Russia’s hunt for uranium

Tom Brown and



Justicia Shipena



Impo Gift Kapamba Musasa holds a hose pipe in one hand and gestures to a garden of ­cabbages, onions and turnips with the other. He is a teacher in the crumbling village of ­Leonardville in rural Namibia, where water is becoming scarce.



The vegetables, grown for children at the primary school where he teaches, are watered from one of the largest aquifers on earth. The groundwater nourishes tens of thousands of people and is the lifeblood of the Kalahari Desert, which stretches across Namibia, as well as neighbouring Botswana and South Africa.



Leonardville is a village of cattle farmers subsisting off meagre government handouts and homegrown vegetables, but it also sits on top of vast deposits of uranium – the fuel for nuclear reactors.



Unlikely attention



That has brought the village of a few thousand people some unlikely attention in recent years.



On shop windows and village waypoints, posters appear, bearing the name and logo of a foreign company: Rosatom – Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, one of the world’s largest uranium companies.



Rosatom has spent years attempting to set up a mine in eastern Namibia after the country lifted a temporary ban on uranium mining in 2017. The isolated African village has since seen an influx of investment from companies linked to the Russian government.



A Rosatom subsidiary, known as Headspring Investments, in 2011 proposed to use a controversial drilling method to extract the uranium, known as “in situ” mining, which involves injecting a solution that includes sulphuric acid down into the aquifer. While Australian miners frequently use the drilling method, it has never been attempted in Africa, and is not usually done around aquifers, mining experts said.



Concerns



While the prospect of financial reward has some locals supporting a potential mine in the area, Rosatom’s proposal has also raised concerns among others in the country.



Calle Schlettwein, the minister of agriculture, water and land reform, told Namibia’s National Assembly on 29 February that Headspring’s activities could “endanger the groundwater” in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana, “destroying the economic basis for the entire region”.



Additionally, because of the need to cool down equipment during uranium mining, the process is also one of the most water-intensive ­operations.



Namibia is becoming hotter and drier because of climate change, leaving residents more ­dependent on aquifers to grow their food as rainfall decreases. With the prospect of a uranium mine and its effects dangling over their heads, local farmers worry their livelihoods will disappear – for good.



Pollution



“Pollution is going to change people’s ­livelihoods,” says school teacher Impo, looking at his crops.



Some local landowners have even started ­campaigning against the planned uranium mine, asking the government to consider the risks to their water supply.



“Should uranium mining be allowed, it could render the water in the southeastern region of Namibia unfit for human and animal ­consumption, effectively bringing ­agriculture to a total and permanent standstill in the area,” said former Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) president, Piet Gouws, speaking to the ­Namibian Sun in 2022.



Just as it seemed that Rosatom was on the cusp of achieving its goal of building the uranium mine, the Namibian government cancelled the drilling permits in November 2021, citing ­non-compliance with the licence terms.



Many farmers hoped this was the last they would hear of Headspring.



But Rosatom doubled down – on the ground in Leonardville and by trying to win supporters through softer means.



Trips, truck and influence operations



Since 2021, Rosatom has been accused of running an influence campaign in Namibia, sponsoring trips for government officials and reporters to visit Russia, Al Jazeera has found.



In April this year, Rosatom subsidiary Uranium One invited Namibian minister of health and social services, Kalumbi Shangula, to Sochi, Russia, to attend Atomexpo 2024, a nuclear industry event organised by Rosatom, where he spoke about rising cancer cases in his country. Uranium One had earlier donated a four-wheel drive to the ministry.



Pijoo Nganate, the governor of the Omaheke region where Leonardville is located, has also visited Russia multiple times in trips he confirmed were at least partially funded by Rosatom. Nganate at first refused to answer whether Rosatom sponsored his trips to Russia.



“Let them make those claims,” he said when informed via phone of accusations that the leadership in the region was aligning itself with the Russian-state entity, adding: “That’s immaterial, you lose the bigger picture.”



