| Since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia,
the Kremlin has clashed frequently with a media company that exposed,
among other things, the government`s handling of the war in A
journalist was sent to prison for four years last year after filming
the Russian navy dumping radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan.
He, like many other Russians and environmental organisations,
opposed the new laws that allow the privately profitable import
of foreign nuclear waste. by our special correspondent Nathalie
Melis*
The deal offered by Minatom (Russia's nuclear energy ministry)
was that Russia was willing to accept 20m tonnes of foreign nuclear
waste in exchange for $20bn. Former minister Yevgeni Adamov worked
to lift the ban on storing and burying imported foreign nuclear
waste (the terms of the ban were previously set out in article
50 of Russia's environmental statutes). Countries seeking to unload
their nuclear waste - including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and
several east European nations - are now free to do so. In contrast
Switzerland is re-evaluating its 1998 protocol of intent with
Russia, and the German environment minister, Jurgen Trittin, announced
last June that his country would no longer support "an irresponsible
gamble with the health and safety of the Russian people"
(1).
On 18 July 2000 Minatom introduced three bills before the Duma,
the Russian federal parliament, seeking to amend existing legislation
to permit "imports of nuclear waste and materials, together
with irradiated fuels, for storage, burial or reprocessing"
(2). Significantly, one of the bills sought to establish a
special fund to clean up sites contaminated by 50 years of nuclear
experiments (see box). Minatom extolled the waste-import programme's
financial benefits: $3.5bn for the federal budget and $7bn for
clean-up operations. Some $9bn would be made available to the
atomic energy industry, which according to Adamov constitutes
"Russia's pride and joy". It would also seem to be a
guarantee of the country's financial independence.
According to a December 2000 Romir opinion poll, 94% of Russians
were opposed to lifting the waste-import ban. Nevertheless on
21 December 2000 the Duma approved the legislation's first reading
by a vote of 318 to 38
(3). After some hesitation the bill passed its
second reading on 18 April 2001. The final reading on 6 June 2001
saw a big drop in support, with only 243 deputies in favour and
125 against.
It fell to the Russian Council of the Federation (the upper
parliamentary
chamber), which represents the various Russian regions, to declare
its
intentions. Various governors and regional assemblies, who enjoy
closer ties to
the Russian people, expressed their opposition. Worried over his
political future,
the former Council speaker, Yegor Stroyev, postponed the vote
until 27 June
2001, thereby missing the constitutional deadline for the Council's
final decision.
In the end Russia's regional governors abstained, effectively
sidestepping the
issue.
Vladimir Putin had never come out publicly with his own opinion.
Before signing
the legislation on 11 July 2001, he had taken pains to meet with
various
hand-picked "representatives of society" while various
TV programmes sung
the praises of nuclear power. The president also set up a commission
to
approve the nuclear imports on an individual basis and appointed
as its head
Jaures Alferov, the 2000 Nobel laureate in physics and a supporter
of the
waste-import programme. According to Minatom, if everything proceeds
smoothly, the programme should be operational in three years'
time.
The environmentalists' quick reaction was spurred by the Kremlin's
decision to
undercut the efforts of those it deemed "anti-pollution spoilsports".
In June 2000
a presidential decree placed the Committee on the Environment
and the Federal
Forest Service, both vestiges of the former ministry for the protection
of natural
resources, within the new natural resources ministry.
The government's anti-environmental offensive had begun several
months
earlier. On 20 February 2000 environmental organisations were
raided in three
different cities. Investigators searched the St Petersburg offices
of Zelyoni Mir
(Green World) and seized documents relating to the nuclear industry.
The
following month the police raided Greenpeace's Moscow offices
with orders -
which were not authorised by any Russian court of law - to seal
the premises
on the grounds of tax fraud.
