Financing the war in Ukraine on the one hand, buying uranium from Russia on the other… These revelations by Greenpeace, which has been able to observe several deliveries of Russian uranium to France in recent months, highlight the difficult independence French energy, even nuclear.
Unlike gas, oil or coal, no embargo has been decided on uranium.
What is uranium and why does France need it?
Uranium is the centerpiece of nuclear power.
Extracted from the Earth's subsoil, it allows after numerous transformations (including material enrichment) the operation of nuclear power plants.
"The pellets (
of enriched uranium
) will stay between four and five years in the reactor and undergo nuclear fission reactions", explains EDF on its website.
After this time, it must be replaced.
If France needs uranium, it is because its energy mix – which ultimately supplies electricity to households – is mainly based on nuclear power.
There are 56 nuclear reactors in the country for 18 power plants located throughout the territory.
Normally, nearly 70% of the electricity supplied in France comes from this sector.
The closure for maintenance of several reactors, due in particular to corrosion problems, is currently reducing this share.
Why do people buy it in Russia?
Greenpeace was able to observe, on Tuesday, the delivery in the port of Dunkirk (North) of "several dozen drums of enriched uranium and ten containers of natural uranium from Russia".
This is not the first time: the NGO had already observed in September the same ship, "spotted several times in recent months in the context of nuclear trade with Russia", unloading in the same port dozens of barrels of 'uranium.
“These imports did not stop with the war in Ukraine,” notes Pauline Boyer, in charge of the Nuclear and Energy Transition campaigns at Greenpeace.
Regarding the most recent delivery, the constructor of nuclear power plants and fuel supplier Framatome, a subsidiary of EDF, simply specified on Tuesday evening that it was a "delivery of material for the manufacture of nuclear fuels" to from its factory in Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme).
This fuel is then intended for its “customers and in particular the French nuclear fleet”.
“Since the beginning of the 2000s, nearly half of the uranium (45%) used in France comes from the Russian sphere of influence, in this case from Kazakhstan,” noted Greenpeace in March.
But Russia has a large stranglehold on the conversion (purification and transformation) and enrichment (for use in nuclear power plants, for example) of uranium: according to figures from the European Atomic Energy Community ( Euratom), the Russian Rosatom had in the European Union in 2021 25% of the conversion market and 31% of that of enrichment.
Why is this a problem?
If France can import uranium from Russia, it is because it is not subject to any embargo, neither now nor planned, as it can be for oil, gas or coal.
In April, the European Parliament had called in a resolution for the imposition of a “total and immediate” embargo on several raw materials, including Russian “nuclear fuel”… without this being followed.
“These contracts are signed with Rosatom, a state enterprise which directly serves the geopolitical interests of Vladimir Putin and which is the same one which occupies the Ukrainian power plant in Zaporijjia”, deplores Pauline Boyer.
In addition to the question of consistency – between sanctioning Russia on the one hand and financing it on the other – questions of the independence of French nuclear power arise.
France no longer extracts uranium on its territory since the closure of the Jouac mine, in Haute-Vienne, in 2001. "These imports link French energy independence to the geopolitical situation in the world", warns Pauline Boyer .
Russia's domination of the enriched uranium market may raise fears of dependence also in the nuclear sector, while European countries dependent on Russian gas are now paying the price.
“Until now, nuclear fuel and services have been exempted from sanctions, but the situation could change,” Euratom warned this summer in its annual report.
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, was also moved in August: “It is not normal that there are still no sanctions against Rosatom.
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