|
Plan to Import Spent Fuel Highlights the Trade-Off between Safety, Funds
MOSCOW -- Russia's legislature is expected to give preliminary
approval todayto a bill enabling the country to earn as much as $20 billion over 10
years by importing spent nuclear fuel, a measure that some environmentalists
and liberal legislators say would turn the nation into a nuclear-waste dump.
A law to allow nuclear-waste imports would be good news for two
competing plans to bring spent fuel into Russia. One plan is backed by the
Non-Proliferation Trust, a U.S. organization looking to send as much
as 10,000 tons of nuclear waste to Russia for storage. NPT is run by a number of former
U.S. intelligence and military officials, including former Central Intelligence
Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation director William Webster.
The other competitor is Russia's own Ministry of Atomic Energy,
known as Minatom, which has aggressively lobbied legislators to pass the
measure with promises of big budget revenues and stringent safety controls. Unlike
the NPT plan, Minatom wants the right to reprocess the fuel so it can be used
again in nuclear reactors.
The issue, which has been at the top of environmentalists' agenda
for several months, has raised questions about the compromises Russia is willing
to make to earn badly needed funds for federal coffers. Environmentalists say
more than 90% of Russians polled oppose opening the country's borders to spent
nuclear fuel.
Russia today reprocesses its own spent nuclear fuel and has a
special agreement that allows the importing of some spent fuel from the former
Soviet republic of Ukraine, scene of world's worst nuclear accident in 1986
at the Chernobyl power plant. The new bill would allow about 20,000 metric
tons to be imported over the next decade, which would give Russia about 10% of
the world market, according to the ministry.
Countries that are among the possible customers for Russia's
reprocessing services are Taiwan, Japan, France and Italy. Atomic Energy Minister
Yevgeny Adamov said the proposed legislation wouldn't require Russia to
re-export processed fuel to the country of origin but said sending it back would
be "a priority."
Green groups and human-rights activists yesterday warned that
Russia's reprocessing technology, railways and safety standards are too
outdated to ensure safety. Sergei Mitrokhin, a legislator with the liberal Yabloko
party, said the secretive Minatom would have too much control over funds
earned and might use some of the earnings to develop nuclear weapons. The
ministry oversees both civilian nuclear reactors and bomb design facilities.
But Mr. Adamov, the minister, said new technologies for
transporting and storing spent nuclear fuel had proved highly reliable. "So, there will
be a million transports without accidents and without environmental or
health damage," he said. A third of the $20 billion in revenue will be
distributed as grants to environmental causes, he said, another third will go into
the federal budget, and the rest will be spent to build nuclear-waste processing
and storage facilities and on insurance.
The bill passed easily in the State Duma, or lower house of
parliament, in a first reading in December and is expected to pass again today.
A third reading is also required before the bill is sent to the upper house for final
approval and then to the president to be signed into law.
NPT, a nonprofit organization based in Reston, Va., says it expects
to raise $15 billion from countries such as Taiwan or South Korea that are
eager to get rid of spent fuel. The trust would spend $2 billion to develop a
"geologic facility" in Russia to house the fuel and would charge countries $1.5
billion a ton for storage and handling, according to the trust's Web site. Much
of the money raised would go for environmental and economic programs in
Russia.
Beyond a change in Russian law, the NPT project would also require
the approvals of the Russian government and the Bush administration.
Copyright (c) 2001 Dow Jones and Company, Inc.
See also:
Nuclear waste bill
section of the web-site
| 