Page 15 - RusRPTDec22

According to the body, there are about 30 countries that are considering, planning or starting new nuclear power programmes. Pre-war Russia’s Rosatom has some 40 projects in the pipeline including four in Africa which is beginning to turn to nuclear power.
Russia was also the seventh-largest producer of uranium in 2021. State-owned Rosatom accounts for about 40 per cent of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity, making it a crucial supplier as most nuclear power stations use enriched fuel.
China is also increasing its exports of nuclear technology. With 27 of the 31 reactor construction projects started since 2017 of Russian or Chinese design, according to the International Energy Agency, battle lines are being drawn with the US.
In 2020, Romania ended six years of talks with China on the construction of two nuclear reactors and signed co-operation and financing agreements with the US, while the Czech Republic excluded Russian and Chinese companies from the tender to build a new reactor at its Dukovany nuclear plant on security grounds.
Poland last month awarded a contract to build its first nuclear plant to US group Westinghouse Electric.
2.5 Five ways the Ukraine war could end
US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said in November that there’s no military solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and it can only be ended with peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
A tide of calls for a negotiated end to the war have build slowly through out November, reversing the earlier Western stance of not negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In April just after the Bucha massacre Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was reportedly close to a peace deal with Russia when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv and told him the West would not support any deal should he reach one with Putin.
Today the official US position is that Ukraine is the only one to decide on peace talks and potential concessions, but in practise if the West throttles back on its military and financial aid then Zelenskiy will be forced to sue for peace.
The west is increasingly nervous of getting dragged into the war through a mistake. The two Ukrainian missiles that hit a Polish village on November 15 killing two has heightened awareness of that risk after many called on Poland to invoke Nato’s Article 5 assuming the incident was an attack by Russia on a Nato member.
15 RUSSIA Country Report December 2022 www.intellinews.com