BERLIN, July 22, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - German authorities said Wednesday they were 
giving the green light to a controversial French-Russian nuclear project 
which critics fear will enable spying and sabotage by Moscow.

The planned joint venture by a subsidiary of French company Framatome and 
Russia's state-owned nuclear power agency Rosatom is aimed at producing fuel 
rods used in Russian-designed reactors.

The project would be based at Framatome's fuel rod assembly facility in the 
town of Lingen in the state of Lower Saxony.

Framatome's subsidiary ANF (Advanced Nuclear Fuels) applied for permission 
for the project in March 2022, just weeks after Russia began its full-scale 
invasion of Ukraine.

The state's environment ministry said in a statement Wednesday it had 
"decided to approve" the project.

This was despite the state's environment minister, Christian Meyer, restating 
his position that "dealings and close co-operation with Putin's nuclear 
agency are totally wrong".

He said however that his ministry had "no legal possibility to reject or put 
a time limit to the application" in the absence of sanctions on Rosatom.

Rosatom has been exempted from the successive rounds of EU sanctions imposed 
against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

- 'Dangerous to security' -

Meyer said that one of the conditions of the approval was that Rosatom 
employees or those from Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL would only be 
allowed to enter the site "in very limited cases and accompanied by the 
relevant inspectorate".

The ministry also stressed that the approval could be revisited "if new risks 
are identified", particularly "in the area of national security".

Roderich Kiesewetter, a prominent member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's 
centre-right CDU party, said Wednesday that the federal government should 
intervene to prevent the project from going ahead.

The decision by Lower Saxony was "dangerous to security and must be 
reversed," Kiesewetter told the Politico website.

The Greens have also been vocal critics of the plan, saying it will that 
enable Moscow to harvest "information on very sensitive nuclear facilities on 
German soil".

Germany is Ukraine's biggest backer in its fight to repel Russia's full-scale 
invasion and has been on high alert for signs of "hybrid warfare" directed by 
Moscow.

Germany itself closed the last of its own nuclear reactors in 2023.

Former countries from the Soviet sphere of influence, as well as Finland, 
have nuclear power plants designed in the Soviet era and still need suitable 
fuel of the kind the project in Lingen will produce.

Russia also controls a large share of the global uranium supply thanks to its 
reserves and its interests in former Soviet states such as Kazakhstan.