Nuclear Monitor #941

Jan van Evert

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is well-known for its large deposits of cobalt, a critical metal used to make lithium-ion batteries for cars, mobile phones and many other devices. But the cobalt ore also contains uranium. Exports of that metal from the DRC are supposed to be banned. Research done by Lighthouse Reports in cooperation with the Financial Times and Nature magazine, reveals that strategic quantities of uranium have been exported to China for many years.

In the past decade, China’s nuclear weapons stockpile has doubled to around 600 warheads and is expected to reach a thousand warheads by 2030, according to estimates from the Pentagon. China’s known imports and domestic production of uranium do not come close to accounting for the scale of this expansion.

A paper by geologist Ryan Manzuk and nuclear engineer Sébastien Philippe published in Nature Communications, concludes that a range of between 2,000 and 5,000 tons of uranium were exported from the DRC to China between 2000 and 2024. However, much of the cobalt mining industry continues to deny that it has a problem with uranium in the DRC. Although there are strict national and international limits on the safe concentration of uranium present in cobalt exports, there have been a number of contamination incidents throughout the supply chain. Interviews with dozens of industry sources revealed the lack of systematic checks on uranium contamination in the cobalt ore.

A stream of leaked documents from Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM), one of the largest cobalt mines in the DRC, reinforced the conclusions of the paper by Manzuk and Phiippe. These documents confirmed the production of cobalt samples rich in uranium. Some of these samples contained an amount that is fifteen times the level that should be allowed for export.  An important detail is that TFM was acquired by the Chinese company CMOC in 2016.

Steve Muanza, the head of the DRC’s nuclear energy agency, said it is “technically possible” and even “likely” that Chinese companies are extracting uranium from cobalt ore exported from the DRC. He said his agency had requested funding to install radiation monitors for trucks leaving the DRC for Zambia.

Sources:
https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/congos-hidden-uranium-exports/