| ZHELEZNOGORSK, Russia, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The
streets of this Siberian city
are eerily clean and uniform, free of the buzz of commerce and
jumble of
billboards found even in the smallest and poorest of Russian provincial
cities.
The few visitors who pass into the city through the kilometres
(miles) of
pine forest and the rings of barbed wire are met instead by a
banner reading
"Honour and homeland above all."
It is not easy to get into Zheleznogorsk, one of Russia's nine
'closed
cities', a well-preserved bastion of the Soviet defence complex
where
satellites are built and the plutonium stuffing of nuclear warheads
was
produced.
With the country scrapping, not building, nuclear weapons and
Russian space
programmes chronically under-funded, the big business in this
city is the
burial of spent nuclear fuel from Russian reactors and former
Soviet
satellite states of Eastern Europe.
"You think the city sighs with joy when the country sends
up a new
satellite?" asked one Zheleznogorsk resident. "No, only
when a train arrives
with spent nuclear fuel. That means salaries will probably be
paid for the
next six months."
Zheleznogorsk's hopes for prosperity rest on a storage facility
that holds
6,000 tonnes of spent fuel from Russian and foreign nuclear power
plants.
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry has said the storage facility
earns $50 from
each kg (2.2 lb) of Russian spent fuel, $200 from that sent from
former
members of the Soviet bloc, and hopes to earn $1,000 from the
unwanted fuel
of developed countries.
HOLES IN THE FENCE
At the nuclear cemetery, 3,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel already
lie
cooling in containers under several metres of clear water. Many
residents of
Zheleznogorsk would happily take more.
Some worry that with the pools more than half full, space is running
out.
As it is, there is often not enough is the state coffers to pay
the
scientists, most of whom say they survive on the produce from
their vegetable
gardens.
"I know of some holes in the fence (surrounding Zheleznogorsk),"
a local
journalist said. "People with cottages make them to get to
their vegetable
patches quicker."
A local engineer said the city had tried plans to convert military
plants to
civilian use but they had not worked out.
"This is how we live -- we look forward to each trainload
of somebody else's
crap," said the engineer, who like other sources declined
to be identified.
NUCLEAR COMPETITION
For more trains carrying spent fuel to roll into Zheleznogorsk,
Moscow needs
to cut a deal with the United States, which has made Russia's
nuclear
ambitions a bone of contention.
Washington says Russia's contract to build civilian nuclear reactors
in Iran
could end up helping Tehran acquire nuclear weapons and that without
proper
security Russia's own nuclear materials could end up in a 'dirty
bomb.'
Washington has the power to influence Russia's access to 90 percent
of the
world's spent fuel, according to the Natural Resources Defence
Council, a
U.S. nongovernmental organisation.
"Russia has two options: One, act alone and lose the market,
or two, enter
into a cooperative agreement with the United States," Tom
Cochran, director
of the NRDC's Nuclear Programme, said in Moscow.
Residents, however, say they see a 'great game' unfolding between
the United
States and Russia for an international market in spent nuclear
fuel.
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry has plans to build a new facility
to hold
20,000 tonnes of nuclear waste in Zheleznogorsk, nearly an eighth
of the
world's total.
President Vladimir Putin last year signed a law allowing the
import of
foreign spent fuel into Russia despite opinion polls that showed
a vast
majority of Russians opposed it.
The government, however, has yet to sign a series of decrees
needed to bring
fuel in from further abroad than former Soviet satellites such
as Bulgaria.
Soviet era reprocessing agreements with those countries are still
in effect,
allowing them to ship fuel to Russia.
'LIFE IS GOOD THERE'
Russia's environmentalists have rallied to oppose nuclear waste
imports. A
national environmental group, Ekozashchita, set up a tent camp
on the road to
the Krasnoyarsk nuclear camp earlier this year to protest against
spent fuel
import plans.
But in Zheleznogorsk itself, even the local environmental newspaper,
Citizen
Initiative, writes about spent fuel in economic terms.
"In our rich region, it is a crime to live in poverty. We
should put the
situation to rights as far as payment for spent fuel storage is
concerned and
get full payment, not the crumbs that the Atomic Energy Ministry
throws us,"
Citizen Initiative wrote recently.
Its pages are also full of obituaries.
"People don't live so long there," said a Krasnoyarsk
taxi driver. "What's
worse, radiation can wreck a man below the belt."
"But life in the closed cities is good. The bus is free,
and they get free
coupons to the cafeterias. Everything is good, like it was before."
See also:
YABLOKO Against
Nulcear Waste Imports | 