Bellona.org

August brought signs of growing pressure on several fronts for Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, from questions surrounding major construction projects abroad to the first decline in its foreign revenue in a decade.

Meanwhile, at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, repeated attacks, losses of external power and difficulties securing diesel fuel underscored the precarious conditions surrounding Europe’s largest nuclear station.

In Hungary, the future of the Russian-built Paks II nuclear power plant has come under renewed scrutiny from the new government of Prime Minister Peter Magyar.

Magyar said in August that experts considered the existing permit for the project untenable and that the government was conducting a comprehensive review that would determine, among other things, whether Rosatom could continue building the plant.

Rosatom chief Alexey Likhachev insisted work was continuing according to plan. But Magyar pointed to the project’s long delays: under the original contract Paks II was supposed to be operating by 2024, while Hungary has already spent around 1 trillion forints (€2.8 billion) on the project. At the same time, Budapest is proposing to more than double its 2026 budget financing for Paks II, suggesting that abandonment of the project is not currently on the table.

Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov argues that the review should extend beyond the project’s finances. Extreme heat and exceptionally low water levels in the Danube forced the existing Paks plant to sharply reduce output this summer, raising questions about the cooling system planned for two additional reactors.

“At the same time, judging by Hungary’s continued financing of the project, a complete abandonment of Paks II does not appear to be under consideration,” Gorchakov said. “Under these circumstances, in addition to the financial questions already raised about the project’s cost, the problems facing the existing Paks plant due to extreme heat and low water levels in the Danube also raise the question of whether the project’s environmental parameters should be reconsidered — in particular, its cooling system.”

The existing plant already imposes a substantial thermal load on the Danube, while Paks II would add another 9.5 GW of thermal capacity. Gorchakov argues that increasingly frequent heat and drought could make the present cooling design difficult to sustain.

Those uncertainties come as Rosatom has acknowledged an unusual reversal in its international business. Its newly released 2025 annual report shows foreign revenue falling 4.1 percent to about $17.2 billion, even as overall revenue rose 7.9 percent to 3.33 trillion rubles. Its lifetime foreign project portfolio nevertheless increased to $206.2 billion.

Gorchakov called the decline significant because it follows 10 consecutive years of growth, with foreign revenue increasing by more than 20 percent annually during the previous five years.

Importantly, the decline does not appear to come from Rosatom’s nuclear fuel business. Bellona estimates that nuclear fuel-cycle deliveries increased substantially to the United States and China, and likewise rose in the European Union.

Instead, Rosatom’s report attributes the decline to lower revenues from nuclear plant construction. Gorchakov says this could partly reflect projects such as Bangladesh’s Rooppur plant and Turkey’s Akkuyu reaching later construction stages, but may also reflect “difficulties and additional costs associated with sanctions pressure, the search for alternative ways to transfer funds abroad, and changing suppliers.”

Egypt illustrates the ambiguity. Leaked documents concerning the Rosatom-built El Dabaa plant reportedly described construction defects, nuclear safety culture problems and a possible 18-month delay to the first reactor. Egyptian authorities disputed the characterization. Yet only days later Cairo and Rosatom began discussing adding two more Russian reactors to the four already under construction. See our article from August for more detail.

The situation at Zaporizhzhia is considerably more immediate. The plant lost its sole remaining external power connection four times during August. After the fourth outage, on August 20, it remained disconnected for roughly three weeks and depended on emergency diesel generators.

That exposed another vulnerability: Russian officials told IAEA inspectors that the last delivery to the plant’s diesel storage facility had occurred in March. A planned May delivery had been prevented by fighting, leaving fuel for approximately 10 days of emergency-generator operation. Operators progressively reduced the number of running generators from seven to four and eventually two, while cooling pumps were operated intermittently to conserve electricity.

The crisis unfolded amid repeated drone incidents around the station and tentative discussion of a possible Russian-Ukrainian energy ceasefire. Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin sees a larger issue emerging from those developments: ZNPP is no longer simply a civilian nuclear facility endangered by war, but has itself acquired military and political value.

‘Despite the military value of the territory around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, judging by their actions, both sides are trying to prevent the plant from permanently losing its potential energy and political value,” Nikitin writes. “This suggests that ZNPP is viewed not only as a source of nuclear risks, but also as a potential asset in future negotiations.’

That possibility makes preserving the plant important for reasons extending beyond nuclear safety. As Nikitin notes, a destroyed plant has little negotiating value; an intact one retains both political and economic importance.

But the August outages also demonstrate why any future agreement concerning nuclear facilities would have to extend beyond simply prohibiting direct attacks on reactors. Transmission lines, substations and other external infrastructure are essential to keeping a nuclear plant safe.

As Nikitin argues, the war has blurred a boundary nuclear regulation traditionally assumed was clear: a civilian nuclear facility can remain civilian in formal terms while simultaneously becoming an element of military strategy.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency has suspended one of its most senior Russian officials — but for reasons largely unrelated to the questions about Russian influence at the agency that have surrounded him since Moscow seized Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Mikhail Chudakov, an IAEA deputy director general and head of its Department of Nuclear Energy since 2015, was placed on administrative leave this month pending an internal ethics investigation, according to Bloomberg.

The investigation concerns a 76-page book, Treatise on Life, which Chudakov published under the pseudonym Valentin Voyutin in 2025. The book contains disparaging descriptions of feminists and LGBT people and expresses support for authoritarian government.

According to Bloomberg, the book came to the IAEA’s attention after Chudakov promoted it among members of Vienna’s young nuclear community. Members of the group subsequently brought it to the agency’s ethics office. The IAEA, Chudakov and Director General Rafael Grossi have not publicly commented on the case.

But Chudakov’s suspension has reopened a different question that predates the book by years: whether a former senior official of Russia’s state nuclear industry should have remained in one of the IAEA’s most influential positions after Russia invaded Ukraine and Rosatom became directly involved in the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Greenpeace International raised precisely that issue in March 2022, less than two weeks after Russian forces seized Zaporizhzhia. In a letter, the organization called on Grossi to suspend Chudakov, citing his decades-long career in Russia’s nuclear establishment and requesting disclosure of any communications between him and Rosatom officials following the invasion.

Greenpeace argued that Chudakov’s presence could undermine Ukrainian confidence in the confidentiality of information shared with the IAEA during the nuclear crisis. No public evidence has emerged showing that Chudakov provided confidential information to Rosatom. Chudakov nevertheless remained in his position for another four years.

The significance of that position extends well beyond the IAEA’s response to Zaporizhzhia. The Department of Nuclear Energy works with countries planning new nuclear programs and oversees areas including reactor technology, small modular reactors, the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear infrastructure and training.

Chudakov has also headed the IAEA’s International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles, or INPRO, and chaired the steering committee of its Platform on Small Modular Reactors and their Applications.

At the same time, cooperation between the IAEA and Russian nuclear institutions continued after the invasion.

In October 2024, the agency renewed and expanded the status of Rosatom’s Technical Academy as an IAEA Collaborating Center. Joint programs have continued to bring nuclear specialists from other countries to Russian facilities.

In September 2025, Chudakov personally led an IAEA delegation to Rosatom’s Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant in Chukotka. The visit was hosted by Rosenergoatom, where Chudakov previously held senior positions, at a time when Rosatom was increasingly promoting floating and land-based small reactors to potential foreign customers.

For Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin, such relationships point to a broader problem confronting the IAEA since Russia’s invasion. The war, he says, has divided nuclear countries into aggressors, victims of aggression and relatively neutral states, while the international nuclear industry continues to operate largely under rules created before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The international nuclear sector continues to function without a referee and under the international regulatory framework that existed before the war,” Nikitin said.

That makes the individuals making decisions within the IAEA particularly important, he argues, including decisions about supporting nuclear projects in countries seeking to develop nuclear power.

But determining when ordinary IAEA cooperation crosses the line into advancing Rosatom’s interests is considerably more difficult.

According to Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov, Ukraine’s desire to remove Chudakov following the invasion was understandable, but attempting to do so simply because of his Rosatom background and continuing contacts with the Russian nuclear industry had little prospect of succeeding under IAEA rules.

“It is extremely difficult to prove that he is working specifically in Rosatom’s interests rather than those of the IAEA — which could indeed provide grounds for his removal,” Gorchakov said.

The problem, he says, is the unusually close overlap between their interests. The IAEA promotes the development of nuclear energy internationally. Rosatom also develops nuclear energy internationally, albeit for its own commercial and political purposes.

None of Chudakov’s contacts with Russian nuclear organizations therefore necessarily demonstrates improper conduct. Other major nuclear countries also host IAEA training and technical programs, while the agency necessarily works with the nuclear industries of its member states.

And although the IAEA Board of Governors and General Conference have repeatedly adopted resolutions condemning Russian actions in Ukraine, Gorchakov notes that they have never instructed the IAEA Secretariat — Grossi and the staff working beneath him — to cease cooperation with Russia or Rosatom.

“Many of Chudakov’s contacts and actions in his position at the IAEA can have perfectly understandable explanations arising from his official responsibilities and, at least formally, do not contradict them,” Gorchakov said.

Even Ukraine’s membership on the IAEA Board of Governors from 2023 to 2025 failed to change that situation.

Yet days after Chudakov’s suspension, Ukrainian military intelligence added a new allegation. It claimed on September 16 that Chudakov helped secure the depiction of Russian-occupied Crimea as Russian territory in the IAEA’s Power Reactor Information System, or PRIS, and that Russian representatives were seeking the use of Russified names including “Rovno,” “Khmelnitski” and “Zaporozhye” for Ukrainian nuclear locations.

Those allegations have not been independently confirmed by the IAEA.

For Gorchakov, the irony is that after years of controversy over Chudakov’s Russian connections, none of those issues ultimately caused his suspension. Instead, Chudakov appears to have created the grounds himself.

“It was only when Chudakov himself created a problem through his book — which apparently contains numerous clear conflicts with the Agency’s ethical standards — that it became possible to accomplish, at least partially, what had previously proved impossible to achieve or demonstrate through other means,” Gorchakov said.

His suspension may remove one controversial official. But the larger question — how an international nuclear organization should work with the nuclear industry of a member state waging war and occupying another country’s nuclear power plant — remains unresolved.

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Europe’s effort to break its dependence on Russian nuclear fuel has a paradox in Germany: making Russian-designed fuel without buying it from Russia may initially require working with Rosatom.

That contradiction is now headed to court. The German environmental group BUND last week sued the state of Lower Saxony over its decision to allow Framatome subsidiary Advanced Nuclear Fuels to expand its fuel fabrication plant in Lingen. The expansion would allow the facility to manufacture fuel for Russian-designed VVER-1000 reactors using licenses and technology from TVEL, Rosatom’s nuclear fuel subsidiary.

The arrangement is supposed to help European nuclear operators do exactly the opposite: reduce direct purchases of Russian fuel.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European countries operating Soviet-designed VVER reactors — including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia — have been searching for alternatives to Russian nuclear fuel. Several have already begun introducing fuel from Western suppliers, while Hungary and Slovakia remain more dependent on Russian supplies.

Framatome argues that cooperation with TVEL is an interim step that will allow it to supply those customers while developing its own independent production technology.

But BUND claims that the arrangement creates security risks inside a piece of European nuclear infrastructure. The group says some manufacturing and quality-control processes will use Rosatom-supplied machinery, raising the possibility of manipulation, espionage or sabotage. Its lawsuit also alleges procedural shortcomings in the approval process, including reliance on outdated environmental assessments.

