The Panamanian-registered ship, the Mikhail Dudin, is regularly used to carry enriched or natural uranium from France to St Petersburg, according to Greenpeace. But Saturday’s consignment was the first of reprocessed uranium to be observed for three years, it added. Rosatom has the only facility in the world — at Seversk in Siberia — capable of carrying out key parts of the conversion of reprocessed uranium to enriched reprocessed uranium. Only about 10 percent of the reenriched uranium sent back to France by Russia is used at its Cruas nuclear power plant, in southern France, the only one in the country that can use enriched reprocessed uranium, according to Greenpeace. France said in March 2024 that it was “seriously” looking at the possibility of building its own conversion facility to produce enriched reprocessed uranium.