Greenpeace on Monday denounced the delivery to France of a shipment of enriched uranium from Russia, a situation that, according to the environmental organization, shows France’s dependence on the Russian nuclear industry.
A cargo ship unloaded several containers of uranium from Russia at the port of Dunkirk this morning, according to a journalist from the French news agency AFP, who was briefed on the operation by Greenpeace.
“This is further evidence that the French nuclear industry continues to trade uranium with Rosatom [empresa estatal russa para o desenvolvimento de energia nuclear]”says Pauline Boyer, Greenpeace expert on nuclear energy and energy transition.
“The continuation of this wartime nuclear trade with Russia is outrageous,” Boyer criticized, referring to the invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement, the non-governmental environmental organization (NGO) said that this morning in the French port of Dunkirk, the Russian freighter Baltiyskiy 202, from Saint Petersburg, “unloaded 25 cylindrical containers of Russian-enriched uranium for the French group Orano (formerly Areva)”.
According to the NGO, these containers were “loaded onto a dozen trucks” for the Pierrelatte plant in the Drôme, Russia’s seventh delivery of uranium to France since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.
In a March 11 report, Greenpeace had already denounced France’s “dependency bond” on Russian nuclear energy, a sector not subject to international sanctions.
The NGO recalled that France received from Russia “one third of the enriched uranium necessary for the operation of French nuclear power plants for one year”.
In a recent statement, the French government refuted this data, guaranteeing that “the country is in no way dependent on Russia for the operation of its nuclear power plants” and claimed that the energy authorities have succeeded in “diversifying their sources of supply”. .
Source: DN
