#15
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
http://www.thebulletin.org/
September/October 2002
Minatom: The Grab for Trash
By Paul Webster (webster@co.ru)
Paul Webster, a journalist who has reported on nuclear issues in Canada, France, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, is currently based in Moscow.

Of all of Siberia's far-flung nuclear cities, Krasnoyarsk-a gritty industrial hub 1,500 miles east of Moscow-holds pride of pride of place as Russia's preeminent nuclear town. Surrounded by a maze of uranium mines, a massive under-ground plutonium plant, the country's largest spent-fuel storage facility, a large uranium enrichment plant, and two spent fuel-reprocessing plants, Krasnoyarsk is nuclear to its core.

Stalin chose this remote city as a nuclear center in 1950. Ever since, its fate has been inextricably tied to the labyrinthian Moscow office block near the Kremlin that was home to the Soviet, now Russian, Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom). Two years ago, when Minatom officials put Krasnoyarsk at the center of a bold, $20 billion plan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel imported from around the world, few in the city were surprised-and, after years of starvation wages at nuclear plants impoverished after the Soviet collapse, most were relieved.

When a petition signed by millions that called for a referendum on Minatom's plan to import and reprocess spent fuel was rejected by the courts early last year, people in Krasnoyarsk started believing that the local nuclear plants might really be on the verge of a major comeback. Once the plan was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin last July, Minatom moved quickly, pursuing contracts to import spent fuel from across the former Soviet Union and opening talks with Britain and Finland.

According to Minatom, these early contracts are merely the prelude to the big prize-contracts to take in the 33,000 metric tons of U.S.-origin spent fuel piled up in Brazil, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, Mexico, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the European Union. This spent fuel, which the United States originally pledged to take back, is still governed by a 1954 U.S. nonproliferation law. But taking back all this waste is no longer politically feasible in the United States.

Having conquered Moscow, Min-atom is now marching on Washing-ton. And opinions at the State and Energy Departments suggest that its overtures are not unwelcome, despite objections centering on the lack of a "peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement" between the United States and Russia.

"We are in favor of trying to see if the conditions can be met," Alex Burkart, deputy director of the State Department's Office of Nuclear Energy Affairs, says about the possibility of sending U.S.-origin spent fuel to Russia. "There are no naysayers here."

U.S. nuclear programs in Russia are already spending millions of dollars on research in preparation for what could be the only politically acceptable solution to America's international nuclear waste problem. "The notion is taken seriously," Burkart says. "Generally, it's a good idea."

As the word has spread, however, that the United States controls more than 85 percent of the world's spent fuel, and therefore the terms of Min-atom's spent fuel plan will be dictated not in Moscow, but in Washington, views have shifted in Krasnoyarsk. In a remarkable twist that reveals as much about the persistence of the Cold War mentality in Russia's nuclear heartland as it does about environmental logic, Krasnoyarsk has become the rallying point for opposition across Russia to Minatom's grand grab for dominance in the global spent fuel market.

"Lots of people in Krasnoyarsk have supported importing spent fuel if it makes money," explains Vladimir Sliyvak, a leading national critic of Minatom's spent fuel plan. "But as it becomes better known that Minatom needs the U.S.-owned material to really make money, things are changing. Because when you ask the people who support Minatom' plan whether they'd accept American nuclear imports, they utterly reject it. After helping build the Soviet nuclear shield through the Cold War, people in Krasnoyarsk can't accept that."

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