He went on to tell Al Jazeera that it was Namibian ministries that had requested some donations in the form of food and medicine from Rosatom, not the other way around, and pointed out the severe unemployment and poverty in Omaheke.



Other officials



Other government officials are listed on travel documents, seen by Al Jazeera, as attending multiple sponsored trips to Russia and Kazakhstan between 2022 and 2023.



Namibian government officials appearing on these documents include governor Nganate; Obeth Kandjoze, the director of the National Planning Commission; Hardap regional governor Salomon April, who said he could not attend; and the chairperson of the parliamentary standing committee on natural resources, Tjekero Tweya.



Phone calls to Kandjoze and Tweya by Al Jazeera, seeking their response, went unanswered.



Responding to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the accusations of the company trying to gain influence through donations and sponsored trips, Rosatom spokesperson Riaan van Rooyen said: “It is disheartening to see and hear that there are those cynical people that label Uranium One’s community upliftment efforts as ‘greenwashing’ and even ‘bribery’.”



“Those privileged ones have had numerous opportunities and time to uplift their own communities,” he said, referring to the farmers who own the land.



‘Gross violations’



In 2010, then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin travelled to Namibia to sign a memorandum of intent to explore the country for uranium. Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom, indicated that Russia planned to invest about US$1 billion in Namibian uranium.



The same year, Headspring acquired eight exclusive prospecting licences (EPLs) in Namibia.



The company began setting up water testing facilities on several farms in Leonardville after obtaining an environmental clearance certificate (ECC) in 2011, drilling at least 600 exploration boreholes and 36 boreholes to monitor water across 39 different farms. The project was expected to last 15 to 25 years.



Those EPLs were not originally approved for uranium exploration because of a nationwide 10-year ban. But the Namibian government lifted its moratorium on uranium mining in 2017. When it did so, it extended all of Headspring’s licences to “nuclear fuel materials”, allowing the company to drill for uranium.



EPLs



The official who approved Headspring’s EPLs for uranium mining was mines commissioner Erasmus Shivolo, who stepped down from his role in October 2022 after allegations surfaced that he had taken a bribe of N$50 million from a Chinese lithium miner called Xinfeng Investments, according to Namibian media.



Mines and energy minister Tom Alweendo did not fire Shivolo, but moved him to a different part of the ministry. Alweendo denied accusations that he had been aware of the bribe.



Over the course of the drilling, Headspring discovered a large uranium deposit in the sandstone beneath the aquifer that was “believed for now to be suitable for in-situ leaching”, it said. The next step would have involved drilling more holes and injecting a weak sulphuric acid solution into the ground to get at the uranium.



To start drilling, Headspring had to obtain yet another ECC from a licensed consultancy. Headspring approached two firms for the certificate, but both walked away, with the second one describing “irreconcilable differences” with Headspring as the reason, according to Informante.



Farmers



By then, Leonardville’s farmers had begun to mobilise against Headspring, and the government took notice.



Former agriculture executive director Percy Misika informed the corporation in a letter dated 9 November 2021, that the government was cancelling two mining permits due to “egregious carelessness”.



“Based on the gross violations and non-compliance of permit conditions, Permit No 11561 and Permit No 11562 are hereby withdrawn with immediate effect and no further drilling is permitted,” wrote Misika.



“Although no mining activities are taking place, the number of boreholes drilled has ignored the licence conditions of proper sealing and grouting,” said Schlettwein while addressing parliamentarians in the National Assembly.



Although Headspring lost two of its EPL permits, it still has seven.



Another eight permits appear in public registries under the ownership of a company called Green Mining. Land documents seen by Al Jazeera suggest that Green Mining is ultimately owned by Headspring, which could circumvent the need for Rosatom to get its cancelled licences reinstated.



Contamination dispute



On one shop window in Leonardville is a poster in Afrikaans which reads: “Headspring Investments is aware of fabricated rumours circulating regarding the activities on Tripoli”, a farm in the village, alluding to murmurs of water contamination through mining activities. “If you want to know more and want to familiarise yourself with the activities there, please call Riaan van Rooyen.”



