Russia operates some of the oldest commercial reactors on Earth, with several exceeding 50 years of service. Rosenergoatom has identified 35 reactors for decommissioning, but its own internal estimates reveal an €18.7 billion shortfall against a total projected cost of roughly €21 billion. These are the optimistic numbers. Real-world precedent — Lubmin in Germany ballooned from €1 billion to €10 billion, Ignalina in Lithuania hit €3.3 billion at only 49 percent completion — suggests the true bill will be far larger. Rather than confronting the cost, Russia is deferring it. Reactors slated for shutdown are placed in long-term "safe" storage, a bureaucratic euphemism for kicking the problem to the next generation. The Bellona Foundation estimates that by approximately 2037, Rosatom's accumulated decommissioning and remediation obligations could exceed the company's entire net profit. The clock is ticking against a declining fiscal position. The waste arithmetic is staggering. Russia inherited roughly 774,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste from the Soviet era. Decommissioning 36 reactor units at eight plants is projected to generate an additional 800,000 cubic metres — effectively doubling the national stockpile. Unlike coal slag heaps in Kemerovo, which already burn and poison communities when mining companies go bankrupt, radioactive waste cannot be abandoned when funding dries up. Yet the institutional pattern is identical: privatize the profit, socialize the liability. The war economy is accelerating the decay. Defence spending now dominates Russia's federal budget, while environmental protection receives a negligible fraction. Regulations have been deliberately weakened to sustain military production. The 2024 Black Sea oil spill — thousands of tonnes of fuel oil from ageing shadow-fleet tankers — demonstrated the regime's tolerance for environmental catastrophe when other priorities dominate. Nuclear infrastructure exists in the same governance environment. Russia's simultaneous international nuclear sales campaign — plants under construction or negotiation in Türkiye, Bangladesh, and elsewhere — compounds the risk. Client states face a dependency trap: Russian-built facilities will eventually require decommissioning expertise and funding that Moscow itself cannot guarantee. If Russia's domestic funding gap grows, its ability to service foreign obligations becomes even more questionable. EcoDefence co-chair Vladimir Slivyak warns that continued European dependence on Russian nuclear technology creates vulnerabilities exploitable for sabotage or political leverage. The information environment is collapsing in parallel. Bellona and Greenpeace have been declared "undesirable" organizations in Russia. EcoDefence has been designated a "foreign agent," its members criminally prosecuted. Independent environmental monitoring capacity inside Russia is effectively destroyed. The historical precedent is direct: the 1957 Mayak disaster was concealed for 32 years. Chornobyl's cover-up fueled the social unrest that helped dissolve the Soviet Union. The conditions for a repeat — ageing infrastructure, zero oversight, institutional secrecy — are all present. The structural problem is not technical. Decommissioning is well-understood engineering. The problem is political economy: a regime that has systematically eliminated every mechanism — independent media, environmental NGOs, fiscal transparency — that might force honest accounting of nuclear liabilities. The cost will eventually be paid, either in euros or in contamination. The only question is who bears it.
