The question of what to do about these reactors issues has sent the EU on a quest to codify new nuclear safety standards, but the international intricacies militate against simple standardization finding common ground raises many questions. Chief among these is, will the inclusion of these reactors on the EU grid lead to a revival for Europe’s nuclear industry?

A short history of nuclear power in Europe
The use of nuclear energy in Europe has been legally governed by the 1957 Euratom Treaty since the inception of the European Community. The treaty provides safeguards to for the safe operation of nuclear installations and the use of nuclear materials that are similar to those provided by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. Unlike the IAEA, however, Euratom sets no standards that have the force of law on nuclear safety and radioactive waste.

By the 1970’s nuclear power programmes in Europe had worked up a substantial head of steam and were diverging along very different paths. So were the national systems for regulating them. Cooperation between the EU’s biggest nuclear powers was governed, over time, by a “non-binding acquis” built on common fundamental principles.

With May’s planned enlargement of the EU to the east, a number of Soviet-designed nuclear reactors in the countries to be incorporated will soon be part of the European Community.. It has therefore become an urgent task for the European Commission, or EC, to harmonize its nuclear safety regulations. An EC policy paper, authored three years ago entitled “Agenda 2000” called for this harmonization process to be addressed immediately.

In response, the EC released a package in November 2002, including proposed directives defining the basic safety principles for nuclear installations—both during operation and decommissioning—within the EU. The set of proposals, which aim to become directives for the definition of safety at European nuclear power plants, are known as the “Nuclear Package.”

“While we can be proud of having an excellent level of nuclear safety in the EU, the shortcomings in nuclear legislation in the run-up to enlargement need to be overcome,” EC Vice-President in charge of energy and transport Loyola de Palacio said in a January 30th 2003 statement about the nuclear package.

“These proposals for directives are being adopted at a time when the Court of Justice recently confirmed the European Community’s legislative power with regards to the safety of nuclear facilities.”

But the Nuclear Package’s jurisdiction has been disputed on many fronts. In a report to the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy Esko Olavi Seppanen, a United Left Party MEP and Rapporteur on the directive, challenged the ECs legal basis for even making its suggestions in the nuclear safety package.

The European nuclear industry has likewise criticized—for somewhat different reasons— what it sees as the Commissions unjustifiable expansion of its Jurisdiction, and called for member states to retain their own national responsibility over nuclear regulation.

In his report, Seppanen added the EC was attempting to expand its jurisdiction to nuclear legislation, and that the Nuclear Package’s Safety Directive fails to evaluate potential problems of current nuclear safety regulation.

The Nuclear Package and its authority
The Nuclear Package has been heavily criticised by environmentalist and Green MEPs, alike. Their objections centre mainly on the fact that the document fails to introduce clear and precise nuclear safety standards that are legally enforceable. Proposals to introduce these safety standards at a later date would be insufficient, say environmentalists and Green MEPs.

Since the package’s first draft was publicized in November, 2002, its proposed Nuclear Safety Directive has been through many rewrites which some observers say has taken out its biting teeth. For instance, each EU nation in the original document was to report on its progress toward realizing the nuclear safety directive every year. In its present draft form, the package stipulates nations have only to report every three years on their progress.

It has been criticised as a set of mere “common safety principles” recommended to member states. Environmentalists and some MEPs argue it will bring about no significant changes in nuclear safety. All EU and candidate countries that have nuclear power plants are, furthermore, already party to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA’s, Nuclear Safety Convention, whose responsibilities are similar to that which is codified in the nuclear package.

“The whole annex on decommissioning of nuclear facilities has been removed from the Nuclear Safety Directive and there is no intention of addressing the issue of segregated funds under the Euratom Treaty,” said Antony Froggatt an independent nuclear analyst, according to EUenergy.com.

This would mean that money gathered for the funds could unfairly support the development of the nuclear industry—funds that can be used for more or less anything involving nuclear development on the continent. This, in its turn, would create a market distortion as other EU energy sectors do not receive such generous funding.

Lithuania's controversial Soviet-built Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant.

Bellona Archive

The EU’s new nuclear countries, come May, are Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia—each of them operating controversial and unsafe reactors. With the exception of Slovenia, which operates a Westinghouse PWR-664 reactor, the rest are Soviet-built reactors. The future admission into the EU of Romania and Bulgaria—with its notorious Kozlodui nuclear power plant—will bring more Soviet built VVER 440/230 and VVER-1000 reactors into the EU. Bulgaria’s entrance into the EU, though, depended on its agreement to shut down Kozlodui’s reactor units No. 3 and No. 4, which will be done by 2006. Its first two reactor units were shut down in December of 2002.

Most off these reactors and the plants that operate them have come under a cloud of controversy at one time or another. Ignalina is notorious for its poor security. In 1992, a group of plant workers smuggled an entire uranium fuel assembly out of the plant on the under-carriage of a truck. Some 80 kilograms of the uranium have been recovered. But 15 kilograms—enough to make a crude nuclear device—remain missing.

As a condition of Lithuania’s entrance into the EU, Vilnius grudgingly agreed to shut down Ignalina’s two RBMK-1500 reactors, both of which were deemed too dangerous to upgrade. The Baltic state counts on electricity exports to other Baltic states as well as to Belarus and Kaliningrad, Russia.

The shut down project will be accompanied by EUR500m in aid, the French Daily Le Monde reported. Ignalina’s first reactor, under Lithuania’s agreement with the EU, will be shut down in 2005 and the second in 2009. Initial plans had been to run the reactors until 2014 and 2017, respectively.

Lithuania would like the EC to foot the bill for disposing of Ignalina’s waste, but, given that the plant will continue to work for some time—thus earning a profit—this would represent market distortion in the eyes of the EC.

The Slovakian Mochovce and Bohunice plants’ eight combined reactors were the target of a June 1998 anti-nuclear campaign spearheaded by non-nuclear Austria over Mochovce’s four Soviet-built VVER 440-213 reactors and the plant’s Framatom-Siemens safety device. The plant is located some 180 kilometres from Vienna. While assessing Slovakia’s entrance into the EU, it was agreed that the two VVER 440-230s at Bohunice would be shut down by 2006 and 2008, respectively.

The Temelin NPP besieged by Austrian anti-nuclear protestors.

www.waldviertelekademie.at

But Austrian anti-nuclear outrage was again poured on the Temelin facility last November, when the Czech government’s deputy trade and Industry minister announced far-reaching plans to build a new reactor at the facility beginning in 2009 and finishing by 2015. The Czech government denied cabinet plans for more reactors, but Austria was not mollified. It remains unclear what the Czech government’s official line on the new reactor is.

In Hungary, the four Soviet-type VVER 440-213 reactors at the Paks NPP, 120 kilometres south of Budapest, were declared by the EU as adaptable to international safety standards. Later, in April 2003, an accidental warming of the combustion cells provoked a leakage of radioactive gas at the plant.

EC optimistic about dealing with the Soviet reactors…
As motley an assembly of reactors that four of the 10 new EU states will bring with them, Derek Taylor, the EC’s head of unit on nuclear safety, said that their safety levels were within expected norms.

“The level of safety in the accessing Members States is less an issue than it was three or four years ago,” he said in an interview with Bellona Web. “The soon-to-be new Members States have been fully involved in the EU’s activity for years now, especially through our Nuclear Safety Working Group. We have a good network now and a quality exchange of information. There will be no big surprise as of the 1st of May”.

Taylor predicted the EU’s enlargement may bring a more pro nuclear atmosphere among Member States because there is no moratorium on nuclear pursuits for countries entering the EU. The need for harmonising EU nuclear standards and the adoption of the Nuclear Package is therefore more critical than ever.

Underground storage tunnels for high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

www.lbl.gov

“Even Russia and Ukraine have not found a good solution so far. And this might be our biggest headache for now,” said Taylor.

From the Commission’s point of view, direct disposal in special geological repositories is the best option, but they are expensive. Aside from that, of all the nuclear power developing countries in the world, only five—the United States, France, Sweden, Finland and Russia—have turned serious attention to build a geologic repository. Of the four, only the United States and France have broken ground on thier repositories.

The US project, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has been fraught with safety problems and cost over-runs. Potential leaks have also been discovered, and the project as a whole has received a sour reception from the American public. The site is also completely booked, so when it does finally begin to receive high-level waste, a new Yucca Mountain will have to be found and built. It is, nonetheless, the position of the EC to cite and build geologic repositories.

France's facility is near Bure, and shaft sinking operations began in 2001, but were suspended in May 2002 after a fatal accident. French courts gave the go-ahead to resume drilling in April 2003 after new safety measures were adopted.

Both Sweden and Finland have sited repositories, but both projects still remain in research and development. Finland's site, at Olkiluoto, is not even expected to submit a licence application for its repository until 2012. Sweden, too, is still in the process of investigating sites for a possible deep repository near Oskarshamm and Forsmark.

Russia's Minatom has said it plans to build a repository near the Central Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. It remains unclear, however, how far those plans have developed.

“Concerning Ignalina, nobody has yet defined a long-term management route for RBMK—The Russians do not reprocess it and, until now, simply store it (probably in casks) awaiting a solution,” said Taylor. “This being the case, I see no alternative to the eventual direct disposal of the fuel as high-level waste. At the moment, there would appear to be no option but for this (geological) disposal site to be in Lithuania.”

Taylor’s words underscore that, at present, there is very little that can be done with the waste that is produced by the Soviet reactors the EU will be bringing under its wing. Spent fuel from the VVER 440 reactor is currently sent to Russia’s Mayak’s RT-1 reprocessing facility in the southern Urals—the world’s most radioactively contaminated place.

Many of the plants whose countries will be joining the EU, like Kozlodui and Paks, already do this. Kozlodui sends spent VVER-1000 fuel—which Mayak is incapable of reprocessing—to Zheleznogork in Central Siberia where it awaits recycling at RT-2, a reprocessing facility that will not be finished for another 30 years, according to Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom. Spent fuel from the RBMK series is not worth recycling at all because of the extremely scant amount of uranium its reprocessing yields. Therefore, it simply has to be stored or—in the long run—buried in a geologic repository Moscow has been promising to build. And Russia is keen to open its long-planned repository to the world.

“There are lots of places to put waste in Russia,” said Taylor in a January interview with Science magazine. “The problem, Taylor noted, is the lack of adequate legislation and regulation governing the nuclear industry. Russia, moreover, has its own problems with securing spent nuclear fuel, especially leftovers from its decommissioned submarines.

“If they can’t manage that property, why send them more?” Taylor asked.

On fear of antinuclear campaigners, noted Taylor in his Science interview, is that some countries will use repositories to revive their nuclear programmes. Closing the fuel cycle would deprive critics of a potent argument: that it is irresponsible to build new nuclear poweer plants until there is a solution to the problem of high-level waste.

“Nuclear waste has been seen as the Achilles’ Heel of the industry,” Taylor told Science.

Will the EU keep shipping to Russia?
Whether soon-to-be EU countries will continue shipping radioactive waste to Russia is a question that puts the EU in a difficult ethical position. At the root of the problem is Russia’s ambiguity about what it intends to do with the spent nuclear fuel imports it currently receives, and the EU has different guidelines on how exporting nuclear waste for storage or recycling as a “resource” are handled. When legislation allowing for the import of radioactive waste into Russia was passed in 2001, Moscow initially said radioactive waste would be both stored and reprocessed, but, in reality, it sits in storage while Russia scrapes kopeks together to simply sustain what reprocessing industry it has, which is focussed mainly on reprocessing naval fuel.

The EC has a clear injunction against the shipping of radioactive waste to countries for storage or recycling that do not have the "technical, legal or administrative resources" to manage it safely. But if the waste is to be reprocessed, a so-called Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and Radioactive Waste must be developed to govern the return of Russian reprocessed fuel—something no current EU country posseses with Russia. Such agreements will likely have to be formalized for those accessing nations that export radioactive waste to Russia should the EU decide to permit such exports

The conundrum for the EU, therefore, is whether radioactive waste shipped to Russia from Bulgaria’s Kozlodui plant, for example, constitutes spent nuclear fuel that will be stored in Russia permanently, or whether it is a resource that will be reprocessed and reused. In other words, can Kozlodui’s spent VVER-1000 fuel be said reasonably to be a resource if it has to sit for three decades while facilities to reprocess it are built? If not, is Russia considered by the EU as having the "technical, legal or administrative resources" to keep it in long term storage?

Nuclear Package gets the EP’s green light—but what happens with the radwaste?
On January 13th 2004, the European Parliament adopted, in Plenary Session, two non-biding resolutions on the EC proposed Directives—meaning a green light for the nuclear package. The EP clarified, however, that the responsibility for the safety of nuclear installations should remain with the nuclear regulatory officials of the Member States. The Parliament also suggested the establishment of a “Regulatory Authority Committee” that would be comprised of representatives from these national regulatory agencies, which would carry out reviews in accordance with the Nuclear Safety Directive.

But many environmentalists and MEPs remain alarmed by the proposed Directive on Waste Disposal. It favours the citing of geologic repositories and does not prohibit the export of waste to third countries.

This runs counter to the desires of the EP’s Environment Committee, which at the end of last year called for an EU wide ban—which included the new Member States—on the export of radioactive waste. It has also infuriated many environmentalists, who say the proposed directive leaves open the possible trade in nuclear waste within and outside Europe, primarily with Russia.

What European officials think of exporting waste to Russia
At present, the EC is required to authorise exports of nuclear materials from any member state to a third country, thus ensuring that the receiving country meets EU and international waste storage or recycling standards.

In the opinion of many highly-placed EC officials who have spoken with to Bellona Web, Russia simply does not meet that criteria. According to one EC official, the consensus is that Russia cannot guarantee the safety and security of any radioactive imports, as its facilities are thought by the EC to be inadequate for the safe management of even that spent fuel generated within the country itself.

Nonethelesss, the language of the Nuclear Package does not sufficiently reassure Green MEPs and environmentalists that oppose exports on the grounds of exploiting less fortunate nations.

“People who have not benefited from the European Union’s nuclear installations should not carry the burden of dealing with our nuclear waste”, said Green MEP Bart Staes, Rapporteur from the Environment Committee on the Directives and also Chairman of the Delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee.

The Nuclear Package will first be discussed at the level of the committee of permanent representatives, better known as COREPER. Each of the 15 Member States has a permanent representative, which together form COREPER. The Nuclear Package will then be discussed at Council level in March and May.

Five currrent Member States still oppose the proposed directives and proposed an alternative legislative route that would remove the proposed directives and replace them with non-binding legislation.

“If these countries continue to insist on their proposals, then they have sufficient votes under the qualified majority voting system that is required under Article 31 of the Euratom treaty to block the introduction of the directives,” said nuclear expert Antony Frogatt,

Taylor told Bellona Web that “if [the Nuclear Package] is blocked until the actual accession of the Candidate countries [enter the EU], it should then be adopted by the EU of 25,” said Taylor.

“For us, it would be good if the package would be adopted before the end of the current Commission’s mandate [which runs out November 1st 2004].”

Controversy over Euratom loans
Another non-binding resolution on Euratom loans to finance nuclear power plants in Member States came into effect with Janauary’s vote on the Nuclear Package in the EP. Euratom loans have long been a lighting-rod for controversy, and critics say that Euratom is allowed given more financial support than other European energy industries. With this money, opponents of the package say, the nuclear industry is able to make larger capital gains, against which it can borrow for even more cash, thus skewing the European energy market in favour of nuclear power.

In an apparent effort to avoid this impression, MEPs in January underscored that “Euratom funding should not be given for increasing efficiency, per se, as the EC had suggested. Instead, the should only be given for “improving safety, decommissioning of installations, as well establishing facilities for storage and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.”

MEPs also urged that the loans should also be given to increase nuclear safety in Central and Eastern European countries, Russia, Armenia and Ukraine.

But for the Greens/EFA groups in the EP, the notion of urging loans for safety—in Europe or other places—was not nearly strong enough. Rapporteur on the Euratom loans and German MEP Hiltrud Breyer, who had sponsored a number of amendments to the text that would have only authorised loans for the improvement of safety in reactors already in operation in the Member States.

“We had objectives when we drafted this opinion,” she said in a recent statement, referring to the proposed amendments. “Firstly to make the highest possible safety measures the top priority for already operating nuclear installations. And secondly, to forbid further distortions to the energy market through back-handed EU subsidies to the nuclear industry.”

In January, none of the Green amendments were adopted and Breyer withdrew her name from the Euratom report. Breyer explained, in harsh terms, her withdrawal on the Greens/EFA website

“This is yet another example of the European Commission’s keenness to promote nuclear energy,” she wrote. “It is absolutely scandalous that MEPs support the funding of new nuclear projects within the Union.”

During last year’s debates over the European Convention and the future of the EU, chaired by former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, disputes over the Euratom’s treaty were just as heated.

Environmental observers pointed out that the Euratom Treaty has never been subject to any serious amendments in its 47-year history, and was inked for the support and development of nuclear energy at time when the future of the then-new and barely tested energy source was unclear. The environmental group Friends of the Earth Europe started a campaign against the Euratom Treaty, supported by politicians and numerous other environmentalists.

Bellona participated and spoke out in favour of abolishing the outdated treaty. Bellona’s main objection in the debate was that Euratom distorts the energy market at a time when the EU is trying to create a more liberalised electricity market. In spite of this key development for EU electricity and the Union’s economic environment, nuclear power continues to receive significantly more political and economic largesse from the Community.

The main reason to eradicate the Euratom loan system, say its critics, is that these loans represent an outdated subsidy for the development of nuclear technology. These subsidies are not available for the development of other sources of energy—including alternative renewable sources—which have to get by with less support from the Community.

EC taking another look at nuclear power
Another example of this is the current request before Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio and Mario Monti, the EC’s Competition Commissioner. They are considering a bid from the United Kingdom’s financially distraught British Energy, or BE, which runs the UK’s nuclear facilities, for £3.8 billion. The money would be used to balance out several years’ worth of draining profits and mismanagement.

“Normally, a company that cannot pay its bills either goes bankrupt or raises its prices. For BE, and for the nuclear industry generally, this would have obvious implications in the wider energy market” wrote Friends of the Earth Europe in a statement after BE publicly announced its losses. “So instead, Mrs. de Palacio is arguing that, because Euratom requires promotion of nuclear development, the UK subsidy plan should get the green light.” It is as yet unclear whether BE will get the subsidy.

What is clear is that Energy Commissioner de Palacio seems to be dusting off the annals of nuclear power and taking a hard look at investing in its development.

One pro-nuclear argument making the rounds recently relies on Kyoto Protocol requirements to fight against greenhouse gases emissions. Nuclear advocates argue that the EU can not limit its dangerous emissions without nuclear power, which does not emit carbon dioxide. But it is the transport, not the power, sector that is responsible for most greenhouse gasses. It is also a widely held belief that Europe will eventually have to adopt renewable energy sources for the long-term future.

But this seems very much on the back burner at the moment, especially following Berlin’s January conference on renewable energy sources, which was co-organised by the EC. The conference was a run-up to the June Bonn conference, which is meant as a follow-up to the Johannesburg Sustainable Development Summit. The conference was shooting for a commitment from the EU to produce 20 percent of its energy with renewable sources by 2020. The current objective is to reach 12 percent renewables by 2010.

Bellona’s opinion is that Europe will not be able to reach Kyoto Protocol goals without renewables or the development of a hydrogen-based energy society.

France as an engine for nuclear power growth in the EU
In Paris on January 17th 2004, several thousand people took to the streets and demonstrated against the so-called “return of nuclear power”. Anti-nuclear movements from France and abroad have been fighting against the French government’s plans to start building a raft of new reactors in France and abroad. The French energy plans were discussed during the government’s 2003 public consultation held last spring.

The system of public consultation is meant to open government policy to public scrutiny and debate, but environmentalists brushed the 2003 consultation aside as a false debate, saying the government had already made its decision in favour of expanding nuclear power.

France’s history with nuclear power begins in 1973, during the first major OPEC oil crisis. The French government began exploring the nuclear option to guarantee its energy independence. Because of that early experimentation, France now has 58 nuclear reactors operating in 19 nuclear power plants that produce 78 percent of the country’s electricity.

France’s state-own EDF—which runs France’s reactors—also exports part of its production to several European countries.

At the end of 2003, France won a contract to build a new reactor for Finland, the only country in the current countries of the EU that is planning on building reactors. The Finns will be getting a so-called European Pressurised Reactor, or EPR, which was developed by the French-German Areva-Siemens concern beginning in the 1980s.

Framatom, a subsidiary of Areva, and one of the EU’s two major nuclear construction firms, is now waiting to build a second EPR in France as well as conducting large-scale overhauls and replacements of French reactors. Some observers have noted that Finland’s contract will probably bring the backing for another new EPR, this one located in France.

If France complete the reactor in Finland, their reasoning goes, it will be easier to get funding for an EPR in France. But this is hardly news: prior to France’s official decision on energy policy, France’s Minister of Energy Nicole Fontaine declared she was in favour or large-scale renewal of the country’s electro-nuclear base.

Environmental groups and anti-nuclear movements are distressed by France’s lack of transparency in its recent nuclear dealings and its avoidance of substantive public debate. They blame the tight ties that have grown over many years between the government and the country’s powerful nuclear lobby, which now seem inseparable.

Framatom has stated that the EPR generation of reactors is much safer as well a more efficient, producing one kilowatt per hour for 10 percent less the cost of older reactors. Framatom has also claimed that risks of a major accident in the EPR is ten times less than the risk associated with other common reactor types in Europe.

But, from the point of view of reducing nuclear waste and boosting nuclear security in Europe, Framatom’s points are untenable, environmentalists note. The waste produced by EPRs still contains—like any other commercial reactor—reactor grade plutonium, an attractive concept for a terrorist with plans to make a so called dirty bomb.

It is estimated by some scientists that the EPR reactor is technologically outdated, having collected dust on engineering drawing –boards for a number of years before the Finnish contract was awarded. There is also, according to a report commissioned in 2000 by France’s former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, no urgency in building new reactors in France. The study noted that France’s current reactors are safely operable until 2025 to 2035.

An engineering schematic of the ITER reactor.

iter.com

A fierce battle erupted between France and Spain to be selected as the site for ITER. Eventually Cadarache France was selected to be the European candidate for the prestigious 30-year, EUR12 billion project. But on January 9th, France’s hopes were reigned in when US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced that the US would support the Japanese site of Rokkasho-Mura for the ITER project. Abraham cited “technical reasons” for the choice, but France’s negative attitude to the US invasion of Iraq may have played a larger role in the decision.

France and the European Commission reacted to the US endorsement of Japan by saying they could unilaterally begin an ITER project of their own.

For environmentalists, the battle over the ITER reactor, and whether France and the EC will push ahead with it on their own, represents the make or break point for the continental nuclear industry. Analysts at Wise Paris, a French-based independent organization providing information and analysis on the plutonium industry and nuclear energy policies, agree. In recent years, the nuclear industry as a whole has been on shaky footing, and the ITER project will once again put it in the energy limelight. The Wise Paris analysis noted that the French government’s aggressive support for the project was a fight for the very survival of the nuclear industry, and that France would not part gently with a generation’s worth of nuclear experimentation.

Belgian Green MEP Paul Lannoye.

Bellona Archive

“A mere 5 years ago the nuclear industry thought they were dead themselves”, he said in an interview with Bellona Web. “EPR’s improved safety and technology is a myth, but as all myths, it has an impact to a public that is not well informed. But the industry needs to maintain its competence in order to survive.”

Lannoye also noted that the US-Russian MOX plutonium disposition agreement—which involves the help of several European nations, including France—presented special problems for nuclear expansion. The principle behind the MOX plan is for Russia and America to dispose of 34 tonnes a piece of surplus weapons grade plutonium. Weapons-grade plutonium oxide would be mixed uranium oxide and burned in conventional reactors.

But environmental watchdogs, including Bellona—as well as members of the Russian-American teams that are trying to realize the MOX programme—see almost insurmountable problems with the plan.

From an environmental and nuclear security point of view, MOX would give Russia and the United States the capability of creating closed plutonium fuel cycles, in which the MOX fabrication plants Russia and America plan to build would play a key role in fabricating plutonium fuel. This would lead not only to foreseeable and unforeseeable environmental disaster, and would threaten world security with unbridled plutonium production.

For Russia, especially, a plutonium based nuclear economy has been a sort of Holy Grail for years. Add to that the fact that, after Russia and America burns their agreed-upon 68 tonnes of surplus weapons grade plutonium, each country has at least 70 to 120 tonnes more surplus plutonium that does not fall under the US-Russian Plutonium Disposition Agreement of 2000. Thus the MOX program, with its billion dollar expenses and environmental hazards, is a mere drop in the non-proliferation bucket.

Given that Russia views its weapons plutonium stocks as viable fuel, the US driven non-proliferation effort could therefore easily backfire in a proliferation disaster of untold proportions.

“This is a disastrous and absurd option,” Lannoye said of the MOX plan. “The EU has so far adopted an ambiguous position and has no official position regarding this issue. It only agrees that plutonium proliferation must be addressed and MOX is a possible solution”.

Belgium opted out of assisting MOX efforts in 2002 when the Belgonucléaire nuclear concern was asked by Washington test the validity of the MOX option. The United States did not—and still does not—have the infrastructure to experiment with the fabrication of MOX fuel elements. According to Lannoye, the request for assistance “was rejected under the pressure of the Greens that were then part of the Belgian government.”

“We threatened to withdraw ourselves from the government if it approved such a project.”

France, however, took the project at its Cadarache site.

Semi-secret Pu shipments to Cadarache for MOX fabrication
Beginning October last year, the United States Department of Energy, or DOE, began pursuing a plan to ship "up to 140 kilograms" of weapons grade plutonium to France for processing, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, reported. The 140 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium is enough to make 50 or more nuclear bombs. The decision was made at a time when the French government ruled that information on plutonium transports and all other nuclear matters are state secret for the pupose of national security.

The NRC information published the information on document quietly released on October 7th, 2003. The plan, revealed in an export licence filed with the NRC, presents an unacceptable proliferation and safety risk and should be cancelled, according to Greenpeace International, which played a role in publicising the event.

The DOE plans to export the weapons grade plutonium to France from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico via the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina, reported the website Nuclear Free Seas Flotilla.

The plutonium is placed in containers on a lightly-armed British-flagged transport vessel and escorted by a similar vessel to the port of Cherbourg, France. It would then be turned over to France for protection and taken to the Cadarache plutonium facility, recently closed by French safety authorities due to seismic safety concerns.

At Cadarache, operated by the state-owned nuclear concern Cogema, the weapons grade plutonium would be processed into MOX lead test assemblies, or LTAs, and then shipped back to the U.S. under limited protection. The overland shipment in France will be especially risky as routes and methods for plutonium shipping are widely known and vulnerable, Greenpeace France has said. The US lacks a MOX plant in which to fabricate the LTAs though the DOE is hoping to build such a plant, at a cost of approximately $2 billion, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

DOE has refused requests by international environmental and non-proliferation organizations to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, on the shipment, as mandated by the US National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA. DOE officials reached by Bellona refused to comment on why no EIS had been performed, though they did acknowledge the shipments.

The French Government regulation, released in August, against revealing information about nuclear matters threatens to suppress information disclosed by the media, local authorities, regulatory bodies and even the nuclear industry itself.

The French authorities and Cogema are particularly incenced about information on the plutonium transports disclosed on the www.stop-plutonium.org website by Greenpeace launched a legal challenge against the French Government and was joined by French scientific, research and journalists associations, inclusing Wise Paris, Reporters Sans Frontieres and Journalists for Nature and the Environment.

