By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Anti-nuclear campaigners in Russia are locked in battle with state authorities over plans by the Atomic Energy Ministry to start a lucrative business reprocessing domestic and imported nuclear waste.
If the ministry is able to push through a scheme to finish building a huge waste treatment plant near the city of Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia, and to force other state bodies to grant permission for waste imports, the income for the nuclear industry could amount eventually to as much as US$300 million a year.
The consequences for the environment of Siberia and the Arctic Ocean could be disastrous. The semi-completed plant is only a few kilometres from the Yenisey, Siberia's mightiest river, which already carries a heavy load of radioactive contaminants.
Supporters of the reprocessing scheme are unable to show that liquid wastes will not finish up in the river and, eventually, in the Kara Sea.
The Atomic Energy Ministry reportedly views the reprocessing plant, referred to by the code name RT-2, as a project of key importance. The profit it would generate is seen as vital for the hard-pressed nuclear sector. Already, the plant's supporters have persuaded the local legislature in the Krasnoyarsk District not to allow the holding of a referendum aimed at blocking the scheme.
Since the 1950s, Krasnoyarsk has been a major centre of the Soviet and now Russian nuclear weapons industry. The fissile material for many of the country's nuclear armaments was prepared in a phantasmagoric 3500-room complex situated 250 metres underground near the secret city of Krasnoyarsk-26 (now Zheleznogorsk), about 50 kilometres north of Krasnoyarsk.
Euphemistically termed the Mining and Chemical Combine, the complex has three plutonium-producing reactors, one of them still operating, and a radiochemical facility where plutonium for weapons production is separated from spent nuclear fuel.
The two reactors that have now been shut down were cooled directly by water that was pumped from the Yenisey and then discharged back into the river. This practice is believed to have been among the main causes of elevated radiation levels that are now found in the Yenisey for some 500 kilometres downstream.
As a legacy of its nuclear weapons industry, the Krasnoyarsk district is the site of some of the largest radioactive waste storage facilities in the world. Liquid waste is either discharged into reservoirs or injected into deep wells at the Severnyy Repository, 20 kilometres north of Zheleznogorsk.
While holes have been drilled in hopes of detecting any spread of the wastes, environmentalists regard these precautions as inadequate. Very few geological surveys have been made in the north-eastern part of the repository, critics point out, arguing that wastes could still reach the Yenisey.
The RT-2 plant was conceived in 1977 as a facility that would extract uranium-235 and plutonium on a massive scale from the spent fuel of civilian reactors, recycling these materials to meet future energy needs. Completion of the plant would lock Russia more tightly into reliance on the nuclear industry, since the possession of large reserves of reactor fuel would serve as an argument for using or exporting it.
Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel does not result in gains for the environment, only losses. As Greenpeace Russia anti-nuclear spokesperson Oganes Targulyan points out, reprocessing nuclear waste is much dirtier and more dangerous than simply storing it. In the extracting of potential reactor fuel, large new volumes of difficult-to-handle wastes are created.
Construction of the RT-2 plant began in 1985 and was suspended in 1989 because of funding shortages and strong local opposition. At that point, the construction work was 30-40% complete. Estimates of the cost of finishing the plant begin at US$2 billion, a sum which is now far beyond the means of Russia's run-down nuclear industry.
To overcome the cash shortage, the management of the Mining and Chemical Combine plans to form an international company with nuclear industry firms from countries such as South Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan, as well as a number of European countries. This company will secure finance for completing the RT-2 plant and will pay back the loans by reprocessing wastes from outside Russia.
When the combine managers and the Atomic Energy Ministry mapped out this plan, they were not put off by the fact that under Russia's Law on the Protection of the Environment, importing radioactive waste is basically prohibited.
Representations were made to President Boris Yeltsin, who, in January 1995, signed a decree pledging state support for the "reconstruction and conversion" of the Zheleznogorsk nuclear complex. Yeltsin's decree designedly left open the possibility of importing spent nuclear fuel for "temporary" storage and reprocessing.
Anti-nuclear activists brought a Supreme Court suit, and in April 1996 the contentious sections of the decree were ruled unlawful. As clarified by this ruling, the current situation is that imports of spent nuclear fuel are permitted only under special inter-government agreements, which need to be ratified by parliament, and following a federal ecological study.
But the nuclear lobby has not been deterred. The RT-2 scheme still has many backers in high places. According to Greenpeace, the fuel and energy provisions of Russia's 1997 state budget allot funds of 100 billion roubles (about US$17 million) for continued work on the facility.
If the reprocessing scheme is to be laid to rest, its opponents will need all the legal strength they can muster. Realising this, they have been working to force the regional authorities in the Krasnoyarsk district to hold a referendum on the issue.
The potential of this tactic was shown last December in Kostroma province, north-east of Moscow. In a legally binding poll, 87% of voters in the province rejected plans for a nuclear power plant.
Under the electoral legislation in the Krasnoyarsk district, a referendum must be held if supporters gather the valid signatures of 50,000 residents in the space of three months. With help from Greenpeace Russia volunteers, local activists gathered 130,000 signatures between December and March. Of these signatures, 86,000 were accepted as valid by the local electoral commission.
The district's Legislative Assembly then had a month to set the date for the poll.
But on April 18, the assembly voted by 22 to two against holding the referendum, arguing that the question of whether to build the RT-2 facility was purely a federal matter.
Seeking to overturn this position, anti-nuclear activists brought a suit in a local court, but were rebuffed. Now, a complaint on the legal validity of the assembly's decision is awaiting hearing in the Supreme Court in Moscow.
The legislature's refusal to hold the referendum is especially striking since the deputies are up for election in October, and could expect to boost their chances by taking a clear stand against the reprocessing plant.
In the view of Targulyan, the vote in the assembly reflects the power in Krasnoyarsk of the nuclear establishment, which makes up an important element in the local political and economic elites.
Among ordinary citizens, there is little reason to think that the nuclear industry is more popular in Krasnoyarsk than in Kostroma. During the petitioning drive last winter, nuclear industry officials vilified the campaigners, at times accusing them of being US agents. But the response to the petition by the general public was sympathetic.
Targulyan estimates that one in three families in Krasnoyarsk contributed a signature. This suggests that if the struggle to force a referendum is lost, anti-nuclear campaigners will have an excellent base for continuing their fight through the methods of popular mobilisation.