“We welcome the decision of the German government
not to export spent nuclear fuel from Saxony to Russia. We
think that the German government has demonstrated a responsible
approach in the solution of this problem,” stated YABLOKO’s
leader Sergei Mitrokhin.
On Monday, December 6, Nobert Roettgen, German Federal Minister
for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, announced
that Germany had revoked its decision to export spent nuclear
fuel from Saxony to the Mayak plant in the Urals due to the
absence of conditions for safe treatment of nuclear waste
in Russia.
Earlier in the year Sergei
Mitrokhin had handed a letter to representative of the German
Embassy in Moscow Mr. Kirsch York calling the German government
to revoke the decision on exporting nuclear waste to Russia.
The letter also had indicated that “the Russian authorities
can not guarantee safety during transportation of nuclear
waste along Russian territory, as well as its safe processing
and storage”.
In Germany different political parties, dozens of thousands
of citizens and about 160 public organisations protested against
transporting of nuclear waste to Russia. In Russia ecologists’
protests were supported by the YABLOKO party: YABLOKO’s activists
conducted a staged action by the German Embassy in Moscow
in August 2010 demanding not to let transportation of German
nuclear waste to the Chelyabinsk region.
“The territory around the Mayak plant in the Chelyabinsk
region is one of the most radiologically contaminated territories
in the world not only due to nuclear disasters (as the one
that happened in 1957), but also because of routine dumping
of nuclear waste into the Techa-Iset-Tobol basin. Consequently
nuclear reactions give birth to long-lived radionucleids,
and no safe methods of treating them have been developed yet,”
noted Alexei Yablokov, leader of YABLOKO’s Green Russia faction,
in his blog.
See also:
Against corruption
in the nuclear sector and turning Russia into a world’s nuclear
waste dump. Statement by the YABLOKO party. November 17, 2010
Radioactive waste
should not get into Russia. Statement by the YABLOKO party.
November 12, 2010
Nuclear
Safety
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