WORLD AFFAIRS

A controversial decision

The Russian Parliament's decision to lift a decade-old ban on the import of nuclear waste draws flak.

BISWAJIT CHOUDHURY

RUSSIA became a source of major environmental concern when it decided last fortnight to import spent nuclear fuel for disposal. On June 6, the Russian Parliament approved a Bill that will end a decade-old ban on radioactive waste coming into the country.

TATIANA MAKEYEVA/AP
A protest outside the State Duma in Moscow on June 6 against its decision to allow the import of nuclear waste.

The new law envisages the import of one tonne of nuclear waste a year between 2002 and 2012, its storage at special sites for 10 years, and its reprocessing from 2021. The reprocessing is also expected to yield plutonium for nuclear reactors. The plan is designed to earn Russia about $20 billion, a significant amount for its beleaguered economy.

The import earnings are to be utilised in three ways: one-third of them would go towards the costs of reprocessing; another third for constructing storage facilities for the radioactive waste; and the rest for "financing a programme of social utilities", which in the Russian context signifies a clean-up programme for the atomic 'dumps' in remote regions such as Siberia and the Urals. That is, the money earned will in effect be used to manage the radioactive waste generated by the hundreds of nuclear reactors spread across Russia and that from dismantled nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers. Hence, the scope of the plan comes across as a paradox in that to deal with its own atomic waste, Russia will function as a kind of dustbin for others in the next decade.

The two sites selected to receive the imports are Mayak (formerly known as Cejlabinsk 45), situated in a populated area in the Urals, and Zhelernogorsk, in southern Siberia. The Mayak reprocessing facility was built in 1949, and there are doubts about its capacity to handle any extra load.

In early 2001, the European Commission had warned that Mayak was at risk of a serious accident. Despite information about Russian nuclear installations being hard to come by during the Soviet era, Mayak was known for a series of nuclear accidents much prior to what is generally regarded as the first such disaster, the one at Chernobyl in 1986. There was reportedly an explosion in a storage tank at the Mayak facility in 1957 and about 100 tonnes of radioactive matter was released into the atmosphere. Another explosion occurred in 1993 in Tomsk, Siberia, considered to be the worst disaster after Chernobyl, with many tonnes of uranium and plutonium being thrown up all over the surrounding countryside.

The passage of the Bill to allow the import of nuclear waste was accompanied by protests in Moscow. Environmentalists pointed to Russia's unenviable record of nuclear safety. Igor Artemeyev, a Member of Parliament from the liberal Yabloko Party, described the Bill as a "national humiliation". The protesters drew attention to the shortsightedness of trying to earn $20 billion by receiving radioactive matter that would remain toxic for thousands of years.

It required three years of public debate and sustained efforts by experts before the powerful nuclear lobby guided by Minatom (Ministry of Atomic Energy) could prevail over the decade-old ban on the import of spent fuel. There was little resistance in the Duma, with 243 votes polled in favour of the Bill and 125 against it.

IN the final analysis, it is perhaps the severe pressure on Russia's nuclear infrastructure, caused by the economic crisis accelerating in the post-Soviet period, that provided the strongest reason for imports. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the world's worst, was a pointer to the state of affairs. The structure in Chernobyl, which still covers 200 tonnes of radioactive fuel and debris, is leaky and unstable. Maintenance at many of Russia's nuclear facilities is poor owing to lack of funds and workers at nuclear stations sometimes remain unpaid for months.

The seriousness of the crisis has often meant recourse to shortcuts and disregard for safety norms. For instance, Russia confirmed in 1993 that 18 of its nuclear-powered submarines had been dismantled and dumped in the Arctic Sea. This meant that solid and liquid radioactive waste had been released into the Arctic waters. In 2000, an official report confirmed that 95 decommissioned submarines were floating in the Adreyev Bay area, a dumping site for nuclear waste.

Russia's vast expanses and unpopulated areas make it a potential dumping ground for nuclear waste worldwide. Russians themselves have been using their Arctic regions for conducting nuclear tests and for dumping atomic waste. Most of Russia's nuclear tests between 1955 and 1990 took place in the Zemjla archipelago. A large quantity of radioactive waste was immersed in the Barents and Kara Seas.

A report published by a Norwegian environmental group, Bellona, said that the Kola peninsula, which borders Norway, had a huge dump of nuclear waste made up of over 21,000 cubic metres of solid fuel nuclear waste, nine reactor cores and more than 29,000 fuel elements.

It is estimated that the reactors in Russia have so far churned out about 4,30,000 tonnes of nuclear waste. Robert Nigmatullin, Chairman of the Special Commission of the Duma, provided a perspective on the debate on the move to import waste: "One tonne of spent fuel a year is not even enough to fill a train wagon. Three thousand tonnes of nuclear waste are stored in California, yet no one dares to describe the United States as a dustbin of the world."

Notwithstanding the misgivings about the latest Russian decision, the fact remains that no country has yet devised a satisfactory solution to the problem of radioactive waste. Protests, often violent, in France and Germany against the transportation of nuclear waste testify to this fact. Environmentalists are also helping focus attention on the lack of preparedness of the nuclear industry in dealing with the problem of spent fuel. Relevant data for some countries show that electricity generated by nuclear power constitutes 75 per cent of the total power generated in France, 50 per cent in Switzerland, 30 per cent in Germany and 20 per cent in the U.S.

Spent fuel is normally classified on the basis of its radioactivity and toxic life span. For instance, in France the national agency for managing nuclear waste has found an effective solution for the disposal of only waste with low radioactivity and a toxic life span of less than 30 years - it is stored overground. Reprocessing plants in France and Britain have the ability to vitrify (change into glass-like substance through heat application) nuclear waste. In Finland, Germany and Switzerland, nuclear waste is stored in underground sites, which is a costlier solution. About six million tonnes of waste worldwide is stored this way.

Since the late 1990s, the French authorities have been studying the feasibility of sites to construct underground laboratories-cum-storage facilities. They met with resistance in Vienne in 1997, when thousands of demonstrators opposed the proposal to set up such a site in their area. The sites are anyway to be selected at the end of a verification process lasting more than 10 years - to store nuclear waste for millions of years.

The underground repositories at Helmsdorf and Culmitsch in Germany contain between them many hundred thousand tonnes of nuclear waste. At an international level, there appears to be a consensus that underground storage is the best possible means for the disposal of high-level waste.

HOWEVER, aside from the enormous costs and scientific research required to devise radiation-proof repositories, there are other difficulties, based on local conditions. In Japan it is difficult to determine a site that would be absolutely safe because the country is earthquake prone. There are fears that the site at Rokkashomura would have developed cracks after an earthquake in December 1994. Reports said that the uranium enrichment facility in the vicinity had developed more than 60 cracks.

Deliberate disregard of safety by the nuclear industry has sometimes come to light. For instance, the French corporation COMUC, according to a 1996 report by the French Parliament, was discharging waste directly into the bed of the river Ngambongou in Gabon until the mid-1970s.

For the first time since 1998, thousands of protesters demonstrated all over Germany earlier this year against the transportation of high-level waste through the country. The shipments were travelling overland from a reprocessing centre in France to repositories in Germany. In 1998, protesters disrupted nuclear shipments destined for Ahaus in north Germany. The latest shipments had been endorsed by Germany's Social Democrat and Green Party coalition as part of an agreement to close German nuclear power plants within the next 30 years.

In the U.S., opponents of cross-country shipments of radioactive waste have pointed out that containers used to transport spent fuel have not undergone full-scale physical testing, and this greatly increases the risk of radioactive release. Exporting the waste appears to be the simplest way out for many countries such as Taiwan, which has signed an agreement to export 60,000 casks of nuclear waste to North Korea. Taiwan has also been negotiating with Russia. South Korea and Switzerland are among the other potential clients for Russian services. By lifting its ban on imports, Russia will facilitate international traffic in radioactive material.