Study: DRC's Cobalt Exports Carried Thousands of Tonnes of Unreported Uranium

A geological study published in the journal Nature Communications in 2026 estimates that cobalt exports from the Copperbelt region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) carried thousands of tonnes of unreported uranium between 2000 and 2024, most of it shipped to China.

The study is the first to account for two factors: uranium and cobalt's geologic co-occurrence, and their similar behavior in processing chemistry, which makes them hard to separate. Researchers modeled uranium grades in cobalt ores from geologic maps, combined with ore volumes processed at each Copperbelt facility and a model of uranium's behavior during processing before shipment.

In the most likely scenarios, the study estimates 2,000 to 5,000 tonnes of natural uranium left the DRC in cobalt-hydroxide shipments between 2000 and 2024. Less than 10% of that appears to have been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which handles uranium accountancy and safeguards. The quantity could yield material for roughly 600 to 1,500 nuclear weapons, or fuel a standard light-water reactor for 10 to 25 years, the study calculates.

The risk is a geologic coincidence, not smuggling, the study says. Southern DRC supplies 70% of the world's cobalt, and its ores lie close to uranium deposits such as the Shinkolobwe mine, the Manhattan Project's main uranium source, closed since 2004. Rainwater has carried uranium from such deposits, formed roughly 600 million years ago, across the Copperbelt, and heterogenite, the main cobalt-bearing mineral, adsorbs it. Removal techniques, discussed only since around 2020, were consistently applied at just 3 of 31 operations examined.

The DRC exported over 200,000 tonnes of cobalt in 2024, and even with systematic uranium removal to meet shipping radioactivity limits, enough would still reach China yearly to make about 12 nuclear weapons, the study calculates. In the weeks after its July 2026 publication, the DRC launched a probe to test outgoing cobalt shipments for uranium and said it would consult the IAEA.