Part 2 of 4 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Over the past twenty years, Russia has become the world’s major supplier for nuclear technology. This is especially true for countries building their first nuclear projects. Russia has great experience constructing and maintaining nuclear power plants. It offers a one-stop-shop for all the items that are needed to create these plants. This includes reactors, fuel, financing and even training of workers. Since the year 2000, Russia has signed bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements with forty-seven countries. It currently has large commercial nuclear power plants under construction in Bangladesh, Belarus and Turkey. Russia is involved in nuclear power plants across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America.
     Russia also has nuclear projects in Eastern Europe. For decades, one of Russia’s main nuclear clients was Ukraine. Before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, Ukraine obtained ninety-five percent of its nuclear fuel from Russia to fuel a majority of its total electricity supply. After Russia annexed Crimea and supported an insurgency in the Donbas, Ukraine accelerated its plans to diversify its uranium imports. Many other European countries also began expressing serious concerns about being dependent on Russian nuclear technology. These worries were validated in February of 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Since the invasion started, Western nations have moved quickly to try to wean itself from Russian energy resources, including nuclear power. On May 2nd, a Finnish consortium announced that it was canceling a contract for a new one thousand two-hundred-megawatt Russia power reactor.
      Europe’s most prominent dependence is ultimately on Russian coal, oil and natural gas, not on nuclear energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently issued guidelines for how countries can best move off of Russian fuel. They highlighted the role that they believe nuclear energy can play. As the IEA noted, nuclear energy “the largest source of low emissions electricity in the EU.” They say that the expansion of nuclear energy could increase the continents access to fossil-free energy.
       Not everyone agrees with this IEA assessment. The European Commission’s plan to reduce Russian natural gas imports does not mention nuclear energy. Germany has maintained its plans to close its three remaining nuclear reactors by the end of this year. This is happening in spite of the fact that Germany has imported close to ten billion euros world of fossil fuels from Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. However, other nations such as Belgium and Japan have promised new investments in nuclear energy to reduce their dependence of Russian natural gas. They are picking up on an old tradition of using nuclear energy to support energy independence. Nations with dwindling domestic coal supplies like the U.K. and Japan, turned to nuclear energy following World War II to fuel their growing industrial sectors. Following the oil embargoes of the 1970, France and Sweden also built out nuclear infrastructure to reduce their dependence on the Middle East.
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