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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron travels on Wednesday to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the place he hopes to safe uranium for his nation’s nuclear plants.
The journey comes as geopolitical tensions develop with the EU’s present main suppliers, Niger and Russia.
Macron’s go to to the 2 nations goals to increase French affect in an space which has sturdy ties with Russia and is now additionally rising nearer to China, an Elysée official mentioned.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are respectively France’s largest and third-largest suppliers of uranium, which is burned to gasoline nuclear vegetation.
Final summer season a army junta took over Niger, which provides 15 % of France’s uranium wants, sparking questions as as to if the African nation can proceed to be a dependable supply. Uncertainty has additionally surrounded imports of Russian uranium since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Niger raises questions, Russia might elevate questions in the long run [if] the EU imposes sanctions on the nuclear sector. Macron’s go to to Central Asia helps to anticipate these considerations,” mentioned Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, an vitality skilled on the Jacques Delors Institute suppose tank in Paris.
Russia’s nuclear sector has not been focused by EU sanctions up to now, however member nations proceed to show away from Moscow. The amount of uranium the EU imported from Russia fell by 16 % final 12 months from 2021, whereas the quantity from Kazakhstan rose by over 14 %.
Earlier this 12 months, Yerzhan Mukanov, CEO of the nation’s state-run nuclear agency Kazatomprom, informed POLITICO he was seeing rising curiosity from Europe, and that Kazakhstan “intends to grow to be a big contributor to the European nuclear market.”
French nuclear agency Orano is lively in Kazakhstan, the place it has been working uranium mines because the Nineties, and extra not too long ago in Uzbekistan. Orano President Claude Imauven is accompanying Macron on his journey together with 14 different French executives, together with Luc Remont, head of French vitality large EDF.
An Elysée official mentioned that new contracts and enterprise partnerships might be introduced in the course of the journey, together with within the vitality sector.
EDF has additionally positioned itself to grow to be a provider of nuclear reactors for Kazakhstan’s first nuclear plant.
The go to comes as Brussels competes with China for affect within the area by way of funding packages centered on infrastructure.
Each Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are benefitting from Chinese language funding below Beijing’s Belt and Highway Initiative, with their presidents attending a high-level assembly on the topic in Beijing in October. The EU is attempting to realize affect within the two nations by involving them in cooperation and funding tasks below its “International Gateway” initiative, the bloc’s response to Belt and Highway.
Victor Jack contributed reporting.
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