Russia’s nuclear plants are ageing. Who will pay to dismantle them? — SkimNews
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- Rosenergoatom plans to decommission 35 reactors but faces an €18.7 billion funding shortfall against an estimated €21 billion total cost; actual costs typically far exceed initial projections (Germany's Lubmin plant ballooned from €1B to €10B).
- Russia is deferring the costliest decommissioning work, placing shut-down reactors in long-term "safe" storage, while the Bellona Foundation warns Rosatom's remediation obligations could exceed its net profit by around 2037.
- Decommissioning 36 reactor units at eight nuclear plants is expected to generate an additional 800,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste on top of the ~774,000 cubic metres Russia inherited from the Soviet Union.
- Russia's federal budget now dedicates its largest single line item to national defence, while environmental protection receives a small fraction — a pattern of neglect illustrated by the 2024 Black Sea oil spill from two ageing Russian tankers.
- Independent oversight is shrinking inside Russia: Bellona and Greenpeace have been declared "undesirable" organisations, while EcoDefence has been designated a "foreign agent" and its members face criminal prosecution.
- Russia's nuclear customers — including Turkiye and Bangladesh — are being urged to develop a "Plan B" in case Russia cannot maintain or eventually decommission the plants it is building for them.
- The 1957 Mayak disaster was concealed by Soviet authorities for more than three decades until 1989, the historical precedent for Russian nuclear opacity.
Why it matters: Countries hosting Russian-built nuclear plants — from Turkiye to Bangladesh — depend on a Russian state that faces an €18.7 billion domestic decommissioning shortfall. With independent environmental watchdogs criminalised and the 1957 Mayak disaster concealed for 32 years, Russia's ageing nuclear fleet is, in the source's framing, 'an international concern, not merely an energy issue.'
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