Did we just lose a bunch of uranium?

A scorpion LOOMS into view then freezes in the blood-red dust, as a rumble grows to a —

ROAR, as a 40-truck war-rig convoy races past under a merciless sun, flanked by 100 escort gunners anxiously scanning the haze as we CUT to reveal —

Masked figures watch silently as this world-ending cargo snakes through the desert land.

🎬 Aaaand scene 🎬

That’s not the cold opening to the next Mad Max, but an actual (ok, dramatized) scene now playing out. But before we tell you where, an obligatory expositional flashback…

Ask any diplomat their worst nightmare, and it’s either a) a promotion freeze, b) a family friend hustling for visa help, or c) a uranium shipment going missing.

Both a) and b) are truly horrific, but we’ll focus on c) because you only need ten pounds (4.5kg) of yellowcake for a dirty bomb that’d turn lower Manhattan into a hazmat zone.

And all that by way of throat-clearing to explain why nuclear watchers were a tad rattled when a coup hit one of the world’s top uranium producers (Niger) in 2023.

Local uranium miner Somaïr, majority-owned by the French government’s own Orano nuclear fuel multinational, projected calm amid the post-coup chaos, but it was always going to be a sore spot for colonial rulers to control such a sensitive and lucrative sector.

So fast-forward to June this year and the inevitable happened, with Niger’s junta seizing Somaïr on claims the French hadn’t paid their dues and had caused too much pollution.

Paris then countered via a World Bank tribunal ruling in September, both a) barring Niger from selling or transferring the mine’s $250M uranium stockpile, and b) urging Niger’s junta to release the Orano exec it’s held for months. Case closed…?

Orano then issued a startling statement last week confirming rumours of a mysterious uranium shipment leaving its Niger mine, and warning it had “no official information on the quantity of uranium transported, its final destination, or the conditions under which this transport was undertaken in terms of safety and security.” Gulp.

And so that brings us back to our cold opening above:

Orano would ordinarily ship its uranium out of landlocked Niger to France via Benin. But the Benin border has been closed since Niger’s coup, forcing this convoy (whoever’s driving it) to take a route that’s not only longer, but passes near two jihadi strongholds.

Online sleuths have managed to track the convoy as far as Burkina Faso, but we don’t know for sure whether it’s reached its presumed end port in Togo.

Niger’s junta will only say it’s exercising its sovereign rights to sell what appears to be almost the entire Orano stockpile out on the open market. And while we don’t know for sure, the buyer could be Russia which, hustling to fill the West’s void, has…

• pushed for its Rosatom nuclear giant to take Orano’s assets since 2024
• signed a nuclear energy MOU with Niger just this July, and
• signed a naval access deal with Togo (the convoy’s presumed port) just last month!

So when we say we don’t fully believe Russia’s public denials, it’s not because we’re Russo-phobic. It’s because we’re not idiots. Rumours have also mentioned Iran and even Turkey.

Anyway, our best guess is this convoy already reached Togo’s Lomé port this time around. But if there’s one thing we know about Mad Max, it’s that there’s always another sequel.

Intrigue’s Take

Forgive us the drama above, but this is a big deal: first, a state just openly defied a World Bank ruling to move a strategic, dangerous commodity through a conflict zone. And second, the end buyer could be UNSC member Russia, who doesn’t need uranium (it’s got plenty), but wants the big signal here: we’ll fill the West’s vacuum, no questions asked.

So sure, the Mad Max framing is maybe the most fun and dramatic, but you could also view this convoy as a rolling middle-finger to the world’s entire non-proliferation architecture of safeguards, export controls, and investor-state arbitration.

It’s also a reminder of exactly what’s now converging across Africa’s Sahel region: juntas, jihadis, radioactive material, and a zero-sum race between world powers seemingly willing to abandon all pretence of standards if it means getting one sweet sweet step ahead.