Nuclear Wastes to Russia

The Russian Duma voted to turn Russia into the world's nuclear garbage dump--WashPost, Spring 2001. The following are reasons why no country should even give Russia should not be trusted with nuclear wastes:

1. Chernobyl: The world's worse nuclear reactor catastrophe.

2. Eastern Ural Radioactive Trace: Released radiation has been three times Chenobyl. Russia faces enormous cleanup tasks from Soviet-era radiation accidents and illicit dumping at sea by the Soviet and Russian navies. (Russian Payoff)

3. Russian Submarines:

   • Eight nuclear submarines accidentally sunk with reactor cores still on the ocean floor

   • Russia has knowing consigned reactors  to the ocean deep without any safeguards.

   • Russia has 90 nuclear powered submarines which it cannot maintain or decommission.

4. The US subsidizes Russia's military forces to maintain its nuclear weapons in a safe condition.

5. The US has not come up with a nuclear storage plan: "Nuclear Waste Dump in Nevada Is Dead for Now, Daschle Says"--NYTimes. Will Russia do a better job?

6. Claims that Russia will use the money to clean up their ugly nuclear messes are like a deep-in-debt person saying more and bigger credit card limits will solve the problem of not working. A middleman getting a fee for increasing the debtors mortgage will support more debt but should the creditors?

Let's be honest. Western habitual politicians are going to payoff Russian habitual politicians to accept nuclear waste  ... with two leaves. The habitual politician will imitate each generation of Russian habitual politicians, leaving Russia forever and leaving nuclear waste behind. Today's Russian politicians will spend the money and leave tomorrow's Russians with the costly mess. And, some of th nuclear wastes will be simply dropped in the ocean rather than shipped to storage. Who pays to montior Russia's compliance? Russia?

Russians don't want the nuclear waste: "Public opinion polls have shown more than 90 percent of the Russian public against the plan and more than 2 million Russians signed on to a failed referendum to block it. But the State Duma gave easy approval to the measure today in its third and final vote on the matter, 243-125." WashPost

The Russian promoting the waste import plan don't even have a plan for permanenting storing or neutralizing it: Rumyantsev's ministry says it hopes to enter a lucrative world market, bringing in as much as 20,000 tons of used fuel from nuclear reactors in Germany, Switzerland, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, South Korea and China in exchange for hefty payments. The waste would be put in "temporary" storage, according to the vague details released by the ministry, for at least 10 years, then reprocessed into fuel that could be re-used. WashPost