Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2668 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Mongolia's State Great Hural adopted a comprehensive package of amendments to the 2009 Nuclear Energy Law on 21 November 2024 (approved by 68.1% of votes), restructuring the country's uranium-sector governance across three principal axes. The amendments introduce a dynamic three-tier uranium royalty framework — 5% basic (AMNAT) + 5% special + 0–9% price-linked incremental royalty, yielding approximately 14–19% aggregate — that replaces a flat-rate structure with a price-elastic mechanism designed to capture uranium supercycle upside for the Mongolian state. The law also prohibits export of radioactive minerals in raw ore form (mandatory domestic processing to at least yellowcake/U₃O₈ before export), prohibits import, transit, and disposal of foreign spent nuclear fuel in Mongolia, and provides the parliamentary legal underpinning for the ~USD 1.6 billion Orano (France)– Mongolia state investment agreement on the Zuuvch-Ovoo in-situ-leach uranium deposit (Dornogovi province), signed October 2024, targeting first production in 2028 with eventual ramp-up to ~2,500 t/yr uranium output.

Premier Li Qiang signed State Council Decree No. 792 on 19 October 2024 promulgating the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Export Controls for Dual-Use Items, with effect from 1 December 2024. The regulation, organised in six chapters and 50 articles, consolidates the previously fragmented nuclear / biological / chemical / missile dual-use control regimes into a single State Council framework operationalising the 2020 Export Control Law. It introduces a control-list / temporary-control / watchlist architecture, a statutory end-user / end-use commitment regime, transit / transhipment / re-export controls, extraterritorial reach over PRC items downstream, and explicit linkage to the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. On 15 November 2024 MOFCOM, MIIT, GAC and SCA jointly issued Announcement No. 51 of 2024 publishing the consolidated Dual-Use Items Export Control List with a unified five-character ECCN-style coding system, also effective 1 December 2024.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security issued a final rule on 5 September 2024 (effective 6 September 2024, published in the Federal Register on the same day as 89 FR 73285) establishing multilateral export controls on four categories of emerging technologies: (1) quantum computing items including quantum computers, related cryogenic / control / measurement systems, and certain quantum software; (2) gate-all-around field-effect transistor (GAAFET) production technology — the next-node semiconductor architecture beyond FinFET; (3) advanced additive-manufacturing equipment for metals + alloys; (4) certain biotech-related items added in a parallel rule on 12 September 2024. The rule operates without country exceptions for some categories, with multilateral coordination via Wassenaar + Australia Group + Nuclear Suppliers Group frameworks.

Cabinet Resolution No. 97 of 2024 is the implementing regulation of UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 43 of 2021 on Commodities Subject to Non-Proliferation. It operationalises the UAE's horizontal dual-use export-control regime, empowering the Executive Office for Control & Non-Proliferation (EOCN) to designate prohibited and restricted goods on the National Control List and to issue export/transit/re-export permits within 20 working days. The Control List covers nuclear materials, chemicals and precursors, electronics, telecommunications, sensors and lasers, navigation systems, avionics, marine and aerospace equipment, propulsion systems, and "national controlled commodities" (armoured vehicles, autonomous equipment). This is the regulatory architecture under which post-G42 advanced AI-chip outbound flows from the UAE are licensed.

On 20–21 June 2024 Niger's Ministry of Mines, acting under the CNSP military-transition government, formally notified the Director General of Imouraren SA (the Orano subsidiary holding the Imouraren uranium permit) that the perimeter of the "IMOURAREN Permit" returned to the public domain of Niger and was freed of all derived rights, in application of articles 59 and 61 of Ordinance no. 93-16 of 2 March 1993 (Niger Mining Law). The decision followed a 7 June 2024 ministerial "note d'information" giving Orano until 19 June to engage development works under the earlier 19 March 2024 mise en demeure, and the Ministry's finding that Orano's 26 April 2024 exploitation plan "did not meet our expectations". Imouraren is one of the world's largest known uranium deposits at ~200,000 t U (Orano-disclosed reserves, originally permitted to AREVA in January 2009 with mine-build paused after the 2011 Fukushima uranium-price collapse). Orano had held 63.4% of Imouraren SA against 36.6% by Niger state-owned Sopamin. Orano notified the public on 20 June 2024 that it took note of the decision, and on 4 December 2024 initiated ICSID arbitration against the Niger state contesting the revocation. The action is the first leg of the 2024–2025 Niger-Orano break (followed by the December 2024 announcement of loss of operational control over Somaïr / Cominak / Imouraren and the June 2025 Somaïr nationalisation announcement).