Radioactive waste train still in St. Petersburg – protesters threatened at gunpoint
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Import of nuclear fuel to Russia
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Bellona-St Petersburg
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Russian legal issues
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Import of uranium tailings
Environmentalists measure radiation levels near containers and unfurl a banner reading “No to the import of radioactive waste.”
Alexei Snigirev/Bellona
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Organization
Bellona and Ecodefence have been following the load of uranium tails since it put into the port of St. Petersburg on Friday filled with waste from Germany’s Urenco enrichment facility in Gronau. Bellona and other Russian environmental groups demand the transport of the radioactive waste be ceased immediately.
Environmental protesters where hanging a banner emblazoned with the phrase “No to the import of nuclear waste” on the train platform in Avtovo, a thickly settled suburb of St. Petersburg where the train had come to a stop.
The machine gun bearing platform guard approached the environmentalists and demanded they cease filming. He then cocked and pointed his weapon at the cameraman. (VIDEO: link, PHOTO: link)
The dangerous cargo was parked in a place where local residents regularly cross the railroad tracks so as not to walk across an elevated railroad bridge.
Bellona and Ecodefence activists measured radiation levels around the containers as high as 680 microroentgens per hour – exceeding normal background radiation by more than 30 times.
When the containers of depleted uranium hexafluoride, also known as uranium tails began their journey from Gronau, Germany they were followed by protesters and activists who measured their radiation levels with Geiger counters. In Munster, environmentalists got readings of 164 microroentgens an hour while measuring the same containers at a distance of five metres.
In 2006, Greenpeace picked up a measurement of 40 times more than normal background radiation while testing train cars carrying depleted uranium hexafluoride at the Kapitolovo railway station near St. Petersburg.
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| Railcars in Avotovo. |
| Alexei Snigirev/Bellona |
“We demand that Rostekhnadzor (Russia’s Agency for technological, industrial and energy oversight) and the Ministry of Emergency Services conduct an official measurement and investigation of the containers’ contents and cease these dangerous transports,” said Rashid Alimov, editor of Bellona Web’s Russian pages who was present at the Avtovo protest.
According to the British nuclear firm BNFL: "It is clear that the sudden release of large quantities of uranium hexafluoride if windborne could conceivably cause large numbers of casualties. In theory, such an occurrence could in certain weather conditions produce lethal concentrations in places 20 miles (32 km) from the point of release."
Alimov said the concentrated readings he and other environmentalists measured at Avtovo on Saturday were grounds for the formation of a commission to monitor the radioactive waste imports.
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| Alexei Snigirev/Bellona |
“Having measured such a significant level of radiation near the containers agains underscores the necessity of creating a commission composed of public environmentalists and representatives of Rostekhnadzor, which until the transports of radioactive waste can be ceased could carry out systematic measurements of radiation background levels near the containers,” said Alimov.
Five environmental and rights organisations - Bellona, Ecodefence, Citizens’ Watch, Green World and the Kremlin opposition political party Yabloko – demanded the creation of such a commission in an appeal to St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly and Governor in October.
“The answer (to the appeal) that was put together by Rostekhnadzor at the behest of the head of the Legislative Assembly’s Health and Ecology Commission head Oleg Sergeyev was a total kiss-off,” said Alimov.
“They said that only people with clearance for information containing state or otherwise legally protected secrets could sit on such a commission. Apparently this means first of all the commercial secrets of (Rosatom's international contractor) Tekhsnabexport, which concluded amoral deals for the import of waste to Russia. Radiation levels cannot be classified – Russian legislation establishes that information about the environment cannot be tucked away as a state secret.”
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| The level of radiation at zero to 20 metres from a container of depleted uranium hexafluoride. |
| WISE |
Bellona and Ecodefence also organised a protest in central St. Petersburg during which signatures were gathered under a demand to Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia’s nuclear energy agency Rosatom, to “immediately terminate contacts under which Russia receives depleted uranium hexafluoride.” During the hour and a half demonstration Saturday, the environmentalists collected 300 signatures.
From St. Petersburg, the waste will most likely be shipped to Novouralsk in the Ural Mountains. In the past, depleted uranium hexafluoride has been sent as well to Seversk, near Tomsk, Angarsk, near Irkutsk and Zelenogorsk, near Krasnoyarsk. Accounts kept by Russia’s former nuclear oversight body Gosatomnadzor, which were transferred to Rostekhnadzor in 2004, indicate that during the years 2003-2006 the storage of the containers of this waste in the open air “does not correspond to contemporary safety demands.”
“By sending their uranium tails to Russian facilities, Urenco is attempting to rid itself of the responsibility for its radioactive and toxic waste on the cheap,” said Ecodefence co-chairman Vladimir Slivyak. “We demand a stop to this cynical and amoral business, which we are deeply convinced contravenes Russian legislation”
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| The gamma background of an empty container after the unloading of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) is approximately 100 times greater than that near a full container. This is because of the decay of UF6 produces thorium 234 and thorium 231 inside the container (upper illustration). These substances are strong gamma emitters (the uranium itself is a strong alpha emitter and a weak gamma emitter). In a full container, gamma radiation is shielded by uranium hexafluoride. The process of unloading the UF6 heats it up to 56 degrees Celsius at which point the UF6 becomes gaseous. The products of its decay remain behind in the container (lower illustration) and their gamma radiation is no longer shielded. |
| WISE |
Kiriyenko said last year that he would sign no new contracts with Urenco or the French Eurodif enrichment firm for delivery of uranium tails, thus admitting indirectly that the initial agreement was a mistake.
Nevertheless, the conditions of the contracts, which expire in 2009 and 2014, are unknown and no one can say whether it contains language for its automatic renewal.
Russia is the only country in the world that accepts uranium tails from abroad on an industrial level. The United States considers uranium tails to be radioactive waste by a decision of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on January 18th 2005.
Depleted uranium hexafluoride, or uranium tails, are what is left over after the enrichment process for power producing uranium is complete.
Russia has already amassed some 700,000 tons of uranium tails form within the country and abroad, for which there are no long terms plans, meaning most of the tails are sent here as waste.
Russia’s law On Atomic Energy stipulates that radioactive waste is material and radioactive substances for which there is no further use. Russian law forbids the import of radioactive waste.
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