The Russian federal security service (FSB), the KGB's successor,
has also harassed anti-nuclear activists. In December 1999, as
part of its investigation into "terrorist" activity,
the FSB interrogated and threatened Alissa Nikoulina, co-ordinator
of the anti-nuclear campaign undertaken by Ecodefense and the
Russian Socio-Ecological Union (Soez). Three months previously
Vladimir Slivyak, one of the anti-nuclear campaign's leaders,
had been forced into a car and interrogated. A military journalist,
Grigory Pasko, was convicted following his first trial for espionage
and treason in 1999, then granted an amnesty
(4); he received a new four-year sentence last
December. Nuclear disarmament expert Igor Sutiagin has spent more
than two years in prison for "treason".
The public relations war between the Kremlin and the environmentalists
began
to heat up in June 2000. "There will be no clean-up of the
contaminated zones,
no reprocessing and no financial benefits for the people",
shouted the
environmentalists at various demonstrations. "The contaminated
regions the
ministry has referred to represent one of Russia's most pressing
ecological
problems, and at least $200bn will be required to fix the damages",
explains
Aleksei Yablokov, former environmental advisor to President Boris
Yeltsin and
currently co-ordinator of Soez's anti-nuclear campaign. But the
waste-import
legislation failed to specify the terms and conditions for financing
clean-ups and
other operations.
The environmentalists point out that there is currently only
one reprocessing site, the Mayak complex in the Urals. Yet Mayak
can only process 200 tonnes of waste a year, while 14,000 tonnes
remain stockpiled at insecure locations, "stored underground
without authorisation", according to Ms Nikoulina. New sites
will have to be built to accommodate the foreign shipments, and
the weekly Novaia Gazeta warns that "the waste will be 'forgotten'
and no one will ever come to remove it"
(5). Ecologists and journalists alike have concerns
with respect to reprocessing, despite Minatom's assertions that
spent fuel is not a waste product, but rather a raw material that
is reusable and resalable (6).
A reputation for secrecy
Minatom has a reputation for secrecy. Adamov, its former head,
was sacked
following accusations in the Duma of corruption; his successor,
Alexander
Rumyantsev, is also an avid proponent of nuclear waste imports.
Before
heading Minatom, he ran the Kurtchatov Institute, a nuclear research
facility
that caused a scandal last April when it was revealed that 2,000
tonnes of
nuclear waste were being stored at the institute's headquarters
in the heart of
Moscow. This came as no surprise since the minister - who has
close ties to the
MDM Group, the powerful financial conglomerate, and who is currently
under
attack by the Alfa Group, which has been on the upswing ever since
Putin's rise
to power - allegedly plans to skim off a portion of the proceeds
from waste
reprocessing. Rumyantsev hopes to use the remaining funds as intended
to build
30 additional nuclear power plants, together with the world's
first floating
nuclear plant.
A portion of the proceeds may be used to develop "new generation"
nuclear weapons, aimed at making "limited" nuclear wars
possible. "In ten years' time", writes the weekly Moskovskie
Novosti (7),
"during some antiterrorist operation, one tiny bomb will
explode. This will neutralise the terrorists in one fell swoop,
together with their goats, cows, vegetables and anything else
they might own". Russia's most recent military doctrine,
approved by Putin on 10 January 2000, confirms this possibility
and provides for the use of nuclear weapons "if all other
means to resolve the situation have been employed or have proved
ineffective".
According to Slivyak, Minatom is aware that the import programme
is
inherently unmanageable: "Minatom has a hard enough time
dealing with its
current problems. But given the economic crisis, the scales were
tipped by the
nuclear community's desire to save Russia's reactors and by the
banks lurking
greedily behind Minatom. The waste will simply be buried, while
some of the
proceeds will be used to shore up Russia's nuclear industry; a
portion will end
up in the pockets of the ministry's bureaucrats and the bankers".
On 23 January 2001 Ecodefense released a report on the dangers
of
transporting nuclear materials. It raised the following concerns:
the
waste-import legislation does not meet international standards;
Russia uses
outmoded shipping containers; its regional and federal statutes
are at variance;
the rules governing the granting of transportation licences are
ludicrous;
personnel-related competence and safety are in doubt; 40% of Russia's
railway
infrastructure is defective, etc.
