{"id":6712,"date":"2023-05-22T06:16:52","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T06:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=6712"},"modified":"2023-05-22T06:16:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T06:16:52","slug":"the-russian-nuclear-company-the-west-cant-live-without","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=6712","title":{"rendered":"The Russian Nuclear Company The West Can’t Live Without"},"content":{"rendered":"

When European countries want to decommission aging nuclear plants, they often call Nukem. There\u2019s only one catch.<\/p>\n

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By Jonathan Tirone<\/a> and Petra Sorge<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/address>\n
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Cutting the heart out of a\u00a0<\/strong>nuclear power plant is a surgical procedure that only a few specialists are equipped to handle.<\/p>\n

The process begins by launching plasma-torch-wielding robots into an empty\u00a0pool surrounded by thick concrete walls. From there, the remote-controlled machines make circular cuts, as if slicing pineapple rings, through a 600-ton steel vessel that contains radiation generated over decades of splitting atoms. These rings are then diced into meter-long pieces and transported via secure convoy to radioactive waste repositories, where they are left to cool down \u2014 indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, scores of nuclear engineers, radiation safety experts and state regulators monitor this operation, which can cost upwards of a billion dollars and take years to plan and execute. The expertise needed to pull this off without error is why \u201cthere are only a handful of players\u201d in the high-radiation decommissioning business, said Uniper SE\u2019s Michael Baechler, who is supervising the dismantling of Sweden\u2019s Barsebaeck Nuclear Power Plant.<\/p>\n

Among the oldest and most experienced is Germany\u2019s Nukem Technologies Engineering Services GmbH, which for decades has offered its unique services in Asia and Africa and across Europe. Nukem engineers helped contain radiation from the destroyed reactors in Chernobyl and Fukushima. They helped lead the clean-up of an atomic-fuel factory in Belgium. In France, the company devised\u00a0ways to treat waste from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0researchers predicting that<\/a>\u00a0cleaning up after aging\u00a0nuclear power plants will evolve into a $125 billion global business in the near future,\u00a0<\/strong>Nukem should be ideally positioned to capitalize on the moment.<\/p>\n

Except for one thing: the company is wholly owned by Rosatom Corp., the Kremlin-controlled nuclear giant, putting it in the center of an uncomfortable standoff.<\/p>\n

While Germany has been vocal in urging EU countries to stop importing Rosatom\u2019s nuclear fuel, a highly specialized\u00a0commodity\u00a0used for power plants, of which Rosatom is the world\u2019s biggest exporter,\u00a0authorities do not want to prevent Nukem from doing business in Germany, according to three government officials who asked not to be identified in return for discussing private deliberations. As sanctions have not been implemented, doing so would violate EU competition laws, they said.<\/p>\n

Located in the rolling hills and orchards just east of Frankfurt, Nukem is a niche player in Rosatom\u2019s global empire. At the same time, it exposes the fault line running through the EU\u2019s approach to nuclear power. Unlike Russia, which has cultivated expertise across all of the industrial processes needed to convert and enrich uranium atoms into forms usable for generating energy, Europe\u2019s hodgepodge development of nuclear technologies\u00a0has left states dependent on outside providers to fill gaps in production and services. Experts estimate\u00a0it would take at least\u00a0four or five years<\/a>\u00a0before the EU\u00a0could match Rosatom\u2019s fuel-manufacturing capacity, but even if that process were sped up, it would require more time still to replicate its global reach and array of services.<\/p>\n

Pressure to cut Rosatom out of European supply chains\u00a0has mounted since Russian forces seized\u00a0Europe\u2019s biggest nuclear power station\u00a0outside the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia and sent in Rosatom engineers to run it. The fact that it or Nukem, a subsidiary, haven\u2019t been sanctioned, \u201cshould raise some serious questions,\u201d\u00a0said Darya Dolzikova, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute.\u00a0But more than a year later,\u00a0it\u2019s still up to individual companies to decide whether to continue doing business with the energy giant. So far, many\u00a0are proceeding as usual: Rosatom saw exports surge more than 20% in the year after Russia invaded Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Unlike Germany’s seizure of Russian storage and refining assets after the war, Nukem doesn’t have as much fixed infrastructure\u00a0to go after. If sanctions were to be imposed,\u00a0Rosatom might simply close shop or move Nukem\u2019s headquarters to a friendlier jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

This has left Nukem\u00a0stuck in a strange kind of limbo, as customers interested in tapping its expertise are now faced with the choice of whether to work with\u00a0a Kremlin-controlled company. Its experience\u00a0is particularly valuable\u00a0as its 120 mostly German engineers can work across the nuclear supply chain, a huge advantage in light of the fact that more\u00a0young nuclear engineers study to build\u00a0new installations\u00a0than\u00a0tear down existing ones.\u00a0The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has warned of an acute shortage of decommissioning workers.<\/p>\n