[main page][map of the server][news of the server][forums][guestbook][publications][hot issues]
Yevgenia Borisova, Staff Writer

Activists Win Reprieve in Nuclear Fight

Moscow Times, Friday, Mar. 23, 2001. Page 1

Opponents who have been fiercely protesting a plan to import 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to Russia won a reprieve Thursday when the State Duma decided to delay a vote on the bill until at least early April.

Duma deputies, who had overwhelmingly approved the bill in first reading in December, agreed that too many uncertainties remained about the proposal from the Nuclear Power Ministry and called for at least two weeks to review its feasibility.

About 200 demonstrators -- 100 from each camp -- had gathered outside the Duma building in freezing weather before the scheduled vote Thursday morning. Environmentalists stood beside the Duma, cajoling lawmakers as they arrived at work, while nuclear power workers protested across the street near the Moskva hotel.

The environmentalists' protests may have paid off. Hearings on the bill, which the Nuclear Power Ministry says would earn Russia $20 billion over 12 years, were tentatively postponed to April 4 or April 5.

The delay comes as a welcome respite to opponents, who had feared that it would be rushed through both second and third readings Thursday. The decision was "a good result," said Sergei Mitrokhin, a deputy with the Yabloko faction and one of the fiercest opponents of the project. "A better result, of course, would have been the ultimate rejection of the project," he added.

Even if the bill passes, the U.S. could block Russia from getting imports.

Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov kept a brave face.

"It is an absolutely correct decision. If questions appear, they must be discussed so that no doubts are left," he said.

While only 38 deputies voted against the bill in December, 339 deputies on Thursday demanded the postponement of the second hearing in lieu of more information about how revenues from the project would be spent.

They also asked for a report from government environmental experts about the project's risks, paperwork required by law for ecologically risky projects that had not been submitted with the proposed legislation.

"I think the Duma needs additional consultations," said Unity faction head Boris Gryzlov. "The issue hasn't been prepared for the hearing."

Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said that lawmakers will "weigh all the pros and cons and the bills may be returned to the first reading again. If needed, additional investigations must be made."

Communists and Agrarians -- who almost unanimously backed the bill in December -- will base their next vote "on the additional information that we receive from parliamentary hearings," said Agrarian faction chief Nikolai Kharitonov.

Other government officials blasted the delay. Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Alexei Mitrofanov said opponents of the legislation were "enemies of the people" because they "oppose making decisions that would bring Russia many billions of dollars."

Presidential representative Alexander Kotenkov said failure to pass the bill was "favorable for our rivals," hinting that opponents of the legislation were getting hefty financing from foreign countries that didn't want to lose their corner on the spent nuclear fuel market.

However even if the bill passes into law, the Nuclear Power Ministry will probably not be able to gain the 10 percent of the market that it is aiming for due to pressure from the United States, according to a letter from the U.S. State Department that was released by the Ecodefense environmental group Thursday.

The letter was written in response to a query from environmental organizations about the Nuclear Power Ministry's planned project. "Any transfer to Russia of power reactor spent fuel subject to U.S. consent rights could only take place if the United States were to conclude an agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation with the Russian Federation," reads the letter signed by Richard Stratford, director of the Office of Nuclear Energy Affairs.

No such cooperation will be signed until Russia stops cooperating with Iran in its nuclear programs, the letter said.

The letter effectively blocks the ministry's hopes of importing spent nuclear fuel from a number of countries with which it has already entered into negotiations including Taiwan, where fuel is provided from the United States, said Vladimir Kuznetsov, a former inspection head in Gosatomnadzor, the governmental nuclear safety watchdog.

Currently, about 90 percent of the world market of about 200,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is controlled by the United States, while another 6 percent is controlled by France and Britain, he said. Russia controls only 4 percent.

The Washington-based environmental group Nuclear Information and Resource Service said that the United States has the power to halt the movement of most of the world's spent fuel.

"The U.S. supplied much of the enriched uranium that powered the reactors in the first place, and it is nearly impossible for any nuclear country to differentiate between the enriched uranium supplied by the U.S. and that supplied by other nations," NIRS executive director Michael Mariotte wrote in an article posted on his organization's web site (www.nirs.org).

"This letter significantly adds to ecologists' argument that the Nuclear Power Ministry's projects are not properly thought out," added Vladimir Slivyak, co-head of Ecodefense.

A Nuclear Power Ministry source, who did not want to be named, would only say: "The project is not going to start tomorrow. In a few years things may change."

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court dealt environmentalists a bitter blow Thursday by ruining their hopes for a national referendum against the import of spent fuel. The court upheld a decision by the Central Elections Commission last year to throw out about 600 signatures out of the 2.5 million gathered across Russia to conduct the referendum, thus voiding the petition.

Environmentalists said they will lodge an appeal.

See also:

Nuclear waste bill section of the web-site

Moscow Times, Friday, Mar. 23, 2001. Page 1

[main page][map of the server][news of the server][forums][guestbook][publications][hot issues]

english@yabloko.ru