Greenpeace claims French uranium is being sent to Russia

(Patria) - Environmental group Greenpeace said on Sunday that France is sending reprocessed uranium to Russia for treatment so it can be reused, despite the war in Ukraine, AFP reported.

The group claims that, although legal, the trade is "immoral" as many nations seek to tighten sanctions on the Russian government for its invasion launched in 2022.
Greenpeace members on Saturday filmed the loading of about ten containers with radioactive markings onto a cargo ship in the port of Dunkirk on the English Channel, the NGO said.

The ship Mikhail Dudin, registered in Panama, is regularly used to transport enriched or natural uranium from France to St. Petersburg, according to Greenpeace.

But Saturday's shipment was the first of reprocessed uranium observed in the last three years, they added.

"It is not illegal, but it is immoral," Pauline Boyer, head of the nuclear campaign for Greenpeace France, told AFP. "France should terminate its contracts with Rosatom, the state-owned company that has been occupying the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia for three years," she added.

French state energy giant Electricité de France (EDF) signed a contract worth 600 million euros in 2018 with Rosatom subsidiary Tenex for the recycling of reprocessed uranium. These operations have not been affected by international sanctions due to the war in Ukraine.

Rosatom operates the only facility in the world, in Seversk, Siberia, capable of performing key parts of converting reprocessed uranium into enriched reprocessed uranium.

Uranium can be reprocessed so that it can be re-enriched and reused. Given that uranium prices on international markets are rising again, it is increasingly profitable for energy companies to seek reprocessing of spent fuel.

Only about ten percent of the re-enriched uranium that Russia sends back to France is used in its Cruas nuclear power plant in southern France, the only one in the country that can use enriched reprocessed uranium, according to Greenpeace.

The French Ministry of Energy and EDF did not respond to AFP's questions about the shipment or the trade.

France ordered EDF to halt uranium trade with Rosatom in 2022 when Greenpeace first revealed the contracts after the Russian invasion.
France said in March 2024 that it was "seriously" considering the possibility of building its own conversion facility to produce enriched reprocessed uranium.