Van Rooyen’s communications have been aimed at addressing concerns about the use of sulphuric acid in uranium mining.



In areas where the water level is too high, companies cannot use open pit mining as they do in Namibia’s desert, or the mines would flood — instead, they are forced to inject either a strong acid or an alkaline substance such as sodium carbonate to “leach” the uranium and suction it back up before refining it.



During a press briefing discussing possible contamination of the aquifer in March, reporters asked van Rooyen if there was a risk of contamination.



He answered that farmers had been “using sulphuric acid for decades in the Stampriet water basin area”, something which the Stampriet Aquifer Uranium Mining Association (SAUMA) called misinformation.



When asked if Headspring could produce water reports showing before-and-after levels of uranium and sulphuric acid in the aquifer, van Rooyen responded with a photo of three file binders and said: “I am sure you don’t expect me to copy all these water reports as proof that [we] had water analysis done”, before sending a water report whose authenticity could not be verified by Al Jazeera.



Approval



Rosatom needs approval from three different government agencies to reinstate its licence and restart drilling, setting the stage for a multibillion-dollar project that could cement Russia’s foothold in the uranium market for decades.



Of those, the ministry of mines and energy and the ministry of environment, forestry and tourism have reportedly not hindered Rosatom’s plan — referred to in government documents as “Project Wings”. The ministry for agriculture is the one holdout, sources said.



“At the end of the day, we cannot survive without water and food, but we can live without coal or uranium,” said Schlettwein.



The fate of those licences will now be decided by Namibia’s next government, after elections yesterday.



Nuclear fuel supply chains



Namibia became the world’s second-largest uranium producer in 2021, behind only Kazakhstan, a longtime Russian ally.



Namibian uranium has become more important for the African continent since the closing of the Arlit uranium mine in Niger, just before the Russian-aligned military rulers replaced the civilian government, which had received Western support.



If Rosatom’s drilling licences are reinstated in Namibia, Russia would find itself in control of one of the world’s most important sources of nuclear fuel.



Since losing its drilling licence, Rosatom has also announced plans to fund a nuclear power plant in Namibia. The development could mark the first time an African country’s nuclear supply chain would be controlled by the Russian state — from when the uranium is first extracted to the moment the spent fuel rods are removed from the nuclear reactor.



Verification



In an attempt to verify claims of water contamination in Leonardville as a result of Headspring’s activities, Al Jazeera took drinking water samples from the village to a testing facility named Analytical Laboratory Services (Analabs) in Windhoek.



But when Al Jazeera reporters attempted to collect the samples for further testing, Analabs said the samples had been disposed of.



“It’s effectively in Russian hands,” said the Stampriet Aquifer Uranium Mining Association (SAUMA), when asked about the laboratory. A



Kuiri Tjipangandjara, chair of the Water Solutions Group, a partnership of public and private companies aiming to bolster Africa’s resilience to climate drought, showed water contamination results from Headspring during a presentation on 17 June, which revealed that in three to four out of 10 boreholes samples there was dissolved uranium in the water, and that radionuclides exceeded permissible limits. But tests also found high uranium levels in samples where in-situ mining activity was not thought to have occurred, making it difficult to attribute any contamination to the company.



Tjipangandjara warned against allowing Headspring or other uranium investors to monitor water levels in the basin, citing a “serious conflict of interest”, adding that a football player “cannot be a referee”.



Tension



Back in Leonardville, SAUMA and the farmers continue to face opposition from many villagers. Town council meetings are tense, filled with accusations on both sides.



Namibia’s latest drought is thinning tempers even more. More animals are dying as grazing disappears and crops dry out. Farmers sit on their property, their heads hanging low, waiting for rain that refuses to come.



“It’s horrific,” said SAUMA, which represents many of the farmers. “This [drought] tops all of them. The little water that we had has gone by now.”



The water beneath their feet is quickly becoming Leonardville’s only source. But for many residents, the chance to escape poverty is worth any risk — even one that could destroy the ancient aquifer sustaining almost all life around them. - Al Jazeera