German authorities themselves acknowledge the uncomfortable fit.

Lower Saxony approved the expansion in July only after consultations with the federal government and imposed unusually strict conditions. Rosatom and TVEL personnel are generally prohibited from entering the Lingen facility. Russian-supplied hardware and software must undergo outside security checks and remain isolated from other plant computer systems, while fuel components arriving from Russia must be inspected for possible manipulation.

Lower Saxony Environment Minister Christian Meyer has said he fundamentally opposes cooperation with Rosatom. But federal and state authorities concluded that existing German nuclear law provided no legal basis to reject the application on the security evidence before them.

Berlin says the proper mechanism for stopping such cooperation would instead be European Union sanctions against Russia’s nuclear sector—sanctions Germany supports but which have failed to win sufficient backing from other EU members.

The dispute highlights a problem Bellona has followed since the invasion of Ukraine: replacing Rosatom is considerably more complicated than simply signing contracts with other fuel companies.

Decades of Soviet and Russian nuclear development left VVER operators dependent on specialized fuel designs and supply chains. Western companies are developing alternatives, but creating a completely independent manufacturing capability takes time.

According to Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov, Framatome is out on a limb with several existing orders for VVER fuel for reactors in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary—orders it can only fulfill on time with Rosatom’s help.

“Framatome needs to cooperate with Rosatom because it does not yet have its own fully licensed, independent technology for manufacturing fuel for VVER reactors,” Gorchakov said. “The company is developing that technology in parallel, but it will need several more years to complete and test it.”

A joint facility at Lingen is a shortcut to that goal, Gorchakov added.  Instead of waiting for an entirely Western VVER fuel-production chain, Framatome would manufacture Russian-designed fuel in Germany while gradually developing its own technology.

The controversy also raises a broader question about how Europe defines nuclear independence. Germany considers cooperation with Rosatom politically undesirable and has imposed extraordinary security conditions on the Lingen arrangement. Yet it also considers the project one route toward replacing Russian fuel imports.

“Continuing to cooperate with Rosatom on the production of VVER fuel in Europe would simply shift this dependence into another, somewhat less direct and obvious form,” said Gorchakov. “But it would still be dependence.”

It also creates two risks, he added. First, it preserves a revenue stream to Rosatom from Europe’s nuclear economy. Second, it could delay the introduction of Framatome’s own fully independent, proprietary fuel in Europe and postpone the complete phaseout of Russian-produced fuel for VVER reactors in the EU.

“However, as long as there are no sanctions or restrictions on Russian supplies to the EU, this cooperation is far from unique,” Gorchakov noted. “Rosatom has supplied — and plans to continue supplying — several dozen tonnes of enriched uranium annually to the Lingen plant for the production of nuclear fuel for Western-designed reactors.”

Cooperation between the French and Russian nuclear industries also continues on Rosatom projects outside Europe, Gorchakov said. So while the Lingen plant is a particularly visible and high-profile example, it is far from the only instance of Franco-Russian cooperation in the nuclear sector. Whether Lingen represents a practical bridge to independence or simply relocates Russian nuclear dependence inside the European Union is now a question for Germany’s courts.

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Nearly four and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, July offered fresh evidence of how difficult it remains to disentangle Russia from the Western nuclear industry. Germany approved production of fuel for Russian-designed reactors using Russian technology, while new data from Europe and the United States showed that Rosatom retains a substantial share of Western uranium conversion and enrichment markets.

Meanwhile, at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the killing of the station’s Russian-appointed chief engineer underscored a different consequence of the war: the continuing danger faced by those working at Europe’s largest nuclear power station—

On July 15, Rosatom chief Alexey Likhachev said a drone strike on a service vehicle between the Zaporizhzhia plant and the neighboring city of Enerhodar had killed the station’s Russian-appointed chief engineer, Alexander Yakovlev, and his driver. Russia blamed Ukraine, while Kyiv denied responsibility and said there was no independent confirmation of Moscow’s account.

