The nuclear long game: How Rosatom became a tool of Russian influence
Summary
- Rosatom has emerged as a dominant actor in the global nuclear power plant (NPP) construction market, backed by state financing, integrated project management, and long-term political support.
- Russia’s NPP export model creates long-term structural influence by rendering partner countries reliant on Russian fuel supplies, technical standards, regulatory cooperation, and engineering expertise for decades.
- Western nuclear vendors have lost ground partly because they treated the NPP market as a space for commercial competition, while Rosatom views it as an instrument of state strategy.
- Rosatom’s business model nevertheless faces growing constraints, including financial pressure, execution risks, sanctions exposure, political backlash, and increasing dependence on volatile emerging markets.
- South Korea and China may one day become Rosatom’s most serious long-term competitors by replicating many elements of the Russian export model.
Introduction
For decades, nuclear power was widely viewed as an essentially Western phenomenon, shaped by American innovation, French industrial discipline, and Japanese precision. Reactors built in the West symbolised modernity, control, and scientific mastery. Even though the Soviet Union aggressively promoted nuclear power at home and across its sphere of influence, this barely affected the broader narrative.
Today, if a fast-growing country in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East wants a nuclear power plant – financed, staffed, regulated, and delivered on a timetable that political leaders can defend – it often turns first to Moscow. Leadership in the field of nuclear exports has shifted, quietly but decisively, away from the West.
As of today, the IAEA PRIS database shows 72 reactors under construction worldwide. Excluding China (where 35 of them are located) and Russia (with another 5), this leaves 32 reactors under construction elsewhere in the world. Of these, about 16 are being built by Rosatom, which, via its subsidiary Atomstroyexport, effectively dominates the international reactor construction industry, with no Western competitor in sight.
Russia’s dominance is not an accident. It is the result of a deliberate strategy which originated between 2006 and 2008, when Rosatom became the last Soviet-era ministry to be reorganised as a corporation, bringing together almost all the industrial companies and many of the research centres in the nuclear sector, both military and civilian. Its mandate was explicit: to preserve the dual-use scientific capability inherited from the USSR, revive domestic construction, and dominate the global export market.
The strategy succeeded and even exceeded its goals. Rosatom now holds the world’s largest foreign order book, with active projects in Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Egypt, Hungary, India, Iran, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan, and aims to draw two-thirds of its revenue from abroad by 2030.
But what makes the corporation strategically significant is the kind of influence it generates. Russia’s nuclear sector has become one of Moscow’s most effective foreign policy instruments, and arguably the only major one that has broadened its reach since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Rosatom offers a deal which no Western vendor can match: a reactor, decades of operational support, and sovereign financing covering 80 to 100 per cent of project cost, repayable over 30 years and backed by the Russian state itself. In return, Russia acquires structural leverage. A reactor commits the host country to a 60- to 80-year relationship covering fuel supply from Rosatom’s subsidiary TVEL,1 technical services, regulatory training, spare parts, and waste management. Switching fuel suppliers requires reactor re-certification; alternative service providers are largely unavailable. These dependencies are difficult and costly to reverse, and they typically outlast the government that signed the original contract. Before the US company Westinghouse was ready to sign a contract with Ukraine’s Energoatom to replace Russian nuclear fuel, it took almost 15 years to overcome all the practical difficulties. Similar contracts were subsequently signed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Finland.
Rosatom’s strategy results in a form of influence that draws countries closer to Russia in a way that resembles the exercise of ‘soft power,’ but operates through an entirely different mechanism. Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman have called this ‘weaponised interdependence’: power exercised through control of critical nodes in long-term infrastructural and supply relationships, where the cost of exit is prohibitive. Nuclear cooperation creates long-term institutional dependence. It places Russian engineers, managers, trainers, and officials in key positions within the host country’s energy sector and policymaking bodies. It also gives Moscow sustained influence over decisions related to electricity pricing, grid development, industrial policy, and energy security. In addition, participation in nuclear projects reinforces Russia’s image as a technologically capable and reliable strategic partner.
This analysis does not cover Rosatom’s achievements in producing the world’s only small modular reactor (SMR) designs currently in serial production, with a capacity ranging from 165 to 315 MW (the RITM-200 and RITM-400). Currently, eight such reactors are installed on Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers, with another 10 in production. Since 2020, the floating NPP/SMR Akademik Lomonosov, with a previous-generation reactor, the KLT-40C, has been operating in Russia, and Rosatom plans to launch three floating NPP/SMRs by 2031. In 2024, Rosatom signed a contract to build a 330-MW NPP in Uzbekistan with six 55-MW reactors. In 2025, the contract was revised to increase the NPP capacity to 2110 MW, with two VVER-1000 units and two RITM-200 M units. The completion of the first unit is scheduled for late 2029.
