The company that operates Belgium’s nuclear power plants Engie Electrabel will not be using any uranium from Russia to keep the Doel 4 reactor in East Flanders and the Tihange 3 reactor in Liège Province running until 2035. Instead Engie Electrabel has signed contracts with western supplies for the uranium that will be needed to keep the reactors running for another ten years.
The news that Engie Electrabel will not be using any more uranium from Russia was published in Friday’s edition of the daily ‘De Tijd’ and is based on the annual report of the energy company’s nuclear fuel ordering subsidiary Synatom. Belgium’s last two remaining nuclear reactors will run solely on fuel from Western suppliers from countries such as Canada and Australia.
Engie’s spokeswoman Hellen Smeets told ‘De Tijd’ that the company has made a conscious decision to stop using Russian uranium suppliers. “The last deliveries of uranium from Russia arrived at the end of 2021”.
“Also for the conversion of uranium, an intermediate step before enriching it, and for the final enrichment, we no longer work with Russian companies.”
Russia is a major global player in uranium mining and enrichment. However, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the dependence on Russia for uranium has come into question in countries across Europe. Prior to the war, around 40% of the uranium used at the Doel and Tihange nuclear power stations was linked in some way to Russia.
Source: vrt.be