RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT VOTES TO BECOME THE WORLD'S NUCLEAR DUMP SITE

21 December 2000

Moscow - Russia could become the world's nuclear waste dump after a large majority of the parliament made an initial vote to amend the environmental law to allow foreign nuclear waste imports.

The amendments will now go through a second parliamentary reading in January and possibly a third before being approved.
However, the overwhelming vote in favour (319 for, 38 against with six abstentions) suggests the amendments are likely to be finally approved by the Russian parliament.

"This is a disaster for the Russian people and could create another Chernobyl generation who's lives could be cut short by radioactive contamination," said Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace International. "President Putin recently spoke of his admiration for environmentalists and their causes. Today his support of this potentially lethal trade shows the depths of his hypocrisy, and his total lack of concern not just for the environment, but also the health of the Russian people."

The Duma vote comes just weeks after 2.5 million people demanded a referendum on the issue of importing nuclear waste. Only two million votes were needed, but the Russian authorities rejected 700,000 votes, claiming the ballots where invalid, and refused the referendum. "Today's vote ignores those 2.5 million voices. It is now up to the client countries to avoid this potential environmental disaster by refusing to export their spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste to Russia," Muenchmeyer added.

The likely sites for the imports will be the nuclear complexes at Mayak and Krasnoyarsk. Both areas are already among the most radioactively contaminated sites in the world. Mayak is the world's largest facility. 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 change to Russia's Environmental Law has been promoted by the cash-strapped Atomic Ministry (MINATOM). 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.

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 complex, 2,500 km east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.

"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
Background photos and video from Mayak are available tel: +31 20 524 9580