One uranium mine in Niger says a lot about China's huge nuclear-power ambitions
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The odds of finding much of anything seem slim in northern Niger’s unnerving expanses of hazy white desert.
The land is so vast, so untethered from any obvious landmarks that when straying just a few hundred feet off of the inconsistently paved road between Abalak and Agadez, it’s hard to shake the fear that the driver won’t be able to find the highway again.
Even with plenty of water, gas, and daylight on hand, there's a general feeling of being marooned.
In the post-World War II years, huge amounts of cheap electricity were needed to fuel the breakneck growth of Western economies.
At the same time, nuclear weapons became the ultimate embodiment of national power and prestige.
So the discovery of uranium in Niger in 1957 was a much-needed economic boon for a country that still ranks 187th on the Human Development Index.
And the ambitions of the nuclear powers in Niger are still playing out today as Niger's remote and inhospitable northern desert environment contains the world's fifth-largest recoverable uranium reserves, some 7% of the global total.
The ore must be extracted and then milled into yellowcake in distant pockets of the Saharan wastes, where it’s then sent on a multi-day truck convoy to the port of Cotonou, in Benin, some 1,900 kilometers (1,180 miles) away.
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With degraded roads and unpredictable passenger air service, it's hard to physically access the country’s two major mines, which are outside of a town called Arlit, about a five-hour drive north from Agadez and a more than 20-hour, 1,300-kilometer (807-mile) drive from Niamey, the capital.
Those mines are operated by Areva, a nuclear-energy-services company that is 70% owned by France, the colonial power that ruled Niger between the 1890s and 1960.
Those two mines have been in operation since the late 1960s and are collectively the largest employer in the country other than the Nigerien government.
On their own, the mines account for nearly one-third of Niger’s exports. Nigerien uranium is thought to provide for approximately one-third of France's domestic consumer electricity needs.
Both of the mines are nearing the end of their operational lifespan — one is expected to only last another 10 to 15 years.
A third mine, at Imouraren, is currently under development and has reserves enough to become one of the most productive uranium sites in the world.
But plans to begin large-scale mining at Imouraren are now on hold because of the worldwide plunge in uranium prices that followed the Fukushima incident and the resulting shutdown of Japan’s 43 commercial nuclear reactors.
Armin Rosen/Business InsiderA vehicle formerly used by the Imouraren mine, which is currently closed.
A fourth mine, in a place called Azelik, near the mostly ethnic Tuareg city of In’gall, is currently much smaller than the other three sites.
Like Imouraren, it's currently shuttered as a partial result of the uranium price dip. But because of its ownership and a checkered recent history, it's an instructive guide to the future of Niger's uranium and the global nuclear energy industry at large.
Niger's Azelik uranium mine, owned and operated by Chinese companies, is at the geographic and economic fringes of a continent-wide wave of Chinese investment, goods, and people.
In Niger alone, China has invested billions in the oil sector and has undertaken a number of large infrastructural projects. But, as the mine demonstrates, it's far from a given that both sides will always benefit from a complex social and economic relationship that neither has fully figured out yet.
Armin Rosen/Business InsiderTwo of the only permanent structures in Gani.
Azelik is operated by a joint partnership called Somina, with ownership split between the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), which owns 37%, the Niger government, which owns 33%, and a second Chinese investor. A Korean investor holds a 5% stake as well.
In 2009, Reuters reported that China had committed to investing $300 million in the project. Even so, no uranium has been extracted from the mine since early 2015 and the mine is effectively shuttered.
In addition to cheap uranium prices, turmoil in the Chinese economy resulted in an 84% plunge in Chinese investment in Africa in the first half of 2015, according to the Financial Times. China has little appetite for starting capital-heavy natural resources projects from scratch during a period of economic uncertainty, and the Azelik mine's future is currently unclear.
Nevertheless, the Chinese-operated uranium mine is one of the most opaque business endeavors in Niger.
Azelik is over an hour trip down a paved road that splits from Niger’s major north-south highway, a four-to-five hour drive or a three-day camel ride from Agadez.
From the outset, the mine angered people in and around In’gall, with journalist Hannah Armstrong reporting in 2010 that locals hurled stones at mining machinery in protest of their land being leased to CNNC's international subsidiary for uranium exploration without their permission or compensation.
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Armstrong reported that people throughout northern Niger referred to the area around the Azelik uranium concession as “Guantanamo” and “a Chinese colony” — even before a single ounce of uranium had been taken out of the ground.
