The Nuclear Energy Weapon: Russia’s Plan B in a Decarbonizing World?

While the existence of “energy weapon” in the gas sector has generally been asserted by pundits and dismissed or challenged by scholars (Smith-Stegen 2011; van de Graaf and Colgan 2017), it is hard to deny that Russia used gas supplies, transit volumes and prices for political leverage (Orttung and Overland 2011). Faced with imminent decarbonization and dwindling medium and long term demand for gas and oil from its key trading partner, the European Union, the Russian authorities should be expected to hedge against a low-carbon future. But are they? Scholars and analysts have taken note of the increased global activity of the RF’s nuclear champion – Rosatom – which is now a top global player, facilitating the construction of new reactors across the world, most importantly in places (Africa, South America) where nuclear energy was underdeveloped (De Blasio and Nephew 2017; Schepers 2019). To what extent is this increased activity a response to the challenge of decarbonization and can it succeed as Russia’s ‘plan B’ for political influence? This paper asks the following research questions: 1) Are Russian decisionmakers linking their nuclear diplomacy with decarbonization, or is this merely a new business opportunity and portfolio diversification? 2) What is the current state of Rosatom’s and other Russian nuclear sector companies’ engagement abroad? 3) To what extent does nuclear have the potential to become Russia’s next “energy weapon”?