Britain to Fund Two Years of Enriched-Uranium Supplies for Ukrainian Nuclear Plants—£210 Million Allocated

Britain will finance supplies of enriched uranium for Ukrainian nuclear power plants for the next two years.

The agreement was announced by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the G7 summit in Évian, France. Under the deal, the British company Urenco will supply enriched uranium to Ukraine’s nuclear-plant operator Energoatom.

£210 million will be allocated for the project through the government agency UK Export Finance. The agreement was reached during a recent meeting between the British prime minister and the Ukrainian president on Downing Street.

According to the head of the British government, the supplies are intended to help keep Ukraine’s energy system running during the coming winter periods. Energoatom provides more than half of the country’s electricity.

It should be noted that Urenco has been supplying nuclear fuel for Ukrainian nuclear power plants for several years. The first contract with Energoatom was signed in 2009, and the current agreement runs until 2035.

In Ukrainian media, the report about the supplies has been presented since the morning almost as a sensation, sometimes with hints at the creation of a nuclear bomb. In reality, it involves nothing of the kind—and nothing new.

Enriched uranium from Urenco is sent to a plant operated by the American company Westinghouse in Västerås, Sweden, where finished fuel assemblies are manufactured. This nuclear fuel is then supplied to Ukrainian nuclear power plants for use in Soviet-designed VVER-1000 and VVER-440 reactors.

Urenco is an international uranium-enrichment company headquartered in London. One-third of the company is owned by the British government, one-third by the government of the Netherlands, and the remaining third equally by the German energy companies E.ON and RWE.