RUSSIAN SUPREME COURT ACCEPTS GREENPEACE PETITION TO INVESTIGATE ILLEGAL REJECTION OF SIGNATURES OPPOSING RADIOACTIVE WASTE IMPORTS

12 March 2001

Moscow - Greenpeace today welcomed the Russian Supreme Court’s acceptance of a legal petition challenging the rejection, last year, by the Central and Regional Election Committees of some 600,000 signatures out of 2.5 million calling for a nationwide referendum on plans to turn Russia into the world’s nuclear dump.

Under the Russian constitution the President must call a referendum on an issue if more than 2 million signatures are collected throughout the country. Last year, representatives of Greenpeace, in co-operation with representatives of seven other Russian environmental organisations (1), formed an 'initiative group' which collected 2,490,042 signatures demanding a referendum on proposed changes to Russia’s Environmental Law which prohibits the importation of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.

The Law change, 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, Korea, China - in contracts worth up to $21 billion.

The Supreme Court will now investigate evidence submitted by Greenpeace that at least 300,000 of the 600,000 discounted signatures were rejected illegally. Evidence submitted to the Supreme Court by Greenpeace shows that 300,806 of the rejected signatures should be reinstated taking the total to 2,174,022. For example, 73,662 signatures were rejected because they were "corrected without additional authorisation", yet Russian legislation forbids only the correction of the date of signature.

"It is clear that the Election Committees intentionally reduced the signatures to below the 2 million threshold for a referendum but such crude tactics will not work, the dossier presented to the court by Greenpeace unequivocally demonstrates the will of the people for a national referendum. A referendum which Minatom and its powerful supporters know will destroy their dangerous plans to turn Russia into the world’s nuclear dump," said Ivan Blokov of Greenpeace Russia.

Mayak, the most likely site for storage of imported Spent Nuclear Fuel 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."

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Tobias Muenchmeyer +1 202 329 25 08 or
- Jon Walter on +31 653504731 or
- Ivan Blokov on +7095 257 4118
www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/waste/russianwaste.html

Pictures and video of radioactive contamination around the Mayak nuclear plant are available through Greenpeace Communications John Novis, photo editor, Mim Lowe, video editor +31 20 5236222

(1) World Wide Fund for Nature; Social-Ecological Union; Centre for Wildlife Protection; Ecological Guard of Sakhalin; Baikal Wave; Committee for the Rescue of the river Pechora; Ecological Centre 'Dront'.