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 published on Wednesday.
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.
A compromise sanctions measure hasn’t been agreed.
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.
The executive also called for sanctions on the Russian nuclear sector, saying that “If there are no sanctions at all, we’ll see some electricity producers continue to get supplies from Russia as long as it’s possible.”
Orano has started working with designers for small modular reactors (SMRs) and advanced modular reactors (AMRs), the company said earlier this month.
“With the creation of two “sharing groups”, Orano is acting as a strategic partner for start-ups working on the development of AMRs,” said the French company.
France, where nuclear power dominates electricity generation, has been looking to build SMRs and other types of next-generation reactors.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com