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Why Do Tomsk Residents Need Radioactive Tails?
19 december 2005 - Tomsk
Today at the Uzhnaya Square the Tomsk Ecological Students Inspection (TESI) held a demonstration where everybody could sign a statement to the heads of the Siberian Chemical Plant with the demand to provide the public with information about import of foreign nuclear materials in the region. The campaign “Why Do Tomsk Residents Need Radioactive Tails?” is carried out with the information support of Greenpeace Russia and the international group Ecodefense.
According to the information of non-governmental organizations, radioactive materials are being imported in the Tomsk region: so called “waste uranium hexafluoride” (WUHF), or depleted uranium hexafluoride, as well as depleted uranium oxide. According to official information, by 1995 the Siberian Chemical Plant (SCP) had received 759 tons of uranium oxides and 100 tons of hexafluoride from Cogema company (France). By 2014 more than 100.000 tons of depleted uranium is to be imported in Russia (including SCP).
After its reprocessing, about 10 percent (already enriched) materials are exported back. The rest – products of imported uranium reprocessing (up to 90% of the imported materials – in the form of even more depleted uranium) is left in Russia forever as the Russian property.
Environmentalists demand from the management of the Siberian Chemical Plant to provide information about the amounts of WUHF that are stored in the Tomsk region.
“The Russian legislation prohibits import of nuclear materials for storage”, says Vladimir Chuprov, Greenpