Is Putin's nuclear company spreading in Emsland?

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“As if the attack on Ukraine had never happened”: Demo of the anti-nuclear organization “broadcast” against Rosatom on January 20th in Lingen

Photo: Lars Hoff / .broadcast

Vladimir Putin can rely on his nuclear company in the war of aggression against Ukraine. The nuclear conglomerate Rosatom reliably operates the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, which Russian troops had previously taken over. According to the Washington Post, Rosatom is also trying to supply Russia's weapons industry with key components and raw materials. Of the approximately 275,000 Rosatom employees, around a third work in nuclear weapons departments, according to the Austrian Federal Environment Agency.

Nevertheless, the Russian nuclear industry was spared from the sanctions that the EU imposed on Russia after the attack on neighboring Ukraine. The electricity supply of several European countries depends largely on the Russian nuclear company. Without the special fuel elements from Putin's empire, nuclear power plants in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary would have to shut down. These Russian-designed reactors rely on nuclear fuel from Rosatom: hexagonal fuel elements.

Such hexagonal fuel elements are now also to be built in Lingen in Emsland. ANF, a subsidiary of the French majority state-owned company Framatome, has had a close partnership with Rosatom for years. The Russian attack apparently did little to change that. The French want to expand their production at the Lingen fuel element factory, in close cooperation with Putin's nuclear conglomerate. In Germany, in the middle of the Russian war of aggression.

»The gas crisis has already revealed Europe's dependence on Russia. Now we are making the same mistake with nuclear power and fuel. That’s crazy,” a senior political decision-maker told SPIEGEL. Although the project in Lingen displeased both Lower Saxony's state government and the federal government from the start, it looked for a long time as if the responsible authorities had no other legal choice than to approve ANF's application.

Now a previously unpublished expert report may yet offer a way out. It was written by the renowned nuclear lawyer Gerhard Roller, professor at the Bingen University of Technology. It was commissioned by the Federal Environment Ministry.

“Given the current state of knowledge,” Roller summarizes in the 43-page report available to SPIEGEL, “it cannot be ruled out that allowing a German fuel element factory to cooperate with a Russian state-owned company could endanger the internal or external security of the Federal Republic of Germany.” This could be enough to prevent the Framatome and Rosatom subsidiaries' project.

Rosatom has been trying for years to get involved in the fuel element plant in Emsland through its subsidiary TVEL. TVEL and Framatome had originally planned a joint venture in Germany for this purpose, contrary to the concerns of politicians such as Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens).

However, shortly before Russia's attack on Ukraine, the two companies withdrew their application for review submitted to Habeck's ministry. A few months later, they founded their joint venture in France instead.

ANF ​​then submitted an application in accordance with Section 7 of the Atomic Energy Act to the responsible Ministry of the Environment in Hanover. The aim is to produce hexagonal fuel elements for Eastern European nuclear power plants in Lingen. The Rosatom subsidiary TVEL should not only grant the license, but also actively help - by supplying the equipment for fuel element production and even taking over quality control.

The federal government would have been happy to reject the application because one of the companies was involved in a war. But that would not be covered by the Atomic Energy Act. “The approval requirements stated in the law relate primarily to technical safety,” says an expert on the subject. And if these technical criteria were met, the responsible authorities thought for a long time, the Franco-Russian project in Lingen would have to be approved, willy-nilly.

Rosatom employees come to the Lingen factory

Roller's report fundamentally changes the situation. "Even if the approval requirements are met, the authority can refuse the approval [...]," writes the expert. The authority only has this leeway in special and unforeseen circumstances. But these are present: with Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which violates international law.

The crux of Roller's argument is Rosatom's employees. According to the law, the project can only be approved if there are no concerns about “the people responsible for the construction, management and supervision of the operation of the facility,” he says. As a manager from the Framatome subsidiary ANF admitted during an interview with Lingen's environmental committee, skilled workers from Russia are to be used in the production of the fuel elements - although, at least ANF asserts, only for a short time and under supervision.

“It is doubtful whether a sufficiently reliable background check could be carried out by the German authorities on non-EU nationals,” writes Roller. "In the current situation, this is particularly likely to apply to Russian nationals."

In addition, according to Roller, “the background check of individual persons cannot determine whether relevant information reaches the Russian state that does not require entry to the facility.” Rosatom employees, it is feared, could possibly be exposed to the project sensitive data arrives.

The former head of the Reactor Safety Commission, Michael Sailer, warns even more urgently about the Franco-Russian cooperation in Lingen. »Rosatom is Mr. Putin's vicarious agent. If he wants to do something, the Rosatom people will do it for him," Sailer said in an interview with SPIEGEL. "Once they're in the Lingen facility, they can find out or destroy anything."

There is also a risk that Rosatom will engage in sabotage, says Sailer - for example, by the Russians deliberately delivering poor raw materials to Lingen and later flagging the faulty fuel elements through quality control. This could significantly disrupt the operation of the nuclear power plants supplied.

Environmentalists are horrified. “The security policy threats are so relevant that the requested approval can and must be refused,” says Julian Bothe from the nationwide anti-nuclear organization “broadcast”. "It is absolutely incomprehensible that such a plan is still being discussed - as if the attack on Ukraine, even with the active participation of Rosatom, had never taken place."

But the authorities are bound by applicable law. And so the approval process in Lower Saxony is still going smoothly.

"The Scooter report confirms our assessment that close cooperation with Putin's nuclear company Rosatom can pose a significant threat to internal and external security in Europe," says Lower Saxony's Environment Minister Christian Meyer (Greens) in an interview with SPIEGEL. “It is therefore an important item in our ongoing approval process.”

In response to a request, the Federal Environment Ministry wrote that “it is now also necessary to examine how the influence of Russia and the state-owned company Rosatom, which is also active militarily, could have an impact on nuclear safety.” A ministry spokesman said: “It is a necessary consequence of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine to reduce dependencies on Russia. From the perspective of the Federal Environment Ministry, cooperation with the Russian state-owned company Rosatom is therefore the wrong approach."

Germany versus France?

The Framatome subsidiary ANF sent SPIEGEL a general statement that said: "Regular access for TVEL employees [is] neither intended nor necessary for the operation of the plant and the production of the fuel elements."

However, the company leaves it open how often and for how long these Russian specialists will be on site at irregular intervals. The ANF did not answer specific questions from SPIEGEL about the report.

Your application for approval is publicly available in the Lingen town hall until March 3rd; all citizens can raise objections and questions. These are then presented to the company so that it can comment.

The formal approval process is then coming to an end. The political debate will then really begin. A German no to the Framatome project would be an affront to France's president. “It may well be,” says an insider, “that in the end Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz will fight it out against each other.”

And when the two leading leaders in the EU argue, a third party is happy: Vladimir Putin.