Putin’s Nuclear Mafia Has The West Under Its Thumb

This is why the West can’t quit Russian nuclear fuel.

Just over a year ago, the unthinkable happened: Putin and his band of yes-men invaded Ukraine. Since then, the brave people of this noble country have fought valiantly, even going so far as to successfully push Russian forces back. This was possible thanks to the West’s support, which enabled Ukraine’s forces to fight on with more and better weapons. But this successful defence was also due to Western sanctions that slowed Russia’s economy. We in the West have pretty much boycotted Russia’s entire fossil fuel industry and even frozen or seized billions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets within our borders. However, nuclear fuel is the one Russian good the West can’t seem to shake. According to the ESA, Russia’s state-owned Rosatom still supplies the EU with 40% of its uranium imports. This equates to around a billion dollars’ worth of nuclear fuel services, and all the profits from this are being fed right into Putin’s war machine. So, the question has to be asked: Why are we so addicted to Russian nuclear fuel?

Let’s start with the basics. Thanks to the Cold War, Russia has vast amounts of nuclear infrastructure. So while Russia mines a fraction of the world’s raw uranium supply, it is responsible for over half of the world’s enrichment services. You see, you can’t just dig up uranium and shove it into a reactor. Modern nuclear reactors need a specific isotope of uranium called U-235 to work. However, U-235 only accounts for 0.7% of natural uranium, and reactors need U-235 levels to be around 5%. So, the uranium is “enriched,” which is a complex and expensive process that removes the other isotopes of uranium and gives you usable nuclear fuel.

The Western world, including the United States and the European Union, has its own enrichment plants. However, they are far more expensive than those in Russia. So while tensions were low, it made sense to use Russian nuclear fuel, and over the years, our enrichment capacity shrank. But that all changed once Putin’s forces entered Ukraine.

Many EU countries, such as Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, have entirely replaced their Russian nuclear supplies with an alternative source. But many Central and Eastern countries, such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, can’t make this switch because they still use Soviet-built VVER nuclear power plants, and only Russia makes fuel for these ancient relics.

And it isn’t just the old-school Soviet reactors. Russia has upgraded the design over the years and still produces VVER reactors. In fact, VVER reactors are the world’s most popular pressurised water reactors. This is due to the fact that these newer reactors are extremely competitively priced and remarkably efficient, and Russia provides dirt-cheap financing and fuel packages for them. As such, the EU already has 18 of these reactors. The most recent is Slovakia’s new Mochovce 3 VVER reactor, and Russia has a deal to provide fuel for this plant until 2026.

So, why can’t these reactors run on different fuels?

Well, each reactor needs fuel rods with very specific chemical contents, shapes, and safety measures. It just happens that no other nuclear supply produces fuel that meets the specification for VVER fuel, at least not on a commercial scale. Westinghouse, a US atomic fuel provider, is looking to offer VVER-compatible fuel, but it will take considerable investment and time to offer it as a product on the market.

Even if Westinghouse sorted this out, it wouldn’t release Europe from Putin’s nuclear stranglehold. You see, when a country buys a VVER, they don’t buy it outright. Instead, the process is closer to leasing a car. Russia offers these countries a finance package to pay for the reactor, and part of that agreement will be that Rosatom will be locked in as their sole fuel supplier for a set period. This package is very appealing because the country receives nuclear power at a reasonable price and a guaranteed fuel supply for a rolling monthly payment. Now, in reality, these deals are a lot more complex, but this is a helpful way to think of them.

If the country breaks the terms of this agreement, Russia can break off the deal and shut down the reactor. This is similar to how breaking the contract of a car you are leasing will cause the manufacturer to repossess it.

Therefore, when the EU did discuss sanctioning Russian nuclear supplies, they quickly realised they were unable to do so. Even before the invasion, Central and Eastern Europe depended on their nuclear reactors to power their energy grids. Now, sanctions on Russian natural gas and other fossil fuels have already plunged the entire continent of Europe into an energy crisis. In short, the EU simply can’t afford to risk these reactors.

That is why vast amounts of hypocritical EU money flow into Putin’s war machine via Rosatom.

Make no mistake, this situation hasn’t happened by accident. Putin is damn cunning. He knows NATO and the West would crush Russia if they ever came to blows. He needed a way to make us so dependent on them that we could never threaten his outdated expansionist plans. So he orchestrated a mafia-like grip on our nuclear industry. This master plan worked because we are addicted to cheap energy and value it over energy security. So we fell for his ruse, and now we, along with the poor people of Ukraine, are paying the price for our naivety.

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