| The YABLOKO faction, conducting a campaign against the import
of spent nuclear fuel into Russia, found a radical way to resolve
this problem. YABLOKO proposed that President Vladimir Putin virtually
disband the Ministry of Nuclear Power, distributing its proxies
between the Energy Ministry, Defence Ministry and the Ministry
of Industry. However, this idea has no backers in the Presidential
Administration or Government.
The analytical note handed over by the leader of YABLOKO Grigory
Yavlinsky to President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in
the middle of July contained a sentence on the Ministry of Nuclear
Power. A top official source in the Presidential Administration
in a conversation with Vedomosti confirmed that such a meeting
took place. Yavlinsky submitted the documents with arguments against
nuclear waste imports into Russia. YABLOKO is the main critic
of the laws allowing nuclear waste imports into Russia (they were
adopted on the initiative of the Ministry of Nuclear Power last
year). YABLOKO states that Russia does not have the requisite
infrastructure to recycle and preserve nuclear waste. And the
costs of creating such an infrastructure, according to YABLOKO,
will exceed the profits from nuclear waste imports that have been
estimated by the Ministry of Nuclear Power at over USD 20 billion
within the next ten years.
Therefore YABLOKO's analytical note indicated that the ministry
pushing through such unprepared projects as nuclear waste imports
should be subject to serious reform.
According to the reform plan of the Ministry submitted by Yavlinsky,
it would transpire that the Ministry of Nuclear Power would disappear.
YABLOKO proposed a transfer of all the departments of the ministry
engaged in the nuclear fuel cycle to the Ministry of Industry
and Science, the nuclear defence complex to the Defence Ministry
and Rosenergoatom concern (it includes all the Russian nuclear
power stations) could, according to YABLOKO, be transferred to
the Energy Ministry. YABLOKO did not officially confirm or refute
this information for Vedomosti. However, deputy of the YABLOKO
faction, Sergei Mitrokhin, who is preoccupied by this problem,
said that in his opinion control over the nuclear fuel cycle and
all military programmes should be wrested from the control of
the Ministry of Nuclear Power.
"Due to the military programmes the Ministry of Atomic
Energy is an extremely closed department, and at the same time
is fully engaged in commercial activities in the most opaque and
non-market variants," noted Mitrokhin.
The Ministry of Nuclear Power refused to issue an official comment
on YABLOKO's idea. However, a source in the Ministry told Vedomosti
that the ministry would issue its written answer to deputy proposals
by 1 August 2002.
However, is unlikely that there are any threats for the Ministry
of Nuclear Power. Our interlocutor in the Presidential Administration
told Vedomosti that any grand-scale disbanding of the ministry
is out of the question. "We shall be more careful when determining
the managerial and economic functions of the ministry," he
noted. Similarly the Government was not enthusiastic about the
idea. In the Energy Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and
Science which had, according to YABLOKO, to get the proxies of
the Ministry of Nuclear Power, Vedomosti was also told that they
did not hear about such changes at all.
In the Ministry of Economy and Development, which participates
in such reforms, Vedomosti was also told that the government had
still not considered the proposals on restructuring the nuclear
power ministry. "There is no speech yet about any plans to
reform the Ministry of Nculear Power," Deputy Minister of
Economic Development Andrei Sharonov told Vedomosti.
See also:
YABLOKO
Against Nuclear Waste Imports
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