GREENPEACE CALLS ON PRESIDENT BUSH TO VETO EXPORTS OF US CONTROLLED NUCLEAR WASTE TO RUSSIA

6 June 2001

Moscow - Greenpeace today called on President Bush to veto any shipments to Russia of spent nuclear fuel originating from the US, following today's vote in the Russian parliament to overturn a ban on the import of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Recent calculations based on data provided by the US Department of Energy (DOE) show that more than 90% of foreign radioactive waste (spent nuclear fuel) considered for import by Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) is under US control. Only 180t (or 7.5%) of the 2,400 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel produced annually by Minatom's claimed potential client countries, could be exported to Russia without US approval. This material is produced in China, Eastern European countries and at some reactors in Switzerland, which are not of US design.

"US permission for the export of spent nuclear fuel to Russia would be a clear contradiction of the most fundamental US nuclear non-proliferation policy", said Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace International. "Reprocessing of imported spent nuclear fuel, as envisaged by Minatom, would clearly undermine all US efforts to discourage the accumulation of plutonium and the proliferation of nuclear weapons."

"Without US support, the whole grandiose Minatom program shrinks down to the simple old Soviet practice of taking back spent fuel from the socialist brother countries." said Muenchmeyer.

The Russian Duma today finally approved a controversial amendment to the environmental bill allowing the import of radioactive waste to Russia. With 243 votes in favor of the amendment, the supporters of spent fuel imports got only slightly more than the minimal required 226 votes.

The Duma vote ignored popular opposition to the proposal with more than 2.5 million Russians signing a petition, sponsored by Greenpeace and other environmental groups, calling for a national referendum on the issue. However, on 2 November, last year, Russia's Central Election Committee declared 600,000 signatures invalid, taking the number below the 2 million threshold required to trigger a referendum. Also an opinion poll, conducted for Greenpeace in May, this year, by independent Russian public research center ROMIR, found that 78.9 per cent of Russians were opposed to the import of radioactive waste and would not vote for Duma members who supported this legislation.

The law changes, approved by the Duma today, must now go to the Russian Upper House. The leader of Russia's Upper House is opposed to the radioactive waste import legislation. Federation Council Chairman Yegor Stroyev told the Interfax news agency on 7 March this year: "Only the mafia could be interested in laws that actually open the way to imports of nuclear wastes and turn Russia into a nuclear dump. The idea of importing nuclear wastes to Russia is insane."

The permission for importing radioactive waste, being promoted by the cash-strapped 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 Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, Germany and Spain in contracts worth up to $21 billion.

The main promoter of the radioactive waste import scheme, former Atomic Minister Evgeny Adamov, was sacked by the Russian President Vladimir Putin on 28 March. The dismissal of Adamov followed the release by Greenpeace, on 3 March, of a confidential report from the Russian Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Commission detailing Adamov's large-scale illegal business activities.

The proposed sites for Spent Nuclear Fuel storage are Mayak in the Ural mountains and Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. Mayak is the world's largest nuclear complex and one of the most radioactively contaminated sites in the world. According to a 1998 statement 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."

Tobias Muenchmeyer, Greenpeace's expert on Russian nuclear issues, was declared persona non grata by the Russian Foreign Ministry in December 1999 and has been banned from entering Russia ever since. No reason has been given why Muenchmeyer is not allowed to enter Russia anymore, except that it "is in the interest of state security" to deny him a visa. Greenpeace is campaigning to overturn this undemocratic decision which strikes at the heart of free speech.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Tobias Muenchmeyer (Berlin) +49 170 86 66 052
Ivan Blokov (Moscow) +7 095 257 41 22
Or visit the Greenpeace website at www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/waste/russianwaste.html where a chronology of events leading up to today's Duma vote is available.

Contact Greenpeace Communications Mim Lowe (video) or John Novis (photo) on ++31-20-5236222