This nuclear project is a joint venture between a subsidiary of the French Framatome group and the Russian state-owned nuclear power corporation Rosatom to produce fuel rods used in nuclear reactors designed by Russia.
The project will be located at Framatome's fuel rod assembly facility in the town of Lingen, Lower Saxony, Germany.
Framatome's subsidiary ANF (Advanced Nuclear Fuels) applied for a license for this project in March 2022, just weeks after the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out.
The Lower Saxony state Environment Agency announced on July 22, local time, the decision to approve the project.
The Minister of Environment of Lower Saxony state said that one of the conditions for approval is that employees of Rosatom or employees of Russian nuclear fuel producer TVEL - a member unit of Rosatom - are only allowed to enter this facility "in very limited cases and accompanied by a relevant inspection agency".
Russian nuclear giant Rosatom is immune from successive rounds of EU sanctions imposed on Russia after the conflict broke out in Ukraine.
The Lower Saxony Department of Environment also emphasized that approval could be reconsidered "if new risks are detected", especially "in the field of national security".
The approval move by the Lower Saxony state has caused many mixed opinions because Germany has closed its last nuclear reactor since 2023.
Countries in the former Soviet Union, as well as Finland, have nuclear power plants designed from the Soviet era and need appropriate fuels such as the type of fuel that the project in Lingen will produce.
