Undeclared Congo Uranium Reaching China Could Yield 1,500 Warheads, Study Finds – SOFX

Between 2,000 and 5,000 metric tons of natural uranium, roughly 4.4 million to 11 million pounds, left the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) embedded in cobalt-hydroxide exports between 2000 and 2024, most of it bound for China, according to a study published July 30, 2026, in Nature Communications.

Less than 10% of the material appears to have been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite the DRC reporting no uranium production in decades.

The quantity could yield fissile material for roughly 600 to 1,500 nuclear weapons, said co-author Sébastien Philippe of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Because the uranium is off the books, he said, “it has no limitation placed on its end use.”

Uranium co-occurs with cobalt across the DRC’s Copperbelt, which supplies about 70% of the world’s cobalt, and stays bonded to the ore through processing unless refiners deliberately strip it out. China refines roughly 95% of global cobalt, and the uranium removed during refining becomes a valuable byproduct.

Co-author Ryan Manzuk of Princeton University said that even if DRC mines removed uranium to meet radioactivity shipping limits, enough would still reach China to build about 12 weapons per year, and that failing to declare it violates the Additional Protocol of China’s safeguards agreement.

The Pentagon estimates China’s stockpile at roughly 600 warheads and projects it will reach 1,000 by 2030.

Philippe said the research shows no evidence the uranium was extracted purposefully. An IAEA expert told Lighthouse Reports, which investigated alongside the researchers and the Financial Times, that the agency believed the DRC was meeting its safeguards obligations and that most of the uranium “ends up in the tailings.”

The researchers estimate 1,000 to 4,000 tons more were discarded into mine tailings in chemically mobile forms, posing radiation risks to miners and surrounding communities.