Calgary Herald, December 22, 2000
Russia Eager To Take World's Nuclear Waste
By Giles Whittell
Russia took a significant step towards becoming the world's nuclear dumping ground Thursday when its parliament backed a law allowing the import of nuclear waste worth $31 billion Cdn to the Kremlin over the next 10 years.
The law, likely to come into force early next year, has been presented to the Duma as a way of freeing Russia from foreign debts and raising money for environmental projects.
Critics gave a warning that it could undo 10 years of international efforts to make safe the former Soviet Union's nuclear installations.
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry is confident of winning contracts with China, Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland and Spain, and has signed one with Bulgaria in anticipation of the law. It proposes to store the spent reactor fuel in Siberia, the Russian Far East, the Altai mountains and in Arctic Russia, though even its most advanced facilities have been plagued by accidents releasing radiation on a level comparable to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs, according to American monitors.
About $10 billion of the expected revenue has been earmarked for "special ecological programs for the rehabilitation of radioactively polluted regions," according to the the bill. The remaining $21 billion, a vast sum considering Russia's 2001 budget totals $60 billion, will be divided between a range of ministries, but fears are mounting that much of it will be plowed back into the nuclear power industry.
Chief among the concerns of foreign observers and the Duma's dissenting minority was that Yevgeni Adamov, the Nuclear Power Minister, may use any windfalls to kickstart a Russian fast-breeder reactor programs despite risks that have stalled development of such reactors elsewhere.
The Duma vote, opposed only by 38 liberals, was a triumph for Adamov and a setback for Russia's beleaguered environmental lobby.
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