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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
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