EU Enlargement and the MOX debate
It is clear that US, Russian and French authorities would like to suppress as much information about MOX as possible. But the enlargement of the EU will doubtless have an impact on the MOX debate—which is a crucial issue when the EU’s relationship to Russia and other former Soviet states is taken into account. None of these countries have the technical or financial means to operate plutonium elimination projects. The EU, under enormous strain from Russia on the development of trade relations after the expansion, may end up selling Russia European technology for plutonium disposition should the currently foundering US Russia MOX efforts fail.

“This might be debate to come in the future if the EU goes in that direction,” Lannoye said.

He added that EU candidate countries tend to take their cues from Washington.

“The Candidate countries are generally quite conformist and they have shown in many circumstances that they are prompt to follow the US way,” Lannoye said. “And the US has proved they are proactive towards nuclear development.”

Lannoye noted that the nuclear industry says reinvigorating nuclear power serves a dual function: It helps in the struggle against carbon dioxide emissions and also is instrumental in the fight against weapons of mass destruction. The revival of the nuclear industry, however, would cause neither or these: Most greenhouse gasses are related to transportation, and growing amounts of spent nuclear fuel increase proliferation risks.

“The key element of this debate is Russia and the non-proliferation challenges,” Lannoye said.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko.

Kremlin.ru

Russia also supplies 25 percent of Europe’s natural and enriched uranium, a guaranteed amount that Moscow is concerned will be negatively affected by EU enlargement. According to Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Valery Govorukhin, Russia reaps an annual $150m from the sales—a cash crop that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko said in a recent interview with Itar-Tass, Russia intends to preserve. Additionally, Russia supplies nuclear fuel to all of the Soviet built reactors that will fall under EU jurisdiction as of May 1st.

According to Govorukhin, as quoted by Itar-Tass, Russia’s “Atomic Energy Ministry is aiming at preserving its market niche, not at increasing its quota for delivering these materials to European countries."

Khristenko, who has been the most vocal official for Moscow maintaining its 25 percent export right, as well as maintaining its hold on nuclear fuel sales to the countries holding Soviet built reactors, told Itar-Tass in early February that he is ready for “intensive talks” with the EU on the subject.

“A mandate for conducting negotiations on the import of natural and enriched uranium for its delivery to the European atomic energy market has been received from the government members of the EC,” Khristenko said.

According to Khristenko, problems are already arising as candidate states transfer to the EU’s system of uniform standards and certifications for imports. Under this system, a candidate state will have to certify that imports from Russia are in accordance with EU standards. This system is most dramatically affecting imports of Russian electricity, automobiles and nuclear fuel. To defray these difficulties, Khristenko suggested the creation of joint certification centres in Russia and the EU with all points to be negotiated before May 1, Nuclear.ru reported.

In an early February email interview, EC Head of Unit on Nuclear Safety Taylor confirmed that the Commission adopted in December a proposal for the negotiating mandate with Russia, about which Khristenko spoke.

“The main objective of an agreement is to effectively agree on a limit to the amount of Russian uranium that should be imported into the EU which would increase in percentage terms—as a percentage of total EU supply—as a direct result of enlargement,” Taylor wrote. “The most important part is not so much the natural uranium (as we no longer have an EU uranium mining industry, so have to import all our supply) but enriched uranium, as we still have two important uranium enrichment organisations.”

Those organisations are URENCO and EURODIF, Taylor wrote, which might have a difficult time competing if enriched Russian uranium were dumped onto the European market.

Russia’s total annual export of nuclear technology and materials to all the countries it exports to is valued at some $3 billion, Govorukhin said. This figure includes deliveries of fresh nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants, the construction of new nuclear plants and reactors in a number of countries—which include at present Iran, India and China—and supplies of enriched uranium for the production of nuclear fuel, he said.

Beyond nuclear questions, the expansion of the EU is going to drastically change the geopolitical situation in Europe and its relationship to Russia, Khristenko said, according to Pravda.ru. Some 35 percent of Russian exports currently go to the EU and that will grow to 50 percent after expansion. A broadened EU will thus have a “controlling stake” in Russia’s foreign Trade, he said. If EU-Russian negotiations over uranium imports take that same turn, then Europe could indeed be inundated with Russian nuclear fuel with no place to put it but reactors.