Kamila Fayzieva
In late 2022, Uzbekistan’s state-owned uranium producer Navoiuran signed a contract worth nearly 9 million euro with the Kazakh logistics company TOO Logistic Centre to supply Uzbek uranium to France via Russian territory. The deliveries are scheduled to continue until the end of the first quarter of 2026, following a route that passes through St. Petersburg and onward to Malvési, France.
Concluded amid France’s renewed interest in Central Asia, the deal represented not just a logistical arrangement but a strategic commitment — one that ties Uzbekistan into a complex web of environmental, economic, and political dependencies.
The route begins in Navoi Region, crosses Kazakhstan, and proceeds through Russia to the port at St. Petersburg, from where the cargo is shipped to Orano — the French nuclear giant formerly known as Areva.
In Tashkent, the contract has been presented as a success of industrial modernization, yet it exposes a range of vulnerabilities — from environmental consequences to geopolitical risks in the context of war and sanctions.
Hidden Costs of Extraction
Since 1994, all uranium in Uzbekistan has been extracted using the acid in-situ leaching (AISL) method — a process in which diluted sulfuric acid is injected deep underground to dissolve uranium ore, and the resulting solution is pumped back to the surface.
This technique is cheaper and visually “cleaner” than open-pit mining, but it leaves behind a long-lasting chemical footprint.
Studies conducted in the Ili Basin (China) and Kurgan Region (Russia) have shown that even decades after operations cease, the underground environment remains acidic and oxidizing, keeping uranium mobile and contaminating groundwater.
According to Andrey Ozharovsky, a nuclear physicist and co-founder of the public program Radioactive Waste Safety, the environmental threat from in-situ leaching is far greater than the risk of transportation accidents.
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