Uranium alert in DRC cobalt exports to China

An investigation by three media outlets has raised alarm over uranium in DRC cobalt shipments to China, reports RFI. An investigation by Lighthouse Reports, The Financial Times and Le Monde traces the possible export of uranium from the DRC back to a confidential International Atomic Energy Agency memo obtained in 2024. Chinese mining group CMOC, which owns the main site examined in Katanga, disputes the findings. Lighthouse Reports obtained a previously undisclosed internal memo from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2024 and began investigating its contents. The 2009 document cited credible information indicating that uranium was present in ‘significant quantities’ in most cobalt ores from Katanga, in the southeast of the DRC, and was effectively exported as a cobalt by-product’. The Katanga region – part of Central Africa’s Copperbelt – has increasingly turned towards cobalt extraction as demand has grown for the metal, which is used in lithium-ion batteries and aerospace alloys. But the region’s mines have also long been known to contain uranium. A significant proportion of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs, came from Katanga’s Shinkolobwe mine. The mine was closed after independence and later placed within an exclusion zone. In 2004, then President Joseph Kabila declared the area a prohibited mining zone, citing national security, public safety and the presence of uranium, which Congolese law classifies as a reserved mineral substance.