(Bloomberg) -- Electricite de France SA is in talks with Orano SA and Westinghouse Electric Co. over the construction of a nuclear facility in Western Europe that would help the company to bypass Russia for supplies of reprocessed fuel used in France’s power stations.

European countries and the US are seeking to reduce their reliance on Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine more than two years ago. However, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog recently cautioned that there’s no quick way to loosen Russia’s grip on nuclear supply chains, as the Kremlin-controlled Rosatom Corp. is the world’s dominant supplier of atomic fuel.

“We’re working with Orano and Westinghouse on the creation of a plant in Western Europe that would perform the conversion of reprocessed uranium,” Jean-Michel Quilichini, head of the nuclear fuel unit at EDF, said at the Sfen conference in Paris on Thursday. 

EDF uses uranium that undergoes a part of the recycling process at a Rosatom plant in Siberia for a handful of its 56 French reactors, based on a long-term contract that was signed before the start of the war in Ukraine, Quilichini said. 

Rosatom’s plant in Seversk is the only one that performs chemical conversion of used fuel, while France and several other nations have their own plants for the chemical processing of natural uranium ore.

State-owned EDF will feed the reactors of its Cruas power station with the fuel processed in Russia while it is not forbidden, while it works on an alternative production facility with Orano or Westinghouse, Quilichini said. Eventually the new plant would give France — which already uses a blend of uranium oxide and plutonium developed from spent fuel in some of its reactors — the capacity to recycle a larger stockpile of fuel.  

France and the US are also working on plans to boost uranium enrichment capacities, another stage in the fuel processing that’s dominated by Russia. Read more:

  • France to Enlarge Uranium Plant to Cut Reliance on Russian Fuel
  • The Manhattan Project to Wean the US Off Russian Uranium

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