What Is Rosatom? Russia’s Nuclear Giant Explained

Last updated: November 13, 2026

Rosatom is Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation. It is the world’s largest exporter of nuclear reactors, one of the largest suppliers of enriched uranium fuel, and the company behind the Akkuyu plant under construction in Turkey. Rosatom also controls Russia’s nuclear weapons complex, its civilian nuclear fleet, and the country’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers.

What Is Rosatom?

Rosatom, formally the State Atomic Energy Corporation “Rosatom,” is a Russian state corporation that holds a near-total monopoly over the country’s nuclear sector. It is not a normal company with shareholders; it is a state corporation created by federal law, reporting ultimately to the Russian government, and combining commercial nuclear business with state functions such as the management of nuclear weapons materials and radioactive waste.

• Full name: State Atomic Energy Corporation “Rosatom.”
• Ownership: Wholly owned by the Russian state.
• Headquarters: Moscow, Russia.
• Founded: December 2007, by federal law, from the former Federal Atomic Energy Agency.
• Core businesses: nuclear power plant construction and operation, uranium mining and enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, nuclear icebreakers, and a growing wind-power and digital-services arm.

Ownership and Corporate Structure

Rosatom sits at the top of a group of several hundred companies that together employ several hundred thousand people, organised by function rather than as a single integrated firm. Its best-known divisions include:

• Rosenergoatom — operates Russia’s domestic fleet of nuclear power plants.
• TVEL — produces nuclear fuel assemblies for Russian-designed reactors.
• TENEX — markets and trades enriched uranium and other fuel-cycle products internationally.
• ASE Group (Atomstroyexport) — designs and builds nuclear power plants abroad, including Akkuyu.
• Atomflot — operates Russia’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers that service Arctic shipping routes.
• NovaWind — Rosatom’s renewable-energy arm, which builds wind farms inside Russia.

Because Rosatom is a state corporation rather than a joint-stock company, it does not report results the way a listed firm does; most public financial figures come from its own statements and from Russian state media rather than from an audited annual report filed with an independent regulator.

Leadership

Rosatom’s Director General since 2016 is Alexey Likhachev, a former Russian deputy minister of economic development who succeeded Sergey Kiriyenko, the corporation’s first Director General from its creation in 2007. Likhachev has represented Rosatom at international forums such as the IAEA’s General Conference and at bilateral talks over projects including Akkuyu and Paks II, and he sets the corporation’s public targets for revenue, foreign construction starts and new technology such as small modular reactors (SMRs).

History

Rosatom’s roots trace back to the Soviet nuclear weapons and power program managed by the Ministry of Medium Machine-Building and, later, the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom). In December 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a federal law abolishing the Federal Atomic Energy Agency and transferring its functions, along with the state’s civilian and military nuclear assets, to a newly created state corporation: Rosatom. The move brought together, under one body, reactor design and construction, fuel-cycle companies, research institutes, and the management of nuclear weapons materials and waste that in most countries are kept in separate civilian and military structures.

Since then, Rosatom has built out an export-led growth strategy, winning contracts to build plants in countries that had little or no prior nuclear capacity, including Turkey, Bangladesh and Egypt, while continuing to build and extend the service life of Soviet-era VVER reactors at home.

Main Business and Scale

Rosatom’s business spans the full nuclear fuel cycle and extends well beyond it:

1. Reactor construction. ASE Group designs, builds and often helps finance nuclear power plants abroad, typically on a build-own-operate-transfer or build-operate basis backed by Russian state loans.
2. Uranium and fuel. Rosatom mines uranium through its Uranium One subsidiary, enriches it, and fabricates fuel assemblies through TVEL for its own reactors and for some Western-designed reactors that still use Russian-origin fuel.
3. Domestic generation. Rosenergoatom operates Russia’s fleet of roughly three dozen power reactors, which supply around a fifth of the country’s electricity.
4. Icebreakers and Arctic logistics. Atomflot’s nuclear-powered icebreakers keep the Northern Sea Route open for longer each year, supporting Russian Arctic liquefied natural gas and mineral exports.
5. Wind power. NovaWind has built several wind farms in Russia using turbine technology partly licensed from abroad.

Rosatom has said its open-part consolidated revenue is on track to reach roughly RUB 3,400 billion (about $43 billion) in 2026, up from about RUB 3,330 billion in 2025, with a stated ambition to reach RUB 4 trillion by 2028. These figures come from the company’s own disclosures rather than independently audited public accounts, so they should be treated as company-reported rather than verified third-party figures.

Major Projects

Rosatom’s foreign construction pipeline is the largest of any single nuclear vendor. Notable projects include:

• Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant (Turkey) — four VVER-1200 units on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, Rosatom’s flagship build-own-operate project and the first nuclear power plant in Turkish history. Rosatom reported construction of Unit 1 as complete around mid-2026, with commissioning work, including final testing ahead of fuel loading, continuing afterward; readers should check official Akkuyu Nuclear and Turkish regulatory statements for the current operating-license and start-up status.
• Paks II (Hungary) — an expansion of Hungary’s existing Paks nuclear plant with two new VVER units, a project that has faced financing and Western-component supply delays since 2022.
• Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (Bangladesh) — Bangladesh’s first nuclear power plant, built with Rosatom financing and VVER-1200 technology.
• El Dabaa (Egypt) — a four-unit VVER-1200 project on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, Rosatom’s main African project.
• Domestic new-build and life extension — including the Kursk II and Leningrad II plants, which are replacing older Soviet-era RBMK and VVER units inside Russia.

Reactor Technology

Rosatom’s main export product is the VVER pressurized-water reactor family, a Soviet-designed lineage that Rosatom has continued to update; the current standard export model is the VVER-1200. Rosatom is also developing small modular reactors (SMRs), including floating units such as the Akademik Lomonosov, which already supplies power and heat to the remote Russian town of Pevek, and land-based SMR designs aimed at both domestic and export markets.

Western Sanctions and Market Position

Unlike most major Russian energy companies, Rosatom has avoided the bulk of Western sanctions imposed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The European Union has not sanctioned Rosatom’s core nuclear business, in large part because several EU countries still depend on Russian-design reactor fuel; Rosatom supplied roughly 15% of the enriched uranium delivered to the EU in 2024, according to industry analysis. The United States banned imports of low-enriched Russian uranium from August 2024, but granted waivers that run until 2028, and a provision that would have penalized foreign buyers of Russian uranium was dropped from US legislation in 2026. The United Kingdom has tightened sanctions on Russia’s nuclear sector, though the practical effect has been described as largely symbolic, since only one British reactor (Sizewell B) uses any Russian-origin fuel and alternative enrichment capacity exists. Because this is a fast-moving and partly political question, readers tracking a specific country’s sanctions status should check that government’s current sanctions list rather than rely on this summary alone.

Recent Developments

Rosatom used its 2026 “Director’s Day” presentation to set out growth targets through 2028 and highlighted plans to bring several foreign-built reactor units into operation during 2026, with Akkuyu Unit 1 in Turkey named as the priority. The company also reported progress on import substitution in its domestic supply chains and said it is piloting quantum-computing applications inside its industrial operations, part of a broader push to position Rosatom as a technology group rather than purely a reactor builder.

Frequently Asked Questions About Rosatom

Who owns Rosatom?

Rosatom is wholly owned by the Russian state. It is a state corporation created by federal law, not a joint-stock company with private shareholders.

Is Rosatom under Western sanctions?

Rosatom has largely avoided EU sanctions on its core nuclear business, partly because some European countries still rely on Russian-origin reactor fuel. The US has restricted imports of Russian enriched uranium but with waivers running to 2028, and the UK has imposed more symbolic restrictions. The picture differs by country and is subject to change.

Is Rosatom building a nuclear plant in Turkey?

Yes. Rosatom’s subsidiary ASE Group is building the four-unit Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, the country’s first nuclear power station.

What does Rosatom actually do, beyond building reactors?

Rosatom mines and enriches uranium, fabricates nuclear fuel, operates Russia’s domestic nuclear power plants, runs the country’s nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet, and, through its NovaWind subsidiary, builds wind farms inside Russia.

Who runs Rosatom?

Alexey Likhachev has been Rosatom’s Director General since 2016, succeeding Sergey Kiriyenko, who led the corporation from its creation in 2007.

Conclusion

Rosatom is unlike most companies covered in an energy encyclopedia: it is an arm of the Russian state as much as a commercial enterprise, and its scale in reactor exports and nuclear fuel gives it leverage that has largely survived the sanctions imposed on Russia’s oil and gas sector since 2022. Its foreign construction pipeline, led by Akkuyu, Paks II, Rooppur and El Dabaa, will shape nuclear power in several new markets for decades, while its position in global uranium enrichment keeps it embedded in the fuel supply of reactors well beyond Russia’s borders.

Related The Daily Energy Pages

• Small Modular Reactor (SMR) — the reactor technology Rosatom is developing for both domestic and export markets
• Barakah Nuclear Power Plant — a comparable Gulf nuclear project, built by South Korea’s KEPCO rather than Rosatom
• Russia Energy Profile — how nuclear power fits into Russia’s wider energy mix
• Gazprom — Russia’s other energy giant, dominant in gas rather than nuclear
• Strait of Hormuz — for context on how geography shapes energy chokepoints and export risk, the kind of risk Rosatom’s overseas projects must also navigate

Sources and further reading

• Rosatom official website: rosatom.ru/en
• World Nuclear Association, country and company profiles: world-nuclear.org
• World Nuclear News, Rosatom and Akkuyu coverage: world-nuclear-news.org
• International Atomic Energy Agency, Power Reactor Information System (PRIS): pris.iaea.org
• TASS, Rosatom corporate reporting: tass.com
• OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, analysis of Rosatom’s export position: osw.waw.pl
• Foreign Policy, reporting on US sanctions and uranium enrichment: foreignpolicy.com

Illustrative image. Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — source