Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned corporation specialising in nuclear affairs, is one of the country’s largest enterprises. With 370,000 employees employed in hundreds of subsidiaries across 31 cities, and annual sales of $30 billion, it is one of the country’s most powerful organisations. Under the control of the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin, Rosatom sells nuclear fuel and reactors around the world and contributes to the production of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Because of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s financial, transport, defence and energy sectors have been heavily sanctioned by the European Union, the US and the UK. In one of the last actions of the Biden administration, the US sanctioned Rosatom’s senior officials, including its CEO. The UK took similar measures two years ago, but both powers have so far avoided applying general sanctions directly to Rosatom itself. Rather, sanctions have been targeted at its subsidiaries. Similarly, Rosatom has not yet appeared in any of the EU’s sanction packages, although some may be imposed this year.

Why has the West been so slow in clamping down on Rosatom? The answer lies in Rosatom’s outsized influence on international nuclear markets. From ore to fuel fabrication, from machine building to isotope production, and from the generation of power in a variety of nuclear power plants, many of the world’s nuclear industries rely on Russia for uranium, technology and expertise.

Rosatom has developed a massive reactor programme, which will expand the company’s operations both at home and abroad. Even though significant cost overruns, delays and accidents have dogged the programme, it continues to move ahead without significant checks because of its political and symbolic importance to Putin’s government. Rosatom and state officials continue to celebrate the rapid recovery of the industry from the political and economic crises of the Yeltsin years in the 1990s, which mothballed many of its projects. The Chernobyl disaster is largely ignored, except for an annual commemoration, held on 26 April, of the workers who toiled to deal with the consequences of the world’s most significant nuclear accident. Russia’s leadership frequently tout Rosatom’s activities as a sign that their nation remains a scientific superpower, one which can serve as an effective counterbalance to Western, and especially American, hegemony. Its first head, Sergei Kiriyenko, called Rosatom ‘a recreation of the legendary Minsredmash [the secret Soviet nuclear ministry] of the USSR, but in new market conditions’.

Rosatom’s symbolic importance permits officials to ignore persistent problems in the industry. As recently as July 2024, an emergency shutdown at the Rostov nuclear power station (NPP) left millions of people without electricity and drew attention to the safety and bold future plans of Russia’s massive nuclear enterprise. This is totally in keeping with Russia’s Soviet past. With almost unbroken continuity since the 1950s, the Soviet high command and that of its successor state have pursued nuclear power as safe, inexpensive and, crucially, as a living confirmation of the glories of state scientific leadership. Its modern promoters in Rosatom claim that it can bring modern nuclear power plants (NPPs) online faster than French, American or Chinese industry.

Rosatom runs a four-fold reactor programme: modernised, pressurised water reactors (PWRs, the Russian VVER-1200); the continued operation of 11 Chernobyl-type channel graphite reactors (RBMKs) under a ‘safe regime’; plutonium breeder reactors (LMFBRs); and the design and manufacture of compact and in some cases transportable units, small modular reactors (SMRs), floating reactors, nuclear icebreakers, and the like. In all, Rosatom operates 37 nuclear power reactors with an overall installed capacity of 29.57 GWs (gigawatts) at 11 power stations. The stations account for about 20 percent of domestic electricity generation. Since Russian electricity demand does not require additional capacity, further domestic PWR construction does not reflect production shortfalls, but is an indication of Rosatom’s power and influence – and the state’s ongoing effort to keep the nuclear engineers of the Cold War busy.

Rosatom regularly advances ambitious state-led programmes for reactor construction and operation, but none of the targets have so far been met. In 2012, for example, leading specialists at the Kurchatov Institute predicted that the next generation of PWRs and RBMKs would generate 50 to 60 GWs of installed capacity by 2030, implying the construction and operation of at least 25 new 1,000 MWe reactors in less than 20 years. A handful will be built.

Russia’s breeder reactor programme has also struggled. It remains the only nation with an operating commercial LMFBR unit, but these have been accident prone and never operated on schedule. Its BN-600 reactor suffered from fires, leaks, ruptures and melted fuel rods; the BN-800 took decades to come online well over cost. A 1,200 MW unit is planned, but it is unlikely to be built before the 2030s, and it is already over cost estimates.

Rosatom is betting on selling floating NPPs (acronym: PATES) to generate additional foreign sales. Rosatom has long pursued floating reactors, but only one has been deployed, in Pevek, a closed military bay in Russia’s far eastern Chukhotka. PATES are designed to provide up to 90 MWe, but can also generate heat and desalinate water. Rosatom has floated the offer to sell them for $335 million each, with China, Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, Namibia, South Africa, Kuwait, Vietnam and other countries expressing interest in them. There have been no firm commitments, presumably since only one PATES has operating experience.

Russia’s fleet of nuclear icebreakers remain important to Russia as a symbol of scientific status, but have also suffered from delays, cost overruns and technological failures. Rosatom’s nuclear icebreaker fleet today numbers eight, with a new generation of vessels in production. The programme has been dogged by delays. Rosatom sees itself as a central feature of Russia’s Arctic strategy, its reactors set to power the development of the polar oil and gas, nickel, copper, and platinum industries. Its shipping division, Atomflot, ties in the operation of pipelines, mines, canals, ports, and polar aviation. Rosatom participates in state megaprojects such as the ‘Arctic SPG-2’ programme, the Sabetta Port, and NOVATEK, Russia’s largest independent natural gas producer. Russia’s Ministry of Defence appears to be arming icebreakers with missiles. All of these military-political connections would seem to call for enhanced sanctions.

In the Soviet era, Minsredmash could not establish a strong market abroad for its first generation PWRs. For one thing, they faced serious questions about safety, service and reliability. Except for Finland, where the Lovissa NPP uses Soviet PWRs, the USSR sold its reactors abroad only to its socialist client-colonies: PWRs to Hungary, Armenia, Bulgaria, East Germany and Czechoslovakia; and two RBMKs to Lithuania and four to Ukraine (Chernobyl). Most of these units were shut down in the 2000s as one of the conditions for those countries to enter the EU.

But since 2020, Rosatom has become the world’s biggest single nuclear player. Of the 439 nuclear reactors in operation around the globe, 37 of them are in Russia, an additional 42 have been built with Russian exports, and 15 more are being built by Rosatom. Ongoing projects include Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Egypt, Hungary, India, Iran, and Turkey; Finland cancelled its Hanhikivi project with Russia over the Ukraine war.

To cement its influence Rosatom has signed nearly two dozen agreements or memorandums of understanding with Asian, African and Latin American countries, including Zimbabwe, Mali, Burkina Faso, Brazil and Uzbekistan. Russian loans, connected with many of these projects, enable Rosatom to maintain its nuclear presence. In 2023, Rosatom earned $16.2 billion from these projects, up from $11.8 billion just a year earlier in 2022. By 2030, Rosatom hopes at least to double its revenues again.

Rosatom’s nuclear fuel sales secure economic and political dependencies on Russia among states across the world. Many countries have abandoned the nuclear fuel system (the production of their own enriched uranium) and rely on Russia to provide it for reactor operation and to dispose of spent fuel. Russia possesses roughly 44 per cent of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity, and most of the 32 countries that use nuclear power rely on Russia for some part of their nuclear fuel supply chain. Russian officials rightly assumed that Rosatom would escape sanctions because of its central position in the international fuel supply.

Accordingly, Rosatom has helped the Kremlin evade sanctions on other aspects of Russia’s industry. In November 2023, Rosatom acquired the Far Eastern Shipping Company (FESCO), which had been sanctioned by the UK in May of that year. FESCO has terminals in Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk, Tomsk, and Vladivostok and has intensified its presence in China.

The US has only belatedly imposed sanctions on Rosatom because America relies on Russian uranium to fuel its 93 civilian reactors. Russia supplies approximately 35 per cent of US uranium needs. Still, the US recently banned the import of LEU (low enriched uranium) from Russia. There are also growing efforts in Congress to impose sanctions on Rosatom, and US, French and other nuclear manufacturers are working to undercut Rosatom sales abroad. One effort to lessen Rosatom’s influence was the formation of the ‘Sapporo 5’ nuclear alliance between the US, Canada, France, Japan and the UK, which has agreed to develop a global nuclear supply chain. Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev dismissed concerns over the US ban on imports of Russian uranium. He pointed to loopholes in existing contracts and claimed that US attempts at self-sufficiency ‘are in their infancy’, and it is hardly likely they can ramp up imports from elsewhere.

If the goal of sanctions is to handicap Russian efforts to carry out war on Ukraine and to punish its leadership for the invasion of a European nation, then the international community should include Rosatom as a target. Russia – and Rosatom – have become nuclear outlaws, threatening Europe and the US with nuclear war and attacking Ukraine’s civilian power reactors. During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia seized control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia NPP with six PWRs. Together with the occupation and ransacking of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in the first days of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the military assault and takeover of the Zaporizhzhia NPP under the direct control of Rosatom, are the wild actions of a pariah state whose military activities put all of Europe at risk of a major nuclear accident.

This has led to further calls for sanctions on Rosatom. As David Albright, former United Nations IAEA nuclear inspector and chairman of the Institute for Science and International Security, writes:

Rosatom… is not just a benign commercial nuclear energy supplier. Rosatom has actively participated in the illegal seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP)… Rosatom is also complicit in the human rights violations of Ukrainian plant personnel, violations that include torture. Rosatom also actively contributes importantly to the production of Russian weapon systems used against Ukraine.

Rosatom remains, like its Soviet predecessor Minsredmash, a tool of state power. It pursues Russian military goals and targets, even with its ‘peaceful’ reactor and fuel contracts. In the coming months, the EU and US must acknowledge how Rosatom’s programmes serve Russian foreign policies and, in particular, Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine.