Swiss Plan to Dump Nuke Waste in Russia

by Danielle Knight

The document -- called a "Protocol of Intentions" -- outlines negotiations on the proposed nuclear fuel deal that were held last September in Zurich between representatives of the Swiss nuclear power industry and Russian officials.

According to Greenpeace, such a project would violate a U.S.- Swiss Nuclear Cooperation Agreement that binds the Swiss to request U.S. permission before transferring fuel containing weapons-grade plutonium (such as the waste in question) to third countries, including Russia.

Because Russian storage facilities -- some of them operated by the military -- are not covered by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, entering such an agreement would be environmentally risky and would only encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons, argued Greenpeace.

"This is an immoral attempt to exploit Russian poverty and lack of regulatory control," commented Damon Moglen, a Greenpeace campaigner in Washington. "We call on the U.S. government to immediately send a strongly worded message to the Swiss and Russian governments that this nuclear waste deal should be killed."

As compensation for storing the fuel, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy has asked for undisclosed financial payments and the opportunity to make fresh uranium fuel for Swiss nuclear reactors.

A Russian Atomic Energy Ministry official who took part in the talks confirmed that Moscow was exploring the reprocessing and storing of spent fuel from Switzerland and other Western nations but said that it had struck no deals.

Herbert Bay, a leader for the Swiss nuclear industry delegation, told IPS the document was genuine but that it only represented the beginning of negotiations, not a final deal. "We are decades away from a deal," he said.

Bay waved aside Greenpeace's description of the document as secret. "When you enter the beginning stages of sensitive negotiations you always keep them confidential -- eventually the negotiations would be made public."

Bay also dismissed the environmental group's charge that international agreements were being violated. He explained that the Protocol specifically stated a number of necessary prerequisites -- including approval from the United States, Russian and Swiss government -- for the agreement to be made final.

According to the Protocol as obtained by IPS, the waste would either remain in Russia or could be reprocessed in order to yield weapons-grade plutonium. While the plutonium would be returned to Switzerland, the nuclear waste generated by the reprocessing would remain in Russia, said the document.

Even if the fuel were not processed for plutonium extraction, the Swiss side requested that it be able to access Russian plutonium stocks equivalent to those contained in the Swiss fuel.

The Swiss nuclear industries also asked that the Russians agree to store up to 550 cubic meters of highly radioactive material expected to be returned to Switzerland from France and Britain between 1999 and 2010, as part of a previous contract.

Such an agreement would violate Russia's federal environmental law, which prohibits the import of radioactive wastes and materials for storage and disposal from other countries, said Greenpeace.

According to the leaked document, N. Yegorov, Deputy Director of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, acknowledged that Russian acceptance of the spent nuclear fuel would require that Russian law be "amended accordingly or special decisions are taken on a governmental level."

"From the Protocol it is clear that the Russian representatives deliberately misrepresented the current legislative situation in Russia pertaining to the importation of foreign nuclear spent fuel," Greenpeace charged.

"We believe that the Russian Duma and the government should intervene to stop these negotiations and take all steps to ban waste dumping and further plutonium reprocessing in Russia," said the environmental group.

"Approval of this deal would lead to the unacceptable underwriting of continued proliferation-prone operations of secret, closed Russian facilities still operating for military purposes," he said.

Several of the Russian reprocessing sites likely to receive the nuclear waste from Switzerland are associated with severe radioactive contamination and are not covered by IAEA safeguards, said the environmental group.

A plutonium reprocessing plant is still in operation in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural mountains. This region was the site of a 1957 accident involving the explosion of tanks containing highly toxic liquid waste that contaminated an area of approximately 15,000 to 23,000 sq. kms.

The contamination was only admitted by officials in 1989, 32 years later.

Military plutonium production near Lake Karachay in the Techa river region has also caused severe water contamination, according to Greenpeace.

According to data collected by the Institute for Biophysics of the Russian Federation, over 8,000 people have died as a result of radiation exposure in that area.

"Lake Karachay has surface radiation levels of 600 rads per hour -- sufficient to give a lethal dose to anyone in the vicinity for one hour, (with) death coming in days or weeks," said the environmental group.

"The environmental pollution problems caused by plutonium production in the Russian Federation are so overwhelming that the last thing the Russian people and their environment needs is more plutonium and nuclear waste," added Greenpeace.