A Russian government-owned company is set to be involved in manufacturing nuclear fuel in the heart of the European Union, as part of a controversial proposal that’s awaiting approval from German authorities.
The French-Russian joint venture, which would manufacture nuclear fuel rods and assemblies in Lingen in northwest Germany, is being pitched as key to the EU’s energy security at a time when nuclear power is seen as essential to getting off fossil fuels.
But it also comes as the bloc attempts to ban all energy imports from Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the proposal is raising concerns in regional and federal government over the risk of espionage and other security threats.
German authorities are expected to decide in the next few weeks whether to approve the plans.
The plant would be operated by Framatome, a subsidiary of French state energy company EDF, using Russian components supplied by TVEL, part of Kremlin-controlled nuclear giant Rosatom. TVEL would not be directly involved in operating the plant but would supply the Russian-made components that are essential to making the nuclear fuel.
Russian-designed fuel is currently used by 19 Soviet-era nuclear reactors spread across five EU countries in Eastern and Northern Europe, and 15 more in Ukraine.
Framatome has been lobbying fiercely for German authorities to sign off on the project, rallying the might of the French government all the way up to President Emmanuel Macron. Good business for Framatome, it argues, is good business for Europe.
But for Germany, saying yes is politically difficult. Authorities in Berlin worry about security risks and Russian espionage, with some officials warning against letting a Russian firm gain a foothold in a country that as all but at war with Putins regime.
German regional authorities must also approve the plan, and they’re not particularly keen either.
Lower Saxony’s Environment Minister Christian Meyer is particularly skeptical. His department is the final approving authority for the project in Lingen. In 2015, Gazprom took control of several German gas storage facilities, including the largest one in Rehden. During the gas crisis in 2021, the company supplied remarkably little gas and allowed the storage facilities to run empty, while Putin linked higher supplies to the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 — a move that is now considered a cautionary tale.
“Now we are threatening to repeat a similar mistake with Rosatom if we grant the company access to sensitive nuclear technology in fuel element production in Lingen,” said Meyer. Cooperation between Framatome and Rosatom is hardly new. Back in 2021 the two companies agreed to a long-term partnership on nuclear fuel manufacturing. They also established a joint venture in France, in which Framatome holds a 75 percent stake and Rosatom subsidiary TVEL holds 25 percent.
In March 2022 — just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine — Framatome’s wholly owned subsidiary, Advanced Nuclear Fuels, filed an application with the Lower Saxony environment ministry for an atomic regulatory license to produce Russian-designed nuclear fuel assemblies in Lingen.
Framatome pursued its plan, even after evidence surfaced that Rosatom played an active role in Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The company has spent more than three years pursuing its goal of producing hexagonal fuel in Lingen using Rosatom’s technology and components. Its reasoning: The move would ultimately reduce dependence on Russia. The French nuclear firm’s project will ultimately lead to “a truly European solution that is 100 percent sovereign. The French firm’s project is twofold. It wants to reproduce the Russian design through the joint venture, using Russian-made components, in Lingen and another one of its factories in Romans-sur-Isère in France. The Lingen plant would produce fuel for four VVER 1000 reactors located in Bulgaria and Czechia, and the French factory would make fuel for 15 VVER 440 reactors located in Finland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary.
In parallel, Framatome is also working on developing its own in-house design and swears the teams working on these two projects are “completely separate.” Framatome has been lobbying the German authorities to influence the decision. According to the Bundestag’s lobby register, the company commissioned the consulting firm Berlin Global Advisors to lobby for the approval of its application in Lingen for the year 2024.
The choice of firm appears deliberate. Berlin Global Advisors employs some consultants with close ties in both the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) — as well as connections to Russia. Among them is Friedbert Pflüger, a former CDU politician who previously worked as a lobbyist for the Russian state-owned company Gazprom and its Baltic Sea pipeline project Nord Stream 2.
For ANF, however, Berlin Global Advisors relies on other political door-openers: Ralf Brauksiepe, a former state secretary in the labor ministry who later served as a deputy at the defense ministry under Ursula von der Leyen, and Frank Schauff, once a foreign policy adviser to the SPD party executive and for many years head of the Association of European Businesses in Russia.