Rosatom says uranium tail contracts will not be renewed, citing economic infeasibility
Part of:
Import of uranium tailings
Igor Konyshev, Rosatom’s director of relations with regions and NGOs.
Rashid Alimov / Bellona
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Officially speaking, Konyshev said the import of uranium tails is not economically justified.
“Now, while our own atomic energy and international participation (in nuclear projects) is developing sufficiently, we have something with which to augment our distributive power,” Konyshev told reporters, according to Interfax Siberia. “Therefore, these contracts do not seem economically effective to us.”
Konyshev said the contracts with Germany and France, which were signed in the 1990s, when Russia’s enrichment capabilities were laid up, and Russia needed any kind of contract it could get to pad the books. It remained unclear what precisely happened with the evaluation of the economic effectiveness of importing western European waste of enriched uranium. It is apparent that public protest and the threat of anti-corruption investigations into the conditions under which the dubious contracts were signed had an influence on Konyshev’s announcement.
“We have already taken this decision relative to one contract and have not extended its deadline because one o the contracts expires in 2009,” said Konyshev.
“The second contract ends in 2010, and there the decision should be taken this summer, but no preparation for this decision has yet been undertaken.”
From where and to where to the uranium tails go?
Konyshev evaded talking about where the uranium tails stored in Russia come from, but it has long been common knowledge that they are shipped in by the German-Dutch Urenco nuclear fuel joint venture, which maintains enrichment facitities in Gronau, Germany and Almelo, the Netherlands.
The Urenco contract closes this year, and soon at that. The second contract, with Eurodif, the enrichment subdivision of French state nuclear giant Areva, could keep delivering depleted uranium hexafluoride for a year and a half.
Konyshev clarified that the re-enrichment of the uranium tails takes place at four different facilities in Russia – in Seversk, near Tomsk, in Novouralsk, near Yekatrinburg, in Zelenogorsk, near Krasnoyarsk, and in Angarsk, in the Irkustk region – all which was also common knowledge.
| A protest against uranium tail imports in Yekatrinburg. The banner reads ‘other people’s uranium – a polluted Urals.’ |
| Ecodefence |
Russian environmental organisations have spoken out in unison against the imports of the foreign depleted uranium hexafluoride. Russian environmental groups consider the uranium tails to be radioactive waste, as they are delivered to Russia under a deal that did not for re-enrichment so much as permanent storage.
Indeed, according to the environmental group Ecodefence, less than 10 percent of the uranium tails imported to Russia is re-enriched and returned to its country of origin. The rest – some 700,000 tones amassed from abroad and domestically – remains in open-air storage in the four Siberian facilities.
There is some debate over whether uranium tails are considered waste. Many European counties consider tails to be the raw stuff of reprocessing – yet avoid doing it on their own territory as it would drive up operating costs. According to Ecodefence, Urenco’s Gronau facility would be paying some four times more if it re-enriched its own tails.
But the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared uranium tails to be radioactive waste in 2005. Sergei Kiriyenko said in 2007 that the contracts to accept uranium tails had been a mistake, and Konyshev’s announcement in Tomsk would seem to be a vindication of that. But the absence of the words “radioactive waste” in his appearance would seem to indicate that Russia is still sitting on the fence over its classification of depleted uranium hexafluoride.
| Protesters in front of containers of uranium tails in St. Petersburg’s Avtovo region hold a banner reading ‘Radioactive waste has been brought to St. Petersburg from Germany.’ |
| Rashid Alimov |
The shipments of the tails are routinely accompanied by environmental protests, often spanning all the way from Gronau, to the Port of St Petersburg where the material is offloaded for transport by rail, to the cities that eventually become its begrudging homes.
Rosatom: fight coal not radwaste transport
According to a study done by British Nuclear Fuels, Ltd. The transport of uranium tails is highly dangerous.
"It is clear that the sudden release of large quantities of uranium hexafluoride if windborne could conceivably cause large numbers of causalities,” reads BNFL’s study. “In theory, such an occurrence could in certain weather conditions produce lethal concentrations in places (32 km) from the point of release."
This notwithstanding, Konyshev insisted at his press conference that transporting radioactive material via rail was less dangerous than transporting coal, Interfax-Siberia reported.
“I therefore suggest that we begin to fight against cisterns of ammonium, acid, gasoline, and coal transports because they relative to four to five categories – as a counterbalance our loads relates to the seventh category,” said Konyshev. How Rosatom plans to lead the fight against coal transport Konyshev did not explain.
The comparison between chemically toxic and radioactively toxic substances and coal was taken as a bad PR move.
“Coal is transported in bulk in open wagons while depleted uranium hexafluoride demands special steel containers,” said Rashid Alimov, head of the Ecopererstroika group in St. Petersburg.
“Saying that transporting coal is more dangerous than transporting radioactive waste is something only a Rosatom spin-doctor could say – it’s not worth taking such ludicrous announcements seriously,” he told Bellona Web.
Some 100,000 tons of uranium tails have been brought to Russia by Urenco. Ecodefence Co-Chairman Vladimir Slivyak has called the contracts “cynical and amoral business” and has demanded an immediate stop to the imports. Ecoperestroika promises it will continue to protest the arrival of the uranium tail loads at the Port of St. Petersburg.
Andrei Ozharovsky wrote and reported from St. Petersburg. Charles Digges contributed writing and reporting.
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