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Secrets of Europe’s nuclear waste trade

How French solves nuclear waste , Jagadee’s English Webblog  January 20, 2010  St. Petersburg, Russian Federation “.……….“The European nuclear power industry can’t deal with its waste mountain so it started dumping some of it in Russia. This is illegal and highly dangerous,” said Vladimir Tchouprov of Greenpeace Russia. “The secretive nuclear industry is claiming that this is legitimate nuclear trade – but the reality is that only a small fraction, 10%, of this nuclear material is processed and sent back to Western Europe – almost all of the waste has been dumped in Russia.

In total, Greenpeace has collected evidence that over 100,000 tonnes of nuclear waste has been shipped to Russia during the last ten years. (2) Last week, industry officials confirmed Greenpeace’s calculations that some 90% of the waste remains in Russia. (3) In addition to uranium waste from enrichment, contaminated and highly radiotoxic uranium produced during reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel has also been shipped to dumping sites in Russia.

After arrival in St Petersburg the uranium waste is due to be transported by rail for over 3,000 kilometers to nuclear sites in Siberia.

Some of Europe’s largest energy companies – EDF, EoN and Vatenfall – are guilty of nuclear waste dumping on a truly mammoth scale. This nuclear waste dumping trade exposes the industry’s cheap attempt to portrait itself as a producer of clean and climate friendly electricity. The reality is that nuclear power is dirty and expensive; it produces vast quantities of nuclear waste for which there is no safe solution. This is another illustration of the deep waste crisis the nuclear industry is facing globally and the ordinary citizen is left with the tax bill to pay for waste disposal,” concluded Tchouprov.

The dumping of all sorts of radioactive wastes in Russia, including highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, is being promoted by both the Russian government and the IAEA. Greenpeace is opposed to all radioactive waste dumping in Russian and has written to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director-General, Mohamed ElBaradei, asking him to end the agency’s promotion of a Russian multilateral waste dump

How French solves nuclear waste « Jagadees’s English Weblog

January 21, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive