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Environmentalists Criticize Plan to Import Foreign Waste
MOSCOW -- Russia's legislature is expected to give preliminary
approval today to a bill enabling the country to earn what proponents say could total
$20 billion (22.03 billion euros) over 10 years by importing spent nuclear fuel,
a measure environmentalists and liberal legislators say would turn the nation
into a nuclear waste dump.
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 money for its coffers. Environmentalists say more
than 90% of Russians polled oppose opening the country's borders to spent nuclear
fuel, but the Atomic Energy Ministry has been aggressively lobbying legislators
with promises of large revenues and stringent safety controls.
Russia reprocesses its own spent nuclear fuel and has a special
agreement that allows the import of some spent fuel from the former Soviet republic
of Ukraine, scene of the 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.
Among 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 send back the processed fuel to
the country of origin but said sending it back would be "a priority."
Green groups and human-rights activists warned Wednesday 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outdated to ensure safety.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 Atomic Energy Ministry 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 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 told
a news conference. He said one-third of the $20 billion in revenues will be
distributed as grants to environmental causes, another third will go into the
federal budget and the remainder will be spent to build new nuclear-waste processing
and storage facilities and on insurance.
Yevgeny Ishchenko, a member of Parliament, said the promised
environmental grants as akin to "ripping out citizens' internal organs and selling
them to get money to buy medicine."
The bill passed easily in the State Duma, or lower house of
Parliament, in a first reading last December and is likely 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.
Environmentalists argued that the ministry has underestimated the
cost of building new facilities to handle the job. Ivan Blokov, director of
Greenpeace in Russia, said the ministry has budgeted only $1.9 billion to build a
new processing plant in Siberia while smaller plants in the U.K. and Japan
have cost more than twice as much.
Sergei Kovalyov, a veteran human-rights activist, said Russia's
record of nuclear accidents and pollution cover-ups provided strong grounds for
opposing the bill. "What do we see as the state policy? A pronounced desire to
hide the mayhem that it is itself causing and the fact that we are polluting
the environment," he said, pointing to recent state attempts to prosecute
environmental whistle-blowers.
Copyright (c) 2001 Dow Jones and Company, Inc.
See also:
Nuclear waste bill
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