|
Russian State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament, held
first reading of a bill regarding amendment of the Law on Environmental
Protection to allow spent fuel imports to Russia on September
24. The Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy, or Minatom, failed
to persuade Russian Cabinet members to approve amendments and
forward them to the State Duma for consideration in late August.
The Duma took the issue up on its own without waiting for the
Cabinet.
Minatom's lobbyists are working hard on separating the issues
of spent fuel and radioactive waste in the bill amending the Law
on Environmental Protection of the Russian Federation. The current
version of the law says that any import of radioactive materials
is prohibited. Once 'spent fuel' and 'radioactive waste' are separate
issues, fuel will be considered a resource eligible for import.
The amendments have reportedly received support among all the
Duma factions, but Yabloko, a reformers' minority in the parliament.
Tamara Zlotnikova, head of the Duma Environmental Committee and
member of Yabloko, said her faction would oppose the amendment
bill at all levels.
But the situation has changed in favour of those supporting spent
fuel imports. The Russian Federal Environmental Committee, former
Ministry of Environment, stated publicly its support for the amendments.
The head of the Committee, Victor Danilov-Danilian, said last
week his agency would support the fuel imports because the money
earned could be used for improving the overall radwaste management
in Russia. Minatom has heavily applied the same dubious argumentation
in attempt to push forward the amendment bill. The Federal Environmental
Committee turned down the drafted bill on several occasions before.
The idea to accept foreign spent fuel for reprocessing was an
old dream of Minatom that was buried some 5-6 years ago when the
construction of a new reprocessing plant, RT-2, in Krasnoyarsk
County, Western Siberia, was put on hold due to the lack of funding.
The idea to import spent fuel was recently revived by the U.S.
based Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT) that suggested storage of
10,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel in Russia. Minatom enlarged this
idea by suggesting to import unlimited amounts of spent fuel and
proposing reprocessing services as well.
See also:
Nuclear Waste
Bill
www.bellona.no
| 