IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jrpoli/v86y2023ipbs0301420723010292.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the weaponability of enriched uranium trade in the geopolitics of nuclear energy: The EU-Russia interrelations

Author

Listed:
  • Meyer, Teva

Abstract

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 revived the debates over Moscow's grip on the nuclear fuel market. European and American governments had since planned for policies to diminish their reliance on Russian supplies, motivated by fear of the Kremlin using it as a coercive diplomatic tool, drawing parallels with experiences of fossil fuels exportation disruptions. While global interest for atomic energy is on the rise again, this article aims at assessing the weaponability of nuclear fuel trades, i.e., the conditions in which they can be used by suppliers to politically constrain importing nations. Geopolitics scholarship had until recently paid little attention to nuclear power and the few existing works overlooked the supply issue. In this paper, we bridge existing literature on the “energy weapon” to build a renewed analytical framework to identify the conditions in which fuel trade interdependencies can be coercively used. We then applied it to the case of enriched uranium trade between Russia and European Union's member states. Data were gathered through analysis of a textual corpus consisting of articles from three main magazines focused on nuclear power—Nuclear Engineering International, World Nuclear News and NucNet — (n = 439), 14 semi-structured interviews and three international conferences observations. Results show that Russia's weaponization capacity of enriched uranium trades against Europe in low, but not inexistent, thanks to supply diversification strategies, existing inventories, ongoing production overcapacity, transport fluidity and partial dependence of Rosatom on exports. However, countries' vulnerability isn't homogenous through Europe, and the low weapon ability of nuclear fuel is largely dependent on the fragile equilibrium in the supply and demand balance. Finally, this paper identifies the limits of applying weaponization theories developed in the context of fossil fuel trades to the case of nuclear power.

Suggested Citation

  • Meyer, Teva, 2023. "Assessing the weaponability of enriched uranium trade in the geopolitics of nuclear energy: The EU-Russia interrelations," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(PB).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:86:y:2023:i:pb:s0301420723010292
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2023.104318
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420723010292
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resourpol.2023.104318?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas Davis & Catherine Hausman, 2016. "Market Impacts of a Nuclear Power Plant Closure," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 92-122, April.
    2. Ahmad, Ali & Salahieh, Sidra & Snyder, Ryan, 2017. "Multinational uranium enrichment in the Middle East," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 103-110.
    3. Jewell, Jessica & Vetier, Marta & Garcia-Cabrera, Daniel, 2019. "The international technological nuclear cooperation landscape: A new dataset and network analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 838-852.
    4. Kacper Szulecki & Indra Overland, 2023. "Russian nuclear energy diplomacy and its implications for energy security in the context of the war in Ukraine," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 8(4), pages 413-421, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wiktor Hebda & Matúš Mišík, 2024. "In Search of Energy Security: Nuclear Energy Development in the Visegrad Group Countries," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-21, October.
    2. Kim, Sunjin & Park, Daehyeon & Ryu, Doojin, 2024. "Potential sanctions on the Northeast Asia supergrid: A network theory perspective," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Gattie & Michael Hewitt, 2023. "National Security as a Value-Added Proposition for Advanced Nuclear Reactors: A U.S. Focus," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-26, August.
    2. Erik P. Johnson & Juan Moreno-Cruz, 2020. "Congestion in the Electricity Transmission System Redistributes Pollution across Long Distances," CESifo Working Paper Series 8483, CESifo.
    3. Stefan Lamp & Mario Samano, 2023. "(Mis)allocation of Renewable Energy Sources," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(1), pages 195-229.
    4. Lamp, Stefan & Samano, Mario, 2022. "Large-scale battery storage, short-term market outcomes, and arbitrage," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    5. Steven M. Smith, 2019. "The Relative Economic Merits of Alternative Water Rights," Working Papers 2019-08, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.
    6. Linn, Joshua & Muehlenbachs, Lucija, 2018. "The heterogeneous impacts of low natural gas prices on consumers and the environment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 1-28.
    7. Brehm, Paul A. & Zhang, Yiyuan, 2021. "The efficiency and environmental impacts of market organization: Evidence from the Texas electricity market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    8. Wealer, B. & Bauer, S. & Hirschhausen, C.v. & Kemfert, C. & Göke, L., 2021. "Investing into third generation nuclear power plants - Review of recent trends and analysis of future investments using Monte Carlo Simulation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    9. Casey J. Wichman, 2017. "Book Review: “Thirst for Power: Energy, Water, and Human Survival”," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(01), pages 1-4, January.
    10. Kim, Philseo & Kim, Jihee & Yim, Man-Sung, 2022. "Assessing proliferation uncertainty in civilian nuclear cooperation under new power dynamics of the international nuclear trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    11. Wiktor Hebda & Matúš Mišík, 2024. "In Search of Energy Security: Nuclear Energy Development in the Visegrad Group Countries," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-21, October.
    12. Brittany Tarufelli & Ben Gilbert, 2019. "Leakage in Regional Climate Policy? Implications of Electricity Market Design," Working Papers 2019-07, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business, revised Dec 2021.
    13. Rinne, Sonja, 2018. "Radioinactive: Are nuclear power plant outages in France contagious to the German electricity price?," CIW Discussion Papers 3/2018, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    14. Brett Watson & Ian Lange & Joshua Linn, 2023. "Coal demand, market forces, and U.S. coal mine closures," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(1), pages 35-57, January.
    15. Bernstein, David H. & Parmeter, Christopher F. & Tsionas, Mike G., 2023. "On the performance of the United States nuclear power sector: A Bayesian approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    16. Lovering, Jessica R. & Abdulla, Ahmed & Morgan, Granger, 2020. "Expert assessments of strategies to enhance global nuclear security," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    17. Geissmann, Thomas, 2017. "A probabilistic approach to the computation of the levelized cost of electricity," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 372-381.
    18. Luis E. GONZALES & ITO Koichiro & Mar REGUANT, 2022. "The Dynamic Impact of Market Integration: Evidence from renewable energy expansion in Chile," Discussion papers 22050, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    19. Maliszewska-Nienartowicz, Justyna, 2024. "Impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on renewable energy development in Germany and Italy," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    20. R. Andrew Butters & Daniel F. Spulber, 2020. "The Extent Of The Market And Integration Through Factor Markets: Evidence From Wholesale Electricity," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1076-1108, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:86:y:2023:i:pb:s0301420723010292. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30467 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.