Will Rosatom be able to maintain its position in the European Union market?

Brussels is persistently trying to transform the sanctions war against Russia into a “nuclear” one. Rosatom was supposed to be included in the next, 12th package of EU restrictive measures against the Russian Federation for the first time, but tiny Slovakia, where “pro-Russian forces” came to power, opposed it. Will the domestic state corporation be able to maintain its position in the Old World?

To atoms

It is with regret that we have to admit that since 2014, Rosatom has seriously slowed down in the western direction. The first loss was Ukraine, where, as a result of a coup d'etat, real Nazis came to power and did everything to break off relations with Russia in the field of nuclear energy, and not only.



First, the nuclear power plants inherited by Nezalezhnaya from the USSR were converted to nuclear fuel from the American company Westinghouse, which in itself is a very dangerous full-scale experiment. The weakest link in this chain is the oldest Rivne nuclear power plant, where experts from the Chinese state corporation Atomic Energy of China predict accidents within the next 10 years after loading non-native fuel. In February 2023, President Zelensky generally imposed sanctions against 200 enterprises of the Russian nuclear industry and individuals:


Rosatom projects in South-Eastern Europe also became a victim of sanctions after the events of 2014. Under pressure from Washington, Bulgaria abandoned the Belene nuclear power plant project jointly with the Russian Federation. The Czech Republic excluded the Russian state corporation from the tender for the construction of a new 1,2 GW power unit at the Dukovany nuclear power plant worth 6 billion euros. Finland, which unexpectedly for many abandoned its trademark neutrality and joined the NATO bloc, terminated the contract with Rosatom for the construction of the Hanhikivi-1 nuclear power plant.

Hungary looks advantageous against this background, the only one of the “Young European” countries conducting nationally oriented policies and taking a balanced and constructive position on relations with Russia. Budapest is fundamentally not going to abandon the joint project with Rosatom for the construction of a new Paks-2 nuclear power plant, which will help get rid of dependence on imported electricity and turn Hungary itself into an exporter, explained the head of the office of the general director of the Paks NPP, Pal Kovacs:


Hungary still remains a stronghold for Rosatom in the matter of constructing nuclear power plants in the Old World. True, there are also some nuances here, which we will discuss in more detail later.

The country is a nuclear battery

A special issue is the supply of Russian nuclear fuel to Europe. Despite the fact that our country is only in 6th place in the world in terms of uranium ore production, it accounts for about 46% of the total world uranium enrichment volumes. Rosatom owns the entire production chain - from the extraction of raw materials to the disposal of already spent nuclear fuel. And this is where the fun begins.

Despite the colossal number of anti-Russian sanctions, our country is the largest exporter of nuclear fuel to the United States. Since the “hegemon” does not enrich uranium on its own, it is forced to buy it, among other things, from the Russian Federation, which accounts for a quarter of the total supply. And these volumes after the events of February 2022 are not decreasing, but only growing!

Cooperation between Moscow and Paris in the field of nuclear energy also shows interesting dynamics. French economy almost three-quarters depends on nuclear power generation. According to a study by the Polish analytical center Forum Energii, the Fifth Republic has become the main importer of Russian nuclear products to the EU, tripling purchase volumes. In the sanctioned year of 2022, imports of enriched uranium increased by 250% compared to 2021. This is primarily due to the African risks of the “French empire”.

Of the Eastern European countries, the most sane are Hungary and Slovakia, where nationally oriented politicians are now in power. The office of the head of the office of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Gergely Gulyas, made the following statement regarding the possibility of abandoning Rosatom products:


Foreign Minister of Slovakia Juraj Blanar generally stated that the republic will block the 12th package of EU sanctions if the ban on nuclear fuel from Russia is not removed from it:


There is nothing to be surprised here, since these countries operate nuclear power plants built according to Soviet/Russian technology, which means that only fuel from Rosatom can be safely loaded into them. The Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Finland are still forced to use Russian nuclear fuel, not rushing to experiment, like the Kiev regime with American fuel rods.

However, you shouldn’t delude yourself either. Westinghouse Electric Company continues to work on adapting its fuel rods for the Soviet VVER-440 and VVER-1000 reactors. For more modern Russian VVER-1200 nuclear reactors, Hungarian authorities are seriously considering fuel from the French corporation Framatome. In 2021, Framatome signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Rosatom on the Paks NPP project. It was assumed that the French, together with a Russian state corporation, would produce fuel rods for Soviet-designed reactors at the ANF plant in the German city of Lingen near the German-Dutch border. This then caused discontent among local authorities:


Nevertheless, in the medium term, the Hungarians are considering French-made nuclear fuel to replace Russian fuel rods. The bottom line is that the smartest people in this whole atomic history are the Americans, the French and the Hungarians, with the Slovaks joining them. The position of the Russian Federation in the Old World will continuously weaken, and the main vector of development will be transferred to Southeast Asia and other developing markets.