The incident quickly became the subject of competing claims. A Telegram channel subsequently alleged that Yakovlev had opposed allowing Russian personnel access to Westinghouse nuclear fuel stored at the plant and suggested that a dispute over that access might have contributed to his death. The claim has not been independently established.

Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin cautions against drawing conclusions from such speculation.

“Both sides (Russia and Ukraine) predictably accused each other of the killing,” Nikitin writes. “Who killed one of the several hundred people who die every day in Ukraine, and what the specific reason for this killing was, will never be established. The reason could have been anything, including domestic, financial or other motives, so there is no point in guessing or trying to investigate it. The war will write everything off.”

For Nikitin, Yakovlev’s death instead illustrates the larger danger created by the continued militarization of the plant and surrounding area. “Not only facilities are being destroyed, but people are also being killed, including personnel working at ZNPP and their families living in Enerhodar,” he writes.

Germany, meanwhile, has approved a controversial plan that will preserve another form of Russian involvement in Europe’s nuclear industry.

On July 22, authorities in Lower Saxony approved an application by Advanced Nuclear Fuels, a subsidiary of France’s Framatome, to expand its Lingen plant to manufacture hexagonal fuel assemblies for Russian-designed VVER reactors.

The fuel will be manufactured under Russian licenses and using Russian technology through cooperation with Rosatom’s fuel subsidiary TVEL. The decision came despite objections from some 11,000 people and concerns about espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks and Russian access to critical German infrastructure. Authorities imposed safeguards, including restrictions on access by Rosatom and TVEL personnel and security inspections of Russian equipment.

Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov calls the decision “rather strange” and warns that it undermines efforts to reduce European dependence on Russia.

“Unfortunately, this shows the absence of a single clear policy and principles regarding contacts with official Russian structures, both within Germany itself and within the EU,” Gorchakov writes.

More importantly, he argues, allowing Framatome to meet its VVER fuel commitments with Rosatom’s involvement “may slow the development of its own French VVER fuel independent of Rosatom and prolong Rosatom’s dependence and influence on this market in Europe.”

“Bellona does not approve of this decision by the German authorities or of this cooperation between Framatome and Rosatom,” Gorchakov concludes.

New figures published in July show why severing those ties remains difficult.

The Euratom Supply Agency reported that European suppliers significantly expanded uranium enrichment services in 2025, increasing their share of the EU market from 63.9% to 72.9%. The volume of Russian enrichment services also increased by 11.6% in physical terms. However, their share of the total volume of European orders declined by 22.55% compared with 23.55% a year earlier and 37% in 2023. Russia supplied nearly 16% of the EU’s natural uranium and 24.4% of its conversion services.

The situation is likewise complicated in the United States. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Russia remained the largest single source of enrichment services purchased by American nuclear operators in 2025, providing 3.284 million SWU — about 26% of the total. That was more than the share supplied by U.S. enrichment capacity itself.

“The published statistics in the EU and the US show the continuing dependence of Western nuclear power plant operators and nuclear fuel cycle enterprises on Russian supplies of uranium and its conversion and enrichment services,” Gorchakov says.

“Despite the existence of major European competitors to Rosatom and technical alternatives, up to 20–25% of nuclear materials and nuclear fuel cycle services in European and US markets still originate in Russia.”

For Gorchakov, market forces alone are unlikely to break that dependence. “Only official restrictions and sanctions can break this trend,” he writes, arguing that firm limits would both force reductions in Russian purchases and give Western suppliers confidence that investments in new capacity will pay off.

Taken together, the developments underline a contradiction that has persisted since the beginning of the war. Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia has created unprecedented nuclear safety risks in Ukraine, yet Rosatom remains deeply embedded in nuclear supply chains in the countries supporting Kyiv. Europe and the United States are developing alternatives, but July’s figures — and Germany’s decision in Lingen — suggest that breaking those ties will require political decisions as much as new technology and production capacity.

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