. Russian-made reactor operators in Eastern Europe, many of which are at the end of their lives, do not have to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to change their fuel source.
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Growing demand for a stable energy supply, together with the EU’s decision to label nuclear energy as green, could help speed up the process. Slovakia, which has four Russian-made nuclear power units, formed a fuel consortium last month to share the costs. The United States is also involved and promised last week to help the Czech Republic provide fuel for its six Russian-made reactors. However, Finland warns that moving away from Rosatom will take time and take three to four years before the Russian fuel currently used in Finland can be fully replaced.
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