(544.5254) Bellona Foundation - In response to Russia's nuclear lobby plans to import foreign spent nuclear fuel, Russian environmental groups presented a report entitled "Transportation of Radioactive Materials and Nuclear Fissile Materials in Russia: Practice of Unavoidable Risks." The poor maintenance of the Russian railway network and a long list of incidents documented during the past years prove the risks outlined in the report.
The report was co-authored by Russian environmental group Ecodefense and Vladimir Kuznetsov, expert for the Anti-Nuclear Campaign of the Socio-Ecological Union and former inspector of the Russian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (GAN). The research was performed in order to confront the successful lobby attempts of the Russian Nuclear Ministry, Minatom, to push the amendments to a number of Russian federal laws through the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. The Duma approved the amendments in the first reading in December 2000. The new bills would lift the ban on importing spent nuclear fuel from all over the world. To become a law, the bills must be approved by the Duma in the second and the third readings, then by the Federation Council, and finally by the president. After that hundreds of new nuclear shipments will flow across the country.
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Taking into consideration the technical quality of the Russian railroads and management problems, nuclear transportation in Russia will dramatically increase the danger of serious accidents involving highly radioactive materials, the authors of the report said. Minatom plans to earn US$20 billion on importing 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The environmentalists calculated that each Russian citizen will get an average 140 grams of foreign nuclear waste and US$3.50.
According to the authors of the report, only a part of the study is finished and presented, but the work will be continued through 2001. The report included chapters on: accidents documented during transporting radioactive materials in 90s, the Russian new containers and their safety, and general issues of safety on railroads. The document will be mailed to the Russian Prime Minister, all members of the State Duma, and several Russian federal ministries, the authors of the report said.
Each year hundreds of nuclear transports cross the globe. According to the report, the number of accidents in Russia is two to three times higher than in the West. Some of the incidents were described in the study:
- The Ural Electrical-Chemical Plant in Novouralsk often practices transportation of various radioactive materials. In 1994, a train carrying a radioactive solution containing uranium crashed, which caused the release of 1,000 liters of uranium-containing solution on the railroad outside the plant, contaminating the ground near densely populated cities;
- A special truck carrying containers with Ir-192 and Co-60 collided with a bulldozer near Tubuk village, Chelyabinsk region, on 11 September 1997. The sealed containers were broken and released radioactivity into the environment;
- On 20 September 1991, an accident happened at Bilibino nuclear plant, in the Russian Far North. While transporting the radioactive waste to the storage, one of the containers fell on the ground, which caused radioactive contamination.
In 1999, there were two cases of illegal shipments of radioactive waste on Russian railroads. Also during 1999, four big accidents happened in which trains crashed on the South-East railway and the North-Caucasus railways. The safety conditions of the Russian railways are getting worse each year.
According to the report, the containers used in Russia for transporting radioactive materials violate the safety regulations. At the Siberian Chemical Plant in Tomsk-7 it was revealed that transportation of the nuclear materials is carried out in the containers of AT-316 and BT-134 types, while such containers do not meet Russian nuclear safety norms. The plant transported nuclear materials without appropriate certificates and licenses. The same containers without necessary approvals are widely used by the Mayak reprocessing plant near Chelyabinsk, in the southern Ural.
According to the authors of the report, the Russian nuclear safety norms are far from being ideal. But the Russian Ministry for Nuclear Energy regularly violates even these norms. The main reason is a lack of respect for legislation developed by the Russian Nuclear Regulatory Authority. "The Minatom's plan to import nuclear waste for storing/reprocessing on commercial basis must be reviewed and not approved by the Russian legislators. Extremely dangerous nuclear shipments may result in great accidents causing wide-spread contamination of the environment, exposing many people to radiation, paralyzing the main transport roads in the country," the report concludes.
The report (in Russian) is available at
www.ecoline.ru/antinuclear/rus/dokl2/index.htm
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