Russia may be willing to take high-level waste

Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 | 10:35 a.m.

Russia may be willing to offer the world a safe haven for high-level nuclear waste -- for a price.

The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, could consider a bill as early as Tuesday that would allow Russia to accept spent nuclear fuel from abroad, Jane's Information Group reported Wednesday.

In exchange for accepting nuclear wastes from Europe for storage, Russia could reap an estimated $20 billion, Russia's Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov told Jane's.

The funds could be used to clean up the sites of Russia's nuclear catastrophes or pay off money owed to the International Monetary Fund.

Adamov said that the ministry has been lobbying to change the law that bans Russia from accepting foreign spent fuel for long-term storage.

An appeal by the environmental groups World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace to hold a national referendum on environmental issues failed to garner enough valid signatures, Russian's Central Election Commission ruled this week.

Greenpeace In-ter-na-tional spokesman Damon Moglen said the Russian offer is more complicated. If the Duma allows Russia to accept foreign nuclear wastes, the government could reprocess them and sell weapons-useable plutonium to countries such as Japan, Iran and Korean, he said.

"Greenpeace is categorically opposed to this," Moglen said.

Tom Lipman, World Wildlife Fund vice president for communications in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that Russia has an economic problem and, like the United States, a nuclear waste problem.

The Department of Energy is studying a single site, Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for a proposed repository to store 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste.

The nuclear waste solution is a long-term effort and expensive, Lipman said.

What happens to the fuel once it gets to Russia has not been decided, Jane's reported. Options range from permanent storage to processing and reuse. In 50 years Russia could return fresh, reprocessed fuel and wastes to the original owners, Adamov said.

The atomic energy ministry is also promoting an amendment before the Duma that would approve transferring license functions from regulators to managing agencies.

If that amendment passes, independent regulatory agencies would disappear in Russia. Instead, the right to license civilian nuclear-related projects would pass from the state nuclear inspectors to the ministry.