After the coup in Niger, Western countries are sounding the alarm – their main uranium supplier may stop importing uranium and start co-operating with Russia, Bloomberg reports. This especially hits the US, which does not even hide its dependence on Russia for nuclear fuel. The uranium situation is now “becoming like an emergency,” they said.
The town of Arlit, a small industrial settlement in northern Niger, has become the starting point of a new geopolitical confrontation – the fight over uranium, which is the main fuel for the nuclear industry, Bloomberg writes. It is from there, from its former colony, that French state-owned companies have been extracting this radioactive mineral since the 1950s. According to statistics, as of 2022, Niger was the seventh largest producer of uranium in the world – 25 per cent of its imports to Europe came from Arlit.
However, now, according to the publication, the coup d’état in this West African country has jeopardised further uranium supplies to the European Union. The fact is that Niger, like many other African countries, may take a course of rapprochement with Russia. The fears are not unfounded – at present, anti-French and anti-American sentiment is growing throughout the sub-Saharan region, Bloomberg notes. And if Niger sides with Russia, “the world will become even more dependent on Moscow”: if Niger is added to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russia, the world’s leading uranium producers, they will account for 60 per cent of global production.
According to the World Nuclear Association, Russia accounts for nearly 45 per cent of the global uranium conversion and enrichment market. U.S. officials call this “stifling control” and a “strategic vulnerability.” About a third of all enriched uranium used last year by the U.S. came from Russia. The U.S. Department of Energy has made no secret of the fact that “today, the United States relies heavily on international sources of nuclear fuel, including countries that do not pursue our interests,” implying Russia.
According to Bloomberg, the United States has long sounded the alarm about its dependence on Russia, but lately “it’s been about crisis.” Now that the problems with Niger have been added to the mix, “the situation is starting to look like an emergency.” According to Bloomberg, this problem will not be easy to solve: in addition to the large financial outlay, it will require intensive co-operation between the US and France – ironically, it is these two countries that are now most interested in co-operating with Niger.
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