People from across northern Niger talk still about Azelik in unmistakable terms: It’s a dark zone, a place where the laws of Niger are disrespected with impunity, and living evidence of the government’s helplessness in the face of powerful foreign interests.
“China doesn’t respect any of the laws of the country,” Almoustapha Alhacen, the founder of the Arlit-based uranium industry watchdog group Aghir In'Man, told Business Insider in reference to the Azelik mine. “They are always in conflict with their employees and with the population.”
Kamil Khamed, a National Assembly candidate from the mostly Tuareg city of Tchin Tabaradin, goes even further.
“If you could see what In’gall has become, you’ll have tears in your eyes,” Khamed told Business Insider. “They violated all of the country’s mining laws. You can read through the laws. They don’t respect a single one.”
In Gani, a collection of cattle herds and wood-frame structures about 50 kilometers down the road from Azelik, Business Insider spoke with locals who blamed the Chinese mine for the area’s declining water table as well as for various nonlethal illnesses afflicting their sheep and goats.
The area’s residents, who are semi-nomadic Taureg herders whose flocks depend on predictable year-round water sources, claimed that the water table had dropped from 30 meters to 75 meters in the past decade alone, something they directly attribute to the mine’s opening in 2011.
It’s hard to verify that accusation. But their suspicion of the mine is fed by something that’s much easier to see: Communities close to uranium sites in northern Niger generally haven’t derived a substantial or obvious advantage from them.
"Today, 80% of Nigeriens don’t even know Niger has uranium," Alhacen told Business Insider, "and 99% never get any benefits from it."
The overriding concern in Gani is finding water to support the area’s herds.
Armin Rosen/Business InsiderAn encampment in Gani.
Healthcare and educational infrastructure are virtually nonexistent — even Agadez, a city of over 100,000 people, didn’t have a university until last year.
The security services seldom go on active patrols and can vanish for weeks at a time (although the army and gendarme reportedly guard the Azelik mine).
“We get nothing from the mine,” Moussa, a herder in Gani, told Business Insider. “We’ve only heard its name before. We don’t know where the money from it is going.”
In’gall mayor Sidi Mamane, who Business Insider met in Gani, echoed Moussa’s concerns.
“There isn’t any benefit for the population who lives here,” Mamane said. “They’re just afraid of the contamination.”
Alhacen specifically alleged that Azelik's operators were improperly disposing of trash from the mine — a worrying possibility, considering that waste from uranium mining and milling is often radioactive.
For people in Gani, Azelik isn’t a source of jobs or a driver of local economic development, but something that's sharpened existing local anxieties. Even seasonal nomadism may not be sustainable in a time of population growth, urbanization, and environmental change.
“Younger people don’t believe they need to take care of the animals,” one Gani resident explained. “They want to go to town and change their lives. They have another idea in their heads.”
The short history of Azelik shows that a wealth of strategic resources and a multimillion-dollar Chinese investment doesn't necessarily guarantee prosperity.
Armin Rosen/Business InsiderAnimals drink from a pond along the Agadez-Abalak highway.
The China National Nuclear Corporation gained exploration rights in Azelik in 2007.
By the time the mine was up and running in 2011, the Nigerien state’s relationship with the mining industry — along with Nigeriens’ expectations of how their government should represent them — were each undergoing an important shift. And increasingly vocal and influential Nigerien civil-society organizations openly questioned how and whether their country could benefit from its uranium wealth.
For over four decades, the French nuclear-services giant Areva and its predecessor companies had been allowed to operate in Niger with remarkable latitude. The government’s arrangement with the company meant that Areva avoided paying export taxes, while both the uranium purchase price and the mechanism for determining that price were kept secret from the general public.
That opacity began to crack in the mid-2000s. In 2006, a new Nigerien mining code authorized that 15% of uranium revenues would go to the Agadez Region, the sub-federal unit in which the mines are located. In 2010, the Nigerien constitution was amended so that the government was required to publish its contracts with mining companies.
And when Areva’s contract with the government was renegotiated in 2014, Niger used the opportunity to wring a number of concessions out of the company, including promises of increased infrastructural and agricultural investment in northern Niger, higher export taxes, and an overall greater government share of uranium revenue.
And a lot of these puppet and weak ass governments won't stand up to them so they'll continue to get large amounts of resources for cheap