How Rosatom has outcompeted the West
Rosatom’s VVER reactors are technically reliable and widely deployed internationally. VVER units have operated outside Russia since the 1970s, including at Finland’s Loviisa plant, which has maintained a strong safety and performance record under a Western regulatory framework. The newest iteration, the VVER-1200, incorporates passive safety features broadly comparable to those of other Gen III+ reactor designs.
However, Western competitors also possess advanced reactor technologies and extensive operational experience. Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor incorporates advanced passive safety systems, while the French company EDF has strong operational expertise in managing large reactor fleets.
Rosatom’s advantage lies elsewhere: in its ability to integrate technologically reliable reactors into a broader export model combining vertically integrated project delivery, state-backed financing, and long-term political support.
Rosatom’s integrated delivery model and build-own-operate structure
Unlike most Western nuclear vendors, Rosatom can combine reactor design, construction, fuel delivery, financing, servicing, and long-term operational support under a single state-backed umbrella.
Western nuclear projects are often delivered through complex consortia involving multiple contractors, utilities, financing institutions, and subcontractors. This fragmentation can seriously complicate coordination, particularly when projects face delays or cost overruns. Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 illustrates the risks of complex consortium-based delivery mechanisms. The project, led by Areva and Siemens for the Finnish nuclear power company TVO (Teollisuuden Voima Oyj), experienced major delays, cost overruns, regulatory complications, and prolonged contractual disputes between the parties. Rosatom’s vertically integrated structure enables the coordination of design, construction, fuel services, and financing within a single system, reducing implementation risks.
The build-own-operate (BOO) structure is one of the key mechanisms behind this model. It entails that Rosatom exports not only reactor technology but also financing and long-term operational support, recovering costs through electricity sales. In 2014, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) noted that new nuclear projects increasingly rely on integrated financing structures, including vendor financing and build-own-operate (BOO) models. It cited the Akkuyu project in Türkiye – developed by Rosatom under a BOO arrangement – as a leading example.
Western vendors have offered turnkey plants before – France’s Framatome built the Koeberg nuclear power plant in South Africa on a similar basis between 1976 and 1985 – but the BOO model goes further, shifting long-term operational risk onto the vendor. This is a meaningfully different proposition than the traditional Western export model, in which the host country, a utility company, or a local consortium bears more of the burden and then seeks financing from export-credit agencies, banks, or governments. The Russian model is therefore uniquely attractive to countries which lack investment capital, institutional capacity, or nuclear expertise.
State-backed financing
A central element of this model is financing. Nuclear power plants require extremely high upfront capital investment – a single VVER-1200 unit typically costs around $6 billion – along with long construction timelines and repayment periods extending over several decades. In many emerging markets, these conditions make it difficult to finance projects solely through commercial lending.
As a result, Rosatom’s competitiveness is tied less to reactor cost itself than to the financing structure it employs. The Russian state absorbs risks and defers returns that Western vendors or lenders would pass on to the host country much earlier.
Russia supports overseas nuclear projects through sovereign credit, vendor financing, and intergovernmental arrangements that reduce (if not eliminate) financial pressure on the host country. The IAEA has noted that such financing structures can make large-scale nuclear projects financially viable where commercial financing alone would be insufficient.
Most Western nuclear vendors operate under different constraints. They typically rely on private financing, export-credit agencies, consortium structures, and commercially driven risk assessments. Western governments are also more constrained by frameworks such as the OECD Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits, which was designed to limit subsidy competition and discipline state-backed financing. Russia – like China – operates outside these restrictions.
This matters most in markets where domestic capital is scarce and borrowing costs are high.2 The case of Bangladesh’s Rooppur nuclear power project illustrates the point. Dhaka considered several international options during the planning process, but Rosatom’s proposal – backed by a Russian state credit line covering most of the project cost – proved decisive. Western vendors were unable or unwilling to offer comparable financing terms.
Political support
Rosatom also benefits from the Russian state’s willingness to operate in markets and political environments that Western firms regard as too uncertain, politically sensitive, or commercially risky. This gives the company access to projects that competitors may avoid altogether.
In practice, Rosatom enters these markets with broad institutional backing from the Russian state. Nuclear projects are often embedded within broader interstate relationships that involve diplomatic engagement, intergovernmental agreements, regulatory cooperation, and long-term technical training. Russian universities and technical academies train foreign engineers, operators, and regulators.
This gives Rosatom a level of institutional access and long-term political presence that most commercial vendors struggle to achieve.
The limits of Rosatom’s model
The same features that make Rosatom competitive also create vulnerabilities and long-term constraints.
The first constraint is capital. Nuclear projects are exceptionally expensive and require financing commitments over several decades. As Rosatom expands across multiple emerging markets, Russia must either absorb growing financial risk or find ways to distribute it more broadly. Wartime spending, sanctions-related adjustment costs, and wider domestic industrial demands on the Russian state budget intensify these pressures.
The second limit is execution capacity. Rosatom’s project pipeline is large, but signing agreements is easier than delivering reactors on time and at scale. Even within Russia, Rosatom has faced significant delays on complex domestic projects, including the BN-800 fast reactor at Beloyarsk, whose construction ran roughly a decade behind schedule. Similar pressures can emerge internationally.
Another constraint is client-country risk. Rosatom’s future growth is increasingly concentrated in emerging markets, particularly in the Global South, which are frequently characterised by political volatility, fiscal constraints, currency instability, and weaker regulatory institutions. The more Rosatom expands in such environments, the greater its exposure to long-term sovereign and political risk becomes. Changes of government, legislation, regulation, or ownership structure can delay projects, force renegotiations, or reduce expected returns. This means that Rosatom’s export portfolio may become increasingly difficult to manage on a predictable commercial basis.
At the same time, the Kremlin does not assess the value of Rosatom’s export activity in purely commercial terms. Like many large state-owned corporations in Russia and China, it pursues broader strategic and geopolitical objectives more than financial gains. Market share, political influence, and the establishment of a long-term Russian presence may therefore matter as much if not more than pure profitability.
Sanctions and geopolitical exposure represent an additional constraint. Rosatom has remained insulated from the effects of sanctions, unlike most Russian companies, because nuclear supply chains are difficult to replace and many countries continue to depend on Russian uranium, enrichment services, and existing reactor partnerships. There are still no direct sanctions on Rosatom itself, and the US ban on Russian uranium imports includes waivers which extend until 2028.
However, Western sanctions and the war in Ukraine have made Rosatom’s international operations politically sensitive. Financial transactions have become more complicated, logistics have become less predictable, and long-term dependence on Russian nuclear infrastructure has become increasingly controversial. The freezing of roughly $2 billion linked to the Akkuyu project by JPMorgan, delays in Bangladeshi loan repayments, and Finland’s cancellation of the Hanhikivi-1 project illustrate these pressures.
Finally, Rosatom’s export model depends heavily on long-term trust in Russia as a strategic partner. Governments may still sign agreements with Rosatom, particularly where financing alternatives are limited, but political opposition and public pressure may make such partnerships harder to sustain over time.
Signs of competition from the West
For years, Western nuclear vendors approached reactor exports primarily as commercial projects, while Rosatom treated them as instruments of state policy. This gave Russia a significant advantage in financing, project delivery, and political coordination. Western governments are now beginning to adapt.
Westinghouse (US)
Westinghouse remains one of the most technologically sophisticated nuclear vendors in the world. Its AP1000 reactor is widely regarded as an advanced Generation III+ design, incorporating passive safety systems and a modular construction philosophy intended to simplify operation and improve safety performance.
Yet Westinghouse’s export credibility was severely damaged by the first projects in the US to use the AP1000 reactor. Units 3 and 4 at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia experienced major delays and cost overruns, with the final costs far exceeding initial estimates and commercial operation delayed for years. In nuclear export markets, such failures matter. Customers evaluate not only reactor design, but also whether a vendor can deliver projects on time and within a politically manageable budget.
At the same time, the American approach to nuclear exports has begun to change. For years, US vendors largely depended on private financing and fragmented institutional support. More recently, Washington has moved towards a more explicitly strategic approach, including stronger export-financing support and closer coordination of overseas nuclear projects.
Poland’s planned AP1000 project illustrates this shift. Westinghouse has emphasised the role of US government-backed financing and the government’s broader political support in the project’s development. This could reflect a recognition in Washington that reactor technology alone is insufficient without financing, industrial coordination, and long-term state backing.
EDF (France)
France, too, seems to understand that financing cannot remain an afterthought.
EDF, the French state-owned nuclear champion, operates the world’s largest nuclear reactor fleet and is highly experienced in operations and maintenance. For countries seeking partnership with a European supplier, EDF carries the prestige of French nuclear expertise and the reassurance of a firm rooted in a long-established civil nuclear sector.
However, EDF’s export position has been complicated by the performance of its European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) programme. The Flamanville-3 reactor in northern France – intended as the flagship domestic demonstration project for the EPR design – was originally expected to enter operation in 2012 at an estimated cost of roughly €3 billion. The reactor was eventually connected to the grid only in the mid-2020s, after costs had risen to more than €13 billion. EDF’s other EPR projects, including Olkiluoto-3 in Finland and Hinkley Point C in the UK, have also experienced major delays and significant cost overruns. In export markets, this has weakened confidence in EDF’s ability to deliver large nuclear projects on predictable timelines and budgets.
Since financing has become a growing problem for EDF, in 2025, France adopted zero-interest loans and other support mechanisms for six new EDF reactors, highlighting the financial pressure surrounding even domestic nuclear projects. EDF later created an advisory body to help potential clients secure financing for overseas projects. This reflects growing recognition in France that financing support must now be integrated into EDF’s export model. Yet it took another 12 months for the European Commission to initiate an in-depth investigation into France’s decision to subsidise reactor construction, which could take 12 to 18 months or more.
Western governments’ growing willingness to adopt the same tools that have long given Russia a structural advantage in nuclear exports poses a significant challenge for Rosatom. If Western vendors can match Rosatom’s state-backed financing and integrated export model while offering higher governance standards, a stronger safety culture, and greater political alignment with Western institutions, Russia’s advantage may narrow over time.
Genuine competition from the East
Although Western vendors are beginning to close some of the gap, Rosatom now faces increasingly credible competition from Asian nuclear exporters.
The rise of South Korea
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP), part of the South Korean state power group KEPCO, has recently become an important player with a credible export record. Its flagship project is the Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE, where four Korean-designed APR1400 units entered commercial operation between 2021 and 2024. KHNP has demonstrated that it can deliver the full nuclear package: design, manufacturing, construction, commissioning, and operation.
KHNP’s second major breakthrough is in Europe. In 2024–2025, it was chosen over EDF to build two APR1000 units worth about $18.6 billion at Dukovany in the Czech Republic, with construction planned to begin in 2029. The Czech project is important because it gives KHNP a foothold inside the EU, not just in emerging nuclear markets. KHNP is also a contractor in Egypt, building turbine islands for four Russian-designed VVER-1200 units at El-Dabaa.
KHNP’s competitive advantages are very practical. First, it has a large domestic operating base and extensive experience: South Korea has 26 working reactors, producing roughly one-third of the country’s electricity. Second, the Korean nuclear industry offers standardised, evolutionary pressurised-water reactors – the APR1400 and export-adapted APR1000 – rather than first-of-a-kind experimental designs. The APR1400 has received US Nuclear Regulatory Commission design certification, while the APR1000 has obtained European Utility Requirements certification, both of which are useful credentials in regulated markets.
KHNP’s core selling point is delivery discipline: the South Korean industry is generally seen as cheaper, faster, and more integrated than Western competitors, but more politically acceptable than Rosatom. KHNP can mobilise a disciplined national supply chain – engineering, heavy manufacturing, construction, financing support, training, and long-term operation – in a single package. This makes it especially attractive to countries that want nuclear power but lack domestic nuclear-construction capacity.
However, KHNP is not fully free of geopolitical and legal constraints. Its technological lineage has led to disputes with Westinghouse, which argued that KHNP/KEPCO reactor exports were subject to US nuclear technology export rules. A US court dismissed Westinghouse’s case in 2023, and in January 2025, Westinghouse, KEPCO, and KHNP announced a global settlement of their IP dispute. Under the settlement, KHNP must pay Westinghouse licensing and services fees for exported reactors and is restricted from bidding in some markets, including North America, most of the EU, the UK, Japan, and Ukraine, with the Czech project excepted. Still, KHNP is now a serious third pole in the export market: less dominant than Rosatom, less politically entrenched than US and French vendors, but often more credible on cost and execution.
China on the horizon
The future of Rosatom’s global position may also depend heavily on the trajectory of China’s nuclear industry.
Over recent decades, China’s nuclear strategy has passed through three stages: import and learn, absorb and localise, then standardise and scale. A major turning point came with Qinshan-1, the first Chinese-designed nuclear reactor, which entered commercial operation in 1994.
Today, China operates 61 reactors and has 39 more under construction, giving it by far the world’s largest active nuclear construction programme. In April 2025, Beijing approved another ten reactor units, continuing a pace of roughly 10–11 approvals per year.
Large light-water reactors remain the backbone of China’s current nuclear buildout. Two designs dominate: the Hualong One, China’s main indigenous Generation III reactor family, and the CAP1000/CAP1400 series, derived from the localisation and scaling of Westinghouse’s AP1000 technology.3 Rather than prioritising experimental systems too early, Beijing first built industrial capacity around proven reactor designs and then used this manufacturing base to expand into more advanced technologies.
China has since developed the Hualong One reactor into both a domestic standard and an export product, which has already been put into service in Pakistan. In 2023, China also brought the world’s first commercial high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) at Shidaowan into operation – a notable milestone for fourth-generation nuclear technology. At the same time, China is advancing large-scale modular construction techniques. During the construction of the Lianjiang nuclear plant, China deployed modules weighing more than 1,000 tonnes, reflecting the scale of its manufacturing and construction capacity. Beijing is also continuing development of the CFR-600 fast-reactor programme as part of its long-term ambition to establish a closed nuclear fuel cycle.
Although Beijing has promoted a ‘Nuclear Silk Road,’ exporting nuclear power plants is considerably more difficult than expanding domestic construction. So far, Pakistan remains the only major overseas purchaser of the Hualong One reactor. The Karachi K-2 and K-3 units were completed and entered commercial operation less than six years after construction began, demonstrating China’s capabilities.
However, Pakistan is a special case. China maintains unusually close strategic ties with Islamabad, while most Western suppliers are effectively absent from the Pakistani market because Pakistan remains outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is largely excluded from global nuclear trade.
Outside Pakistan, Chinese reactor exports remain limited. The UK’s Bradwell B project, once expected to showcase the Hualong One reactor under a Western regulatory framework, has effectively stalled amid security concerns and political tensions. Other prospective projects in Latin America and the Middle East have also progressed slowly.
Argentina illustrates the challenge. China signed an agreement worth approximately $8 billion to use the Hualong One reactor in the Atucha III nuclear project in 2022, but the project has remained vulnerable to Argentina’s chronic fiscal instability, debt problems, and shifting economic policies.
China’s limited export footprint, nevertheless, should not obscure its underlying strengths: reactor designs, the ability to construct them quickly and in large numbers, competitive pricing driven by scale, and close integration between nuclear construction, infrastructure financing, and broader industrial policy linked to the Belt and Road Initiative. These capabilities have not yet resulted in a large overseas reactor portfolio, but we have seen how quickly China can develop its capabilities and win global markets, such as in solar power and electric vehicles.
Rosatom currently retains a significant first-mover advantage in nuclear exports. But in the long term, China may become the only country capable of replicating the Russian model at a comparable geopolitical scale and with greater industrial capacity.
Conclusion: What is at stake
Rosatom’s importance to Russia extends far beyond reactor exports themselves. Nuclear projects create relationships that last for decades and tie partner countries to Russian financing, fuel supplies, technical standards, regulatory cooperation, and engineering expertise. Unlike many other forms of infrastructure, nuclear power plants are difficult and costly to replace once they are built.
This gives Moscow a form of long-term structural influence that few other sectors of the Russian economy can still generate internationally. Nuclear cooperation embeds Russian institutions, companies, and specialists into the energy infrastructure and policymaking forums of other states. In practice, this creates durable channels of political contact and economic dependence that often outlast individual governments and political cycles.
Rosatom’s success also reflects a broader shift in the nature of geopolitical influence. In the nuclear sector, power depends less on technological superiority than on the ability to finance, build, operate, and sustain complex infrastructure over long periods. Russia understood this earlier than many Western competitors and has built an export model around it.
At the same time, this model is not without limits. Financial pressure, geopolitical exposure, sanctions, execution risks, and growing competition from both Western vendors and China may gradually narrow Rosatom’s advantages. China, in particular, is developing industrial and financial capacity that could eventually support a competing export model on a far greater scale.
For now, however, Rosatom remains one of the few Russian institutions capable of converting industrial capacity into sustained geopolitical influence. Its record demonstrates that infrastructure can function not only as an economic asset, but also as a long-term instrument of state power.