Rosatom

The Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) is the successor agency to the Soviet state nuclear agencies. Rosatom is aggressively pursuing export contracts throughout the world with its business model of “Build-Own-Operate” (BOO). Rosatom offers to attend to all aspects of construction and operation of a nuclear project. Theoretically, this model would allow a nation to become a nuclear state even though it has little to no knowledge and infrastructure in place to support operation and oversight of a nuclear reactor. The United States does not compete in the global market for low cost, nuclear generated and environmentally friendly electricity, with France being the Russian Federation's only competitor in the developing and former "Third World". The model increases the client's dependency on Rosatom to operate the reactor, as well as its dependency on imported uranium.

Global clientele

Uranium is the one viable clean energy source that does not create carbon emissions. By 2014 Russia controlled 60% of the world's uranium supply and half of all enrichment capacity. Energy was one export commodity Russia had to integrate itself into the global trading system. Along with its crude oil and natural gas reserves Russia has set the goal for itself to become the world's energy powerhouse. The American firm Westinghouse along with French and Japanese companies are Rosatom's only competitors. Rosatom has pursued various contracts to provide reactors in China, India, Iran, Turkey, Belarus, Armenia, Finland, Hungary, the UK, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cape Verde, Namibia, Tunisia, Morocco, Brazil and Uruguay. Rosatom additionally has contracts in Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Tanzania, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the US.

Disposal of waste

Disposal of nuclear waste is the most problematic issue facing the nuclear industry beyond the problem of nuclear proliferation. Rosatom has opted to reprocess highly radioactive spent fuel from its foreign plants. The radioactive waste must be cooled onsite for years before it can be transported. The transport of waste itself puts communities along the route at risk, and the final reprocessing generates an even greater volume of radioactive wastes. Reprocessing has been rejected in some nations, such as the United States. Reprocessing increases the volume of radioactive wastes and is a direct pathway to the production of separated weapons grade plutonium.

Reprocessing

Blending, on the other hand, is the recycling of nuclear weapons material into nuclear fuel for power plants. In 1992, the United States and Russia signed the HEU-LEU treaty (also called "Megatons into Megawatts"), in which highly enriched uranium extracted from disassembled Russian warheads was blended into low-enriched uranium and sent to American nuclear power plants. In coming years the program fueled ten percent of U.S. electricity. Tenex (Techsnabexport) is the Rosatom subsidiary responsible for the sale and transportation of this uranium to the United States. Tenex maintained its presence in the United States under the name Tenam, established about October 2010, based in Bethesda MD. The HEU-LEU contract worth more than $13 billion terminated in 2013.

History

Russia's main exports throughout the Cold War were AK-47s and T-62 tanks. When Hitler invaded in mid 1941 Russia was unprepared, and spent the entirety of World War II bringing its weapons manufacturing capacity up to strength. When the Second World War ended, Soviet arms production didn't stop. For the next half century only a portion of Soviet manufacturing was ever converted to the peacetime domestic production of consumer goods, eventually leading to the collapse of the Soviet economy and state. The end of Cold War I brought a pledge from the new Russian leaders to end the declaration of worldwide Marxist revolution and the export of AK-47s, in exchange for membership in the IMF and G8, and access to World Bank loans.