OCCUPIED RUSSIA TO BE USED AS NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE
EUROPE - AMERICA - JAPAN TO PAY $20 BILLION TO OCCUPIED RUSSIA'S RULERS


Russian Workers Ready A Container of Nuclear Waste for Long-Term Storage


THE MONEY WILL NOT BE USED TO BENEFIT THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE
WEST JOINS RUSSIA'S DICTATORS IN MORE EXPLOITAITON OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE

RUSSIAN "RESISTANCE" BIDES ITS TIME

RussIa is the most radioactively contaminated country in the world: Its nuclear industry is in collapse and its current economic crisis is so severe that it can barely manage waste from its own nuclear reactors. Given these circumstances, it seems unlikely - not to mention ill-advised - that the Russia would want their country to become the world's nuclear waste dump. Occupied Russia's disctators don't care what the Russian people want as long as they can make money for their private offshore accounts. So Minatom, the Russian atomic ministry, is proposing just that- offering the bright, circular logic that revenue from such ventures would help solve the country's existsting nuclear crisis.

To cash in on a projected $150 billion market, Minatom wants to import thousands of tons of spent reactor fuel from Europe and Asia for both storage and reprocessing (i.e. the recovery of fissile plutonium from used fuel. A Minatom document leaked in January outlines negotiations with Swiss utilities to import 2,000 tons of spent Swiss nuclear fuel. Another memo indicates that Minatom has its eye on "final disposal" of 10,000 tons of spent fuel from Switzerland, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, and possibly Japan.' Spokesman Yuri Bespalko says Minatom expects to make up to $10 billion over the next seven years from these deals, revenue that will disappear into Nomenklatura bank accounts outside Russia by the 'normal" government to private bank acocunt transfers. Bespalko adds that funds will also be set aside for "upgrading the nuclear industr and solving the ecological problems.", menaing getting paid by the West with tribute for not closing Chernobyl type installations which pose a threat of disasters. Specifically, he mentions the task of cleaning up Lake Karachay in the Ural Mountains. (A person standing by the shore of Lake Karachay would receive a lethal dose of radiation in only half an hour, says Harvard nuclear expert Matthew Bunn.) Minator's proposal has drawn fire from environmental groups. 'Minatom has never spent its profits cleaning contaminated areas" says Vladimir Slivyak of the Russian Socio-Ecological Union. (In Russia Government agencies refer to revenues as [personal] profits). "It does not care about safety of the population or environmental protection. But it cares about money a lot.

Tobias Muenchmeyer of Greenpeace International pulls no punches, saying nuclear waste export to Russia "would be a criminal act of negligence by wealthy nations." Minatom calls the dire depictions of Russia!s nuclear industry overstated and emphasizes the use of reprocessed fuel in meeting the nations energy needs. Russia's Nomenklatura continues to refer to "The Greatest Daylight Robbery of the 20th Century" as over-stated. It is the only accomplishment they are modest about.

But Oleg Bukharin, Russian energy specialist at Princeton, cautions that reprocessing creates additional radloactve waste and that, done incorrectly, "it could be disastrous." Although importing spent fuel for storage is currently illegal in Russia, this has not stopped Minatom from exploring potential deals. If there is enough money in it, and there is, the law can always be changed to accomodate the money.

• In December 1998, Minatom chief Evgeny Adainov wrote Energy Secretary Bill Richardson proposing the "transfer ... of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants to Russia for its long-term storage and subsequent reprocessing." The Department of Energy refuses to comment on the Russian proposal, except to say that any plan that envisions reprocessing (illegal in the United States) would not be considered.
• And in July, Minatom and a U.S. nonprofit called the Non-Proliferation Trust, a group including an ex-CIA director and former Cold Warriors, and advised by the Natural Resources Defense Council, agreed to jointly pursue a 10,000-ton Russian waste-storage facility.

"There has been an effort to set up international storage facilities for a long time," says Princeton's Bukharin. "None of them has been successful." Critics maintain that Russia is simply the wrong place to start: "Minatom has no idea about what to do with Russia's waste let alone anyone else's ," says Slivyak.

One thing is certain based upon the occupying Nomenklatur'as record in Russia. They certainly know what to de with another $20 billion. Where it comes from and what is it for has been demonstrated to be irrelevant.

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