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Nuclear Power Minister Alexander Rumyantsev showed up at a downtown
restaurant Sunday for a cup of tea, a slice of cake and a debate
with Yabloko head Grigory Yavlinsky on a controversial plan to
import spent nuclear fuel. Yavlinsky and Rumyantsev were guests
of the "Bender Show" on Ekho Moskvy radio, which is
broadcast live from a restaurant on Arbat and named after Ostap
Bender, the charming con-man hero of the classic 1920s novel "Twelve
Chairs." Cracking jokes and assisting in the writing of a
silly poem about nuclear waste, an unrelenting Rumyantsev maintained
that earning billions of dollars by importing spent nuclear fuel
was the only way for Russia to clean up areas contaminated by
nuclear tests and storage leaks.
The State Duma in April passed on second reading a bill that
would allow the import of about 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel
during the next 40 years, a plan its authors say would earn $20
billion. The Yabloko party is the loudest opponent of the bill.
Dressed casually, Yavlinsky and Rumyantsev jovially debated the
bill on a sunny afternoon in the middle of the street surrounded
by cameras and a crowd of about 50 onlookers. The debate lasted
a short 10 minutes and was dominated by journalists, who didn't
give Muscovites a chance to ask any questions. Ekho Moskvy journalists
presented the men with the results of an informal street poll
taken on Arbat hours earlier that showed 62 of the 67 pedestrians
surveyed had voted against the import of nuclear waste.
"But I am also against importing nuclear waste," Rumyantsev
said, playing with semantics. "Only, we're not planning to
import waste. We'll be importing spent nuclear fuel." "Of
course, we can call it spent nuclear fuel," Yavlinsky replied.
"But the countries that will be sending it to us call it
waste." Yavlinsky criticized the authors of the bill for
not taking into consideration the poor state of Russia's railroads
and nuclear plants, which would need to be used for transporting
and reprocessing the fuel. He called for the bill to be suspended
before it gets to the third reading and for a referendum to be
conducted on the issue. A date for the third hearing has not yet
been set.
National opinion polls show that 90 percent of Russians are against
the import of spent fuel. An earlier attempt by a group of environmental
organizations to call for a referendum failed when the Central
Elections Commission threw out just enough of the 2.6 million
signatures to invalidate the appeal. Yavlinsky also said that
the bill in its current form presents a fertile ground for corruption
and that the money earned by importing fuel would end up in politicians'
pockets rather than in programs for the cleanup of areas contaminated
with radiation, as the ministry envisions.
"Today's Russia is not ready for such an operation,"
he said. "Not with nonexistent systems of control, not with
our banking system, nor with our bureaucracy." Rumyantsev
agreed that the bill passed in the second reading does not guarantee
transparency or public control over the way the money earned by
imports would be spent. "But I am giving my word that I will
keep everything transparent," Rumyantsev said. After the
debate, Yavlinsky and Rumyantsev continued their conversation
in private at a coffee table on the restaurant's terrace. Outside,
volunteers dressed in T-shirts with radiation danger signs and
gas masks pretended to collect nuclear waste and a group dressed
in white jackets swept the street in a mock demonstration of how
Russia would have to clean up radiation if the bill is passed.
See also:
Nuclear
waste bill section of the web-site
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