DUMA DELAYS DECISION AS POLITICAL OPPOSITION GROWS TO LAW ALLOWING RADIOACTIVE WASTE IMPORTS TO RUSSIA

22 March 2001

Moscow - The last minute decision by the Russian Duma today to delay law changes to allow radioactive waste imports to Russia was a sign of growing political opposition to the proposal, Greenpeace said today.

The Duma decision to delay the second reading of the bill, for at least two weeks, was announced at 11.30 today after a Greenpeace action at 10.05 outside the parliamentary building where activists unfurled a large banner reading "Spent Nuclear Fuel? Duma - Think Again". At 10.15 security officers tore down the banner attached to the entrance roof overhang, endangering a Greenpeace activist hanging 10 meters above the ground. Three activists were arrested.

"The delay of the Duma decision is a great success and indicates that political opposition is growing to the radioactive waste import bill, which will turn Russia into the world's nuclear waste dump" said Greenpeace International spokeperson Tobias Muenchmeyer. "More and more Duma members are finally realising how irresponsible and dangerous it would be, to open Russia's gates for thousands of tonnes of deadly radioactive waste."

Last week of the head of Russian's Upper House of parliament, the Federation Council, Yegor Stroyev said he is categorically against the radioactive waste import law. "Only the mafia could be interested in laws that actually open the way to imports of nuclear wastes and turning Russia into a nuclear dump," Stroyev told repoters last Wednesday. "The idea of importing nuclear wastes to Russia is insane."

Also today a Supreme court hearing began on a Greenpeace legal challenge to the Russian Central Electoral Committee, seeking to validate over 300,000 signatures calling for a national referendum against the import of radioactive waste to Russia. In November last year Russia's Central Election Committee declared 600,000 signatures invalid of the 2.5 million collected by Greenpeace and other environmentalists. This lowered the total below the 2 million threshold required, under Russian law, for carrying out a national referendum.

"This is not only about ecology, this is also about democracy," said Muenchmeyer. "There are 2.5 million people who want to use their constitutional right to vote for a referendum, but some governmental agencies appear intent on denying them this right."

The legislation to allow the importation of radioactive waste, 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.

Earlier this month Greenpeace released a confidential report from the Russian Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Commission detailing large-scale illegal business activities of the Minister of Atomic Energy, Evgeny Adamov.

"This has been a wake up call for the Duma members who voted (at the first reading) in favour of Adamov's multi-billion proposal for importing nuclear waste," said Muenchmeyer. "Many Duma members realise that this proposal is nothing more than a money making scheme for Adamov and the rest of the Russian nuclear mafia."

One of the likely sites to receive foreign nuclear waste is the nuclear complex at Mayak in the Urals. It 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:

- Ivan Blokov (Moscow) +7 095 257 41 22
- Tobias Muenchmeyer (Berlin) +49 30 440 58 960

www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/waste/russianwaste.html