Tsvetana Paraskova
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews.
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Dec 23, 2024, 8:00 AM CST
Russia is looking to maintain its position as “one of the biggest builders of new nuclear plants in the world,” a top envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Financial Times in an interview published on Monday.
“We are building more than 10 different units around the world,” Boris Titov, Putin’s special representative for international cooperation in sustainability, told FT.
“We need a lot of energy. We will not be able to provide this energy without using . . . nuclear,” the official said.
This type of energy is safe and low-carbon, Titov added.
Russia currently has nuclear power plants under development and construction in countries such as China, India, Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey, among others.
Russia’s ambitions to boost its global influence in nuclear power fleets come as the West seeks to diminish its dependence on Russian nuclear fuel and technology.
Yet, the Western countries will need additional incentives and sanctions on Russia to reduce their dependence on the Russian supply of nuclear fuel, according to French company Orano, one of the top Western suppliers of enriched uranium.
“To entirely disconnect from Russia, we need new capacities, and industrial groups will only invest if they have long-term contracts,” Orano’s CEO Nicolas Maes told the Financial Times in an interview in October.
France’s Orano and Urenco, a consortium created in 1970 by the governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, are the main Western competitors of Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom.
Europe has not sanctioned Rosatom or Russian nuclear fuel supplies as dozens of nuclear power stations in the eastern EU member states have been built by Russian companies and supplied with Russian nuclear fuel.
As many countries are now looking to nuclear power to cut emissions and reliance on imports of oil and gas, they would need to cut their dependence on enriched uranium from Russia.
But in order to reduce reliance on Russia, western contractors and suppliers would need visibility over the long-term demand, the chief executive of France’s Orano told FT.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana Paraskova
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews.