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Greenpeace activists protesting against the importing of spent
nuclear fuel outside the Nuclear Power Ministry in November.
In broad daylight, a State Duma deputy, two Greenpeace activists
and three NTV cameramen sneaked into a supposedly high-security
industrial complex in western Siberia and spent several hours
near storage facilities containing 3,000 tons of spent nuclear
fuel. The six men took dozens of photographs, shot a video and
returned to Moscow undisturbed.
"We entered through two-by-two-meter holes in the barbed
wire and walked on well-trampled paths, probably made by local
citizens," Sergei Mitrokhin, a liberal lawmaker in the Duma's
Yabloko faction, said of his break-in at the Krasnoyarsk Mining
and Chemical Plant, which was shown in a special report by NTV
broadcast Thursday night. "The guards drove past us several
times, and we passed by their sentry boxes, but we pretended to
be locals and nobody stopped us."
In November, the Krasnoyarsk plant received 41 tons of spent
nuclear fuel from the Kozlodui plant in Bulgaria under a controversial
new law allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing
and storage.
Advocates of the law, which was signed by President Vladimir
Putin in July, argue that Russia could earn $20 billion over the
next decade by importing some 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.
However, environmentalists have fought the law, saying that turning
Russia into the world's leading nuclear recycling facility would
cause far greater ecological damage than the billions earned could
repair. When the first consignment of spent nuclear fuel arrived
in Russia from Bulgaria in November, Greenpeace activists demonstrated
outside the Nuclear Power Ministry in gas masks and chemical protection
suits.
At a news conference in Moscow on Friday, Mitrokhin said that
his break-in at the Krasnoyarsk plant was designed to show that
Russia is not ready to import radioactive material. The country's
system of nuclear safety is not just poor but "nonexistent,"
he said.
Mitrokhin, a member of the presidential commission on controlling
imports of spent nuclear fuel, said that during a hearing on ecological
safety in the Duma on Feb. 7, the Nuclear Power Ministry assured
deputies that there were no security problems at its facilities.
But Mitrokhin said Friday that he could have easily climbed
onto the roof of the Krasnoyarsk plant's storage building and
got inside it.
"I was shaken to see it," he said. "Anybody can
come to a depository with extremely dangerous materials and do
whatever he wishes near them. And the Nuclear Power Ministry plans
to bring 20,000 tons of nuclear supplies from abroad here and
leave it adrift."
According to Mitrokhin, safety measures at most of Russia's
96 nuclear plants and research centers are not covered by the
federal budget at all. As a member of the international coalition
fighting terrorism, Russia must be more responsible for the safety
of its nuclear facilities, Mitrokhin said, otherwise it will become
"the weakest link of the coalition and a potential target
for terrorists."
Vladimir Chuprov, a Greenpeace nuclear expert, shared his fears.
"Several dozen kilograms of regular explosives would be enough
to trigger a new Chernobyl there," he said Friday.
Chuprov said the plant's storage facilities contain 1 billion
curies of radioactive waste. The radioactive discharge from Chernobyl
was about 50 million curies, he said.
However, the management of the Krasnoyarsk plant insisted last
week that security at its storage and transportation facilities
remained unbreakable.
"We employ several hundred guards, and one regiment of Interior
Ministry troops is delegated to guard us," Vasily Zhidkov,
the head of the plant, said in the NTV report. It was unclear
whether Zhidkov was aware of Mitrokhin's break-in at the time.
Zhidkov could be reached for comment about Mitrokhin's claims
Friday.
Mitrokhin said that he would send a video about the break-in
to Putin. In addition, Greenpeace said it has sent letters about
the security breaches at the plant to the Federal Security Service
and to the Prosecutor General's Office.
See also:
the original at
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Nuclear Waste
Bill
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