France arrests activists blocking ship over alleged Russia uranium links
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A banner reading "Uranium: EDF loves Putin" hung by Greenpeace activists blockaded the Mikhail Dudin at the northern port of Dunkirk on the morning of March 2.
PHOTO: AFP
DUNKIRK, France - Police arrested four Greenpeace activists on March 2 for blocking a cargo ship in France that they alleged was transporting uranium from Russia for the country’s nuclear power plants.
Around 20 protesters carrying signs reading “Stop toxic contracts” and “Solidarity with Ukrainians” blockaded the Mikhail Dudin at the northern port of Dunkirk on the morning of March 2, to prevent it from unloading its cargo, an AFP journalist observed.
The French authorities then arrested four individuals, Dunkirk police told AFP, adding that the blockade was lifted around 9am (4pm Singapore time).
Greenpeace has repeatedly accused France of maintaining ties with Russia’s state-owned energy company, Rosatom, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Activists, some on kayaks, impeded the ship while a large banner stretched across the lock read “Uranium: EDF loves Putin”, a jab at the French state-owned energy giant.
In 2018, France’s EDF signed a €600 million deal with a Rosatom subsidiary, Tenex, for reprocessed uranium from French nuclear power plants to be sent to Russia to be converted and then re-enriched before being reused in power production.
Rosatom has the only facility in the world – in Seversk in Siberia – capable of carrying out key parts of the conversion of reprocessed uranium to enriched reprocessed uranium.
“This trade, which indirectly fuels Putin’s war, must stop,” said Ms Pauline Boyer, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace France, on March 2.
The environment group alleges it has “on numerous occasions” observed the Mikhail Dudin unloading Russian natural and enriched uranium in France.
Following March 2’s blockade, Greenpeace told AFP that it observed workers allegedly offloading “40 containers of natural uranium” for rail transit, as well as separate containers of enriched uranium being “taken away by lorry”.
Contacted by AFP, EDF declined to comment.
An AFP analysis of Global Fishing Watch tracking data shows that the Mikhail Dudin has made more than 20 round trips between Dunkirk and the Russian ports of Vistino, Ust-Luga and St Petersburg since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
The Baltiyskiy-202 – another vessel that Greenpeace alleges has transported uranium between France and Russia – has completed more than 15 round trips during the same period.
It left St Petersburg on Feb 24 and is expected to arrive in Dunkirk on March 9, according to tracker Vesselfinder.
Both sail under the Panamanian flag and are owned by companies registered in Hong Kong, according to the International Maritime Organization’s register.
In 2022, France ordered EDF to halt its uranium trade with Rosatom when Greenpeace first revealed the contracts in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
But in March 2024, Mr Jean-Michel Quilichini, head of the nuclear fuel division at EDF, said the company planned to continue to “honour” its 2018 contract.
France in March 2024 said it was “seriously” looking at the possibility of building its own conversion facility to produce enriched reprocessed uranium.
AFP analysis of French Customs data shows that in 2025, France imported at least 112 tonnes of enriched uranium and its compounds from Russia, accounting for a quarter of total purchases by volume – a level stable compared with 2024.
These imports, however, fell significantly between 2022 and 2024. AFP
