ENERGO: Rosatom’s nuclear exports surge in 2022

Russia's nuclear exports were already booming well before the war in Ukraine started but now they are growing even faster. After the disaster of Chernobyl in the 80s, Russia has fully modernised its nuclear technology and switched to the VVER 1200 reactors (water-water energetic reactor) that are compliant with the IAEA’s International Nuclear Safety Group (INSAG) recommendations and general considered to be amongst the safest in the world.

And customers around the world are queuing up to buy them. The sales drive was organised by former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko, who presided over Russia during the 1998 financial crisis but was given the job of running Rosatom after leaving office and tasked with selling 40 nuclear power plants (NPPs) internationally, with roughly the same number being added to the Russian domestic power network, including a bevy of small modular reactor (SMRs) that are a cheap way of powering remote mining towns and factories or which can be installed on a ship as mobile power stations.

Russia already has over $100bn of orders for NPP exports at various stages of commitment before the war started but those exports have surged since the invasion a year ago.

The business is especially lucrative, as not only does Russia sell the hardware and do the building, but NPP deals usually come with 60 years of fuel supply and maintenance deals that keep the customers dependent on Russia for decades afterwards. While both Russia and Kazakhstan are big producers of the uranium 235 fuel the NPPs burn in the eastern bloc, processing and refining of the ore is almost all done in Russia.