VIENNA, Sept 19 (Askume) – The Russian and Western nuclear industries are interdependent, a situation that has allowed Russia to escape European sanctions, an industry report said on Thursday.
The annual status report on the world nuclear power industry says reducing dependence on the West would increase costs.
Some of the five EU countries that have Russian-designed VVER reactors and use Russian fuel are looking for alternative fuel sources as Russia plans a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, many of these countries stockpiled Russian fuel last year, leading to a surge in imports.
The report said some Western companies rely heavily on Russia’s state-owned Rosatom to build new reactors abroad and sell their parts.
“Interdependence between Russia and its Western partners remains critical,” the report said.
A subsidiary of France’s national power company EDF said that “the 13 nuclear power reactor construction sites started outside China in the past five years were built by Rosatom, so parts suppliers such as French Arabel Turbines have no other foreign customers” apart from the Russian Atomic Energy Corporation.
It also cites so-called instrumentation and control technology provided by Germany’s Siemens Energy , often described as the “central nervous system” of nuclear power plants.(ENR1n.DE) and France’s Framatome (majority owned by EDF).
“The close industrial and market interdependence between the Russian and Western nuclear industries explains at least to some extent Europe’s hesitation to impose restrictions on the nuclear industry,” the report says.
“Efforts to reduce or eliminate dependence on Russian natural uranium, conversion and enrichment services would increase costs,” the report said.
The report, which outlines global nuclear power generation last year, predicts that nuclear power generation will grow by 2.2% to 2,602 net terawatt hours in 2022, although its share of total commercial generation will fall slightly from 9.18% to 9.15%.
