Russia after 10-year hiatus, resuming the import of radioactive uranium waste from Europe. As reported by Tageszeitung, in the period from 2019 to 2022 Russia will take 12 thousand tons of depleted uranium from Germany.
We are talking about the so-called “uranium tails” – that is, side-dressing products, which remain in the production of fuel for nuclear power plants, said GreenPeace. Russia is actively imported these materials in the 2000s, however, under pressure from the environmental activists shipments were stopped in 2009, when it became clear that are used to store rusty containers under the open sky.
The new contract with Russia signed the German “daughter” of the British Urenco Group. The transaction took place without publicity, and it became known after the members of the Bundestag sent a request to the Federal Ministry for the environment, writes the TAZ.
In may-September from the Westphalian Gronau JSC “Ural electrochemical combine” in Novouralsk of Sverdlovsk region sent six trains of 600 tons (50 containers), or about 3.6 tons of uranium “tails.”
The beginning of deliveries confirmed by the government of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, writes GreenPeace. In just four years it is planned to send about 20 trains.
Russia has already accumulated about a million tons of uranium “tails” that are not only radioactive, but also toxic. Plans for using such amount is not, and the practice contracts to 2009 shows that the secondary waste after enrichment remain in Russia, says GreenPeace.
“This cynical and immoral business. He needed Urenco to save billions of euros on the disposal of its uranium “tails”, sending them to Russia. Affects the readiness of Rosatom to earn the actual dumping of foreign waste, which is nonsense in any civilized country,” – said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of the group “eco-defense!”.
This organization acted as the coordinator of the campaign against the import of radioactive waste to Russia 2004-09 years, and in 2014 was declared a foreign agent.
Uranium hexafluoride is officially declared not nuclear waste but a valuable material, but even if he again enriched, at least 80% remains in Russia as waste at the end of the cycle, said a member of the Bundestag, Hubertus Zdebel.
“It is clear that significant amounts of nuclear waste can be disposed of cheaply in Russia,” he says.
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