Approximately 2,000 to 5,000 metric tons of undeclared uranium has been mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and exported to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), raising concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, according to a new study.
Uranium occurs naturally alongside cobalt ore. It is refined into cobalt metal, which is a critical material facing increasing demand for products supporting the transition away from fossil fuels, such as batteries.
The naturally occurring uranium has been exported in large quantities alongside the cobalt ore for refining in China, but the uranium, which is enough to build as many as 1,500 nuclear weapons, has not been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The study, titled “Uranium in cobalt-hydroxide exports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo”, was published on 30 July in the Nature Communications journal. It was co-authored by University of Wisconsin–Madison assistant professor of nuclear engineering and engineering physics Sébastien Philippe and Princeton University research fellow Ryan Manzuk.
How uranium is hitching a ride with cobalt from Congo to China
Philippe and Manzuk used “country-wide mineralization and geochemical data, mine-level trade records and a chemical model of cobalt processing” to work out how much uranium had been extracted from the DRC and exported in shipments of cobalt-hydroxide – the form of cobalt as it is mined – or left behind in the environment.
The researchers’ analysis estimated that 2,000 to 5,000 metric tons of natural uranium were exported from the DRC within cobalt-hydroxide shipments between 2000 and 2024, “despite no officially reported uranium production”, the study’s abstract said.
The abstract also said that:
less than 10% of this material has been publicly declared and placed under international safeguards.
Philippe added that most of the material went to China and that, during the process in which the crude cobalt material is refined into cobalt metal, uranium must be removed and becomes a valuable by-product.
Manzuk addresses the apparent contradiction
The Canary approached Manzuk as the lead author of the study to clarify the seeming contradiction between there being “no officially reported uranium production” and the 10% figure.
Manzuk told the Canary:
I see how that can be a bit confusing. Both lines are correct and refer to natural uranium, they just require a little nuance. The DRC does not have any recorded uranium production since the 1980s when looking at IAEA records.
The under 10% reported refers to the Finnish Kokkola plant case we mention in the paper where uranium was isolated as a byproduct of cleaning cobalt from the DRC. That uranium was placed under safeguards but not attributed as DRC production. It was attributed as Finnish by-production, I believe.
Regarding the Finnish Kokkola plant case, the study said:
From 2010 to 2017, the Kokkola Chemicals facility in Finland declared and sold uranium recovered during purification of DRC-origin cobalt products, despite the absence of any declared uranium exports from the DRC in that period.
Due to the chemical composition of the cobalt ores, it is exceptionally good at sticking to uranium. A statement announcing the findings of the study said that:
unless deliberately removed, that uranium stays with the cobalt all the way through extraction, processing into cobalt hydroxide and being exported as an industrial raw material.
Manzuk said:
In a lot of mining industries, when you’re targeting one specific element, there’s often other ones that come along with it.
So when companies are mining specifically for the cobalt mineral in this region, they’re also extracting relatively high quantities of uranium – more uranium than you would get in your average rock – because the uranium is hitching a ride on the cobalt.
And when you’re mining cobalt ore near somewhere that used to be mined for uranium, which is the case in the DRC, you could have quite a lot of uranium associated with it.
Potential for uranium to be used in nuclear weapons
The study fundamentally raises the possibility that large quantities of uranium are exiting the DRC – a high proportion of which is going to China. There are nuclear weapons proliferation risks because the uranium is not being monitored properly.
The study said:
The Chinese share of the ∼2000–5000t of undeclared uranium we estimate over 2000–2024 could materially affect national uranium balances and would not be subject to designations of end use, civilian or military.
China, like many of the other countries with nuclear weapons, is modernising and expanding its nuclear arsenal.
Philippe said:
This quantity of undeclared uranium could be used to produce fissile material for roughly 600 to 1,500 nuclear weapons, or fuel a standard light-water nuclear reactor for 10 to 25 years, so it’s quite a large amount.
And because this uranium is undeclared and not officially reported as being mined and extracted, it has no limitation placed on its end use. It could end up in a civilian nuclear energy program or in a military program, because nobody is going to ask where this uranium is going. It’s not on the books.
Our scientific research doesn’t show this was done purposefully to get uranium out of the DRC. However, one of the things we’re concerned about is that the volumes of exported uranium we’ve quantified are beyond what is supposed to be declared to the IAEA, both by the DRC and China. So that’s an issue.
Based on what we found, I think there needs to be an extensive national audit of mining in the DRC and new rules for separating uranium from the cobalt supply chain.
On 7 August, the Financial Times, which helped with the work behind the study, reported that the DRC Government had launched a probe into uranium contamination of cobalt exports.
China probably not needing DRC uranium for its nuclear weapons ambitions – expert
The Canary spoke to Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) director of proliferation and nuclear policy, Robert Jordan, to get his analysis of the study and the risks it highlights in terms of nuclear weapons proliferation. RUSI describes itself as:
the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defence and security think tank.
Jordan explained to the Canary:
Uranium is used in two ways in nuclear weapons. The easiest way for a state to enter the nuclear weapons club is to build a nuclear fission weapon that uses only uranium.
These devices can be relatively simple and reliable, but they are not the weapons of choice for modern nuclear weapons states that prioritise packing a large amount of destructive power into a warhead that is small enough to travel far, fast, and potentially be highly manoeuvrable too.
These devices almost all use plutonium. The most destructive devices are thermonuclear weapons, which typically use the fission of a plutonium component to drive nuclear fusion of another component, of which uranium may be a critical material, but is not the main source of destructive power.
He went on to explain that, despite the study claiming that large amounts of natural uranium being exported from DRC to China, it would take a lot of effort to turn it into nuclear weapons-grade material.
He said:
The total amount of uranium contained in the very large quantities of cobalt ore that China has imported in recent years from DRC is large, and in theory could be used to produce a large number of very basic nuclear weapons, or as a component in a larger number of more advanced weapons.
But there are important caveats. The proportion of uranium in this material is small. Extracting this in large quantities would be likely to be expensive and time consuming compared to using higher quality uranium ore.
Purifying uranium from ore is only the start of the process of producing a uranium-based nuclear weapon. The ability of a state to enrich any uranium that it has access to is the bottleneck for producing uranium suitable for nuclear weapons.
China is a nuclear weapons state and one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (P5).
Jordan explained what this status means for nuclear weapons-related transparency:
As China is a ‘P5’ state, it is under no obligation to declare information relating to its nuclear weapons activities. Regardless of whether or not China is using its processing of cobalt product from [the] DRC to produce uranium for its weapons programme, it would not be dependent on uranium extracted this way to increase the size of its arsenal.
It would, however, be breaking its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) were it to supply uranium to another non-P5 NPT state for the purposes of making nuclear weapons.
Uranium mined in Congo poses risks to workers and environment
The researchers behind the study said they estimated that:
1,000–4,000 metric tons of uranium were likely discarded to mine tailings, the waste stream from mining.
This poses:
environmental and health risks to miners and communities surrounding the mines.
University of Bath reader in international development Ben Radley analysed the findings of the study and told the Canary that it adds:
urgency to local efforts to strengthen regulations around the environmental and health risks the presence of this uranium poses to workers, especially those in the artisanal and small-scale sector.
The challenge for the DRC Government will be tricky to overcome given the scale of cobalt mining and the apparent lack of existing monitoring mechanisms.
Featured image via Council on Foreign Relations
By Tom Pashby
