Russia Drops Restrictions on Foreign Nuclear Waste
by Sergei Blagov
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by Sergei Blagov |
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(IPS) MOSCOW --
In
an unlikely Christmas gift to the nation, Russia's lower house of parliament has removed a legal ban on the long-term storage of foreign nuclear waste on Russian soil.
The State Duma's action December 21 came despite a determined campaign by environmentalists, who accused the Russian government of putting environmental and public health concerns aside to earn hard currency. Only one-third of the Duma deputies opposed the bills to change the law. "Russia must not be turned into a radioactive dump," said Anatoly Greshnevikov, deputy head of the Duma's environmental committee. Before Dec. 21, Russian law allowed only countries with Russian-built nuclear power plants to send nuclear waste to Russia. However, Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, Minatom, was long seeking foreign clients to reprocess spent nuclear fuel at its Chelyabinsk plant. The storage of spent nuclear fuel from other countries will allow Russia to earn $20 billion in the next 10 years, Duma deputy Robert Nigmatullin told the house. "Russia will import spent fuel from China, Taiwan, Iran and whatever other market available," he said. Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov denied that Russia was importing nuclear waste for disposal. After 20 to 50 years, the spent fuel is to be sent back to its country of origin, he said. Some politicians were not convinced. "The whole world calls it 'waste,' and very dangerous waste, while Minatom is still talking about 'spent fuel,'" said Duma deputy Sergei Mitrokhin. Adamov was aggressively lobbying for a change in the federal law that prevented Russia from accepting foreign spent nuclear fuel for long-term storage. Long before the legislation was changed, Adamov was telling potential clients that Russia would soon be ready to start a nuclear storage business. However, the Russian press has accused Adamov of being linked to well-connected tycoons, who were said to be behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's surprise rise to power.
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One
of the first decrees signed by Putin in May was to dissolve the State Committee for Environmental Protection, which was opposed to lifting the ban on import of spent foreign nuclear fuel.
Greens allege that Russia's environmental watchdog was disbanded under pressure from powerful lobbying groups. Among those lobbying for this was Minatom, Yevgeny Usov, spokesperson of the Russia office of international environmental watchdog Greenpeace, told IPS. Last year, Minatom drafted legislation to allow import of foreign nuclear waste. The then-chair of the State Committee for the Environmental Protection, Viktor Danilov-Danilian, wrote an official letter to the government saying this would hurt "Russia's ecological security." In a desperate attempt to block the change in the law, green groups collected some 2.5 million signatures to initiate a national referendum on the issue. The national vote would also have asked Russians whether they wanted a separate state environmental protection agency. But in late November, Russia's Central Elections Commission, citing minor technical inaccuracies, rejected more than a fifth of the 2.5 million signatures collected across the country. This left environmentalists, 200,000 signatures short of the two million needed to force a referendum under the constitution. Green activists alleged that the election commission was ordered by the government to block the referendum. If at least two million of the collected signatures had been accepted, the draft legislation to change the ban on the import of foreign nuclear waste would have been cancelled. Greens argue that Russia can keep the spent foreign nuclear fuel only at its largest nuclear waste storage facility -- Krasnoyarsk-26. This has some 3,000 tons of unused capacity, while Minatom wants to import more than 10,000 tons of radioactive waste. Russia is planning a new nuclear waste storage site in a remote northern region, which could be built either on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the far north, or the Chukotka Peninsula in the far northeast. No date has been set as yet for starting work on the new site nor has its cost and capacity been finalized. The Minatom-managed Chelyabinsk-65 Reprocessing Plant, or NPO Mayak, was the site of a series of serious accidents. In 1957, an explosion in the high-level waste storage facility caused widespread contamination and the evacuation of more than 10,000 people living near the area.
Albion Monitor
December 31, 2000 (http://www.monitor.net/monitor) All Rights Reserved. Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format. |