These conclusions shed light on the status of Russia's nuclear
industry. Even though the country's scientific community shows
great promise, its nuclear industry continues to evolve under
unstable conditions; corruption, irresponsibility and chronic
shortages of funds have held sway for decades. According to the
United States State Department, the world's seven most dangerous
nuclear sites are located within the borders of the former Soviet
Union (8).
In June 2000 the environmentalists officially applied to hold
a Russia-wide
referendum on two issues: importing nuclear waste and establishing
governmental agencies to ensure effective environmental protection.
Over a
four-month period the environmentalists worked to collect 2m signatures
as
required by Russia's constitution. On 25 October 2000 a petition
with 2.5m
signatures was presented to the central elections commission,
which invalidated
800,000 signatures for spurious reasons a month later. The Greens'
referendum
application was rejected by the constitutional court in March
2001.
Winning the PR battle
The environmentalists won a significant public relations battle
stemming from
their anti-nuclear camp held in the Ural region, near the city
of Chelyabinsk and
the Mayak reprocessing centre. From 23 July to 5 August 2000,
some 60
representatives from organisations representing 10 Russian cities,
and countries
such as Austria and Slovakia, pitched tents in one Mayak's most
polluted
districts - although it is not officially recognised as such.
Soez, Ecodefense and
two local groups sought to focus attention on public health standards
in the
contaminated zone; they also protested nuclear imports and waste
storage at
the Mayak site and condemned plans to build a brand-new nuclear
plant in the
southern Urals.
While scientists from western Siberia's University of Novossibirsk
checked
radioactivity levels, the environmentalists staged demonstrations
throughout
Chelyabinsk. On 3 August 2000 some 30 protestors blocked the entrance
to the
residence of the regional governor, Petr Sumin, who agreed to
meet with the
protestors. On 8 August vice-governor Andrey Kosilov announced
that he
would not allow the storage of foreign nuclear waste at Mayak
and would
oppose waste imports unless Russia's 2001 federal budget included
provisions
for the social rehabilitation of the region's inhabitants.
Tensions were exacerbated that December when federal deputies
voted in
favour of the waste-import project. On 15 January 2001 initiatives
were
organised in a dozen cities across Russia: in Tomsk "radioactive"
dollars were
distributed and local residents were coached on lobbying their
political
representatives; in Irkutsk signatures were gathered for a petition
to be
presented to the regional parliament; in Saratov the Ecological
Theatre put on
street performances; in Nijni-Novgorod activists from the Dront
ecological
centre distributed postcards addressed to the federal deputies.
The actions were
all successful: thousands of postcards were mailed out and, several
days later,
the governor who was seeking re-election, came out against waste
imports.
There were few street protests, either because people were fearful
of the
police or questioned their own ability to influence events; nevertheless
the public
registered its disapproval via opinion polls, TV programmes and
letter-writing
campaigns. As a result, by March 2001 almost a third of Russia's
regional
parliaments had voted against the waste-import programme.
The larger ecological organisations also staged various international
initiatives.
The public-relations war shifted to Taiwan and Japan, where local
media
contended that exports of nuclear waste to Russia were lawful.
Soez flooded
Russian parliamentarians with faxes, with help from environmental
organisations based in Kazakhstan (whose parliament is also considering
the
legalisation of waste imports), Greece, the United Kingdom and
Kyrgyzstan.
In the Duma, some members of Grigory Yavlinsky's liberal party
Yabloko
and the SPS (Union of Rightist Forces) opposed the project and
sought to
reduce the scope of the legislation. One of their proposed amendments
would
have required the Duma to approve the waste-import contracts on
an individual
basis. Another would have required reprocessed materials to be
sent back to
the various countries of origin. Both amendments were defeated.
Two hundred people gathered in Moscow in front of the Duma on
15 February
2001 for a demonstration organised by Soez, Ecodefense and the
Yabloko
party. Aman Tuleyev, the popular governor of western Siberia's
Kemerovo
region, expressed his outrage at the waste-import programme. Last
March
President Putin received a letter signed by 600 citizens groups
from all over
Russia. On 22 March Greenpeace got into the act: two young women
clad in
white robes distracted the guards stationed at the building entrance
while two
activists scaled the walls and hung a huge banner from the windows
of the
Duma. The next day editorials expressed alarm at the ineffectiveness
of the
security services responsible for guarding the people's representatives.
Then last 18 April members of the Khraniteli Radugi environmental
association handcuffed themselves to the doors of the Duma
(9). The following month, just before the legislation
received its third and final reading, the tide of demonstrations
showed no sign of abating. Some 200,000 signatures were collected
in the Irkutsk region; residents mobilised in the port city of
Novorossisk, where local authorities had given Minatom their approval
in principle to nuclear waste shipments. Last June nine members
of the Russian Academy of Sciences wrote an open letter to President
Putin expressing their opposition to the programme.
'People don't die from radiation'
The nuclear energy minister, speaking on television in March
2001, offered this
rebuttal to the environmentalists: "People don't die from
radiation. But they
sometimes hang themselves after listening to your speeches. It's
a medical fact:
among Chernobyl's dead, there were many suicides". At the
plenary session of
the Russian Environmental Congress, created by the Kremlin to
oppose the
proposed referendum campaign, journalists were told: "The
ignorant masses
should have no say in the matter".
Russians looked on in alarm last October as a convoy arrived
from Bulgaria including 41 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, bound
for the Krasnoyarsk storage site (in eastern Siberia) and eventual
reprocessing. The contract governing the shipment was not drawn
up by scientific experts as required by law (10),
and a fresh scandal erupted: even though the firm named by the
Bulgarian nuclear plant to act as middleman went out of business
in March 2001, it was still listed as the financial intermediary.
This offshore company, Energy Invest and Trade, was closely linked
to the notorious Alfa Group, whose bankers took over the management
of Minatom's accounts - and thus the Bulgarian contract - last
year.
Several hours before the nuclear convoy passed by, 15 cars from
another train
derailed, damaging 350m of track. "The lives of thousands
of people living along
the trans-Siberian railway will be threatened by 670 of these
convoys if the
20,000 tonnes of waste are transported to Siberia", Slivyak
estimates. Three
regional referendums on these questions are being organised. Will
the Russian
people's right to state their position on such critical decisions
be denied once
again? Ms Mikoulina thinks democracy itself is at stake.
The Russian people are under no illusions. According to a June
2001 Romir
opinion poll, one third of Muscovites believed that the Duma's
decision primarily
served the interests of the foreign owners of the nuclear waste;
19.6% thought
that the decision reflected the wishes of Minatom and 17.8%, the
Russian
government. A mere 4% of Muscovites viewed the decision as serving
the
interests of the Russian people.
* Brussels-based
journalist
(1)
The Guardian, London, 12 July 2001.
(2)
A 1995 presidential order sought to legalise imports but was successfully
appealed by Greenpeace before the constitutional court.
(3) The
Duma vote concerned proposed amendments to article 50 of the environmental
statutes.
(4)
The charges against Pasko stemmed from his providing Japanese
media outlets with footage of the Russian navy dumping radioactive
and chemical waste in the Sea of Japan.
(5) Novaia
Gazeta, Moscow, 8-15 October 2000.
(6)
In its reprocessed form, irradiated fuel contains more plutonium
than uranium. Plutonium, which is reusable for civilian or military
purposes, is much more toxic than uranium.
(7)
This Moskovskie Novosti quotation (Moscow, 26 December 2000-2
January 2001) alludes to a 1999 Russian Security Council order
calling for rapid development of new-generation controlled-power
weapons buried deep in the ground for use in local and limited
nuclear wars.
(8)
See Rene Sepul, "Recrudescence des accidents au niveau international",
Avancees, Brussels, May 2000.
(9)
The members of the Khraniteli Radugi are known as the Rainbow
Keepers.
(10)
This contract was signed in June 2000 and was not affected by
the subsequent amendments. Nevertheless the earlier legislation
permitted imports for reprocessing, with two caveats: nuclear
materials were to be shipped back to their country of origin and
each contract was subject to expert evaluation.
Translated by Luke Sandford
See also:
Yabloko Against
Nuclear Waste Imports
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