GREENPEACE CALLS ON DUMA TO REJECT CHANGES TO ENVIRONMENT LAW TO ALLOW IMPORT OF FOREIGN NUCLEAR WASTE

21 December 2000

Moscow - Greenpeace called on Duma members to oppose amendments to the environment law, scheduled to be introduced into the Russian parliament today, which will allow the import of foreign nuclear waste.

The change to Russia’s Environmental Law, being promoted by Russia's cash-strapped Atomic Ministry (MINATOM), is designed to allow Russia to become the world's nuclear waste dump. MINATOM believes that over the next decade it could import up to 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from countries including Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Taiwan, South Korea, China - in contracts worth up to $21 billion.

"Duma members should go to the regions surrounding the horrendous nuclear facilities at Mayak and Krasnoyarsk and see the human misery they have caused before they vote to accept the world's nuclear waste," said Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace International, who has been refused entry into Russia since last December after campaigning against the nuclear industry.

"If Duma members vote for this amendment they will be creating another Chernobyl generation, ravaged by nuclear contamination," Muenchmeyer said.

Valentin Ivanov, MINATOM first deputy Minister, claims that the contracts would be for temporary storage and or reprocessing. However a MINATOM document, released by Greenpeace earlier this year, revealed that Russia would also be offering final disposal. MINATOM argues that by taking the world's unwanted radioactive waste it will be able to; upgrade its own nuclear waste storage, remediate some heavily contaminated land, and expand its nuclear reprocessing operations at the Mayak nuclear complex, 2,500 km east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.

Mayak is the world's largest nuclear complex and one of the most radioactively contaminated sites in the world. According to a statement in 1998 by G.J. Dicus, a commissioner for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission :"As a result of early operational practices and some accidents at Mayak, workers at the plant and populations around the site were exposed to unusually large amounts of radiation and radioactive materials. In many cases, the doses were comparable to those received by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings."

"The fairy tales about nuclear cleanup by Minatom are nothing but public relations for their crude attempt to get Western money for an expansion of the Russian nuclear industry, whose disregard for safety and the environment is starkly demonstrated by the nuclear nightmare of Mayak and Krasnoyarsk," said Muenchmeyer.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Tobias Muenchmeyer +49-170-8666052 or Ivan Blokov on +7095 257 4118 or visit www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/waste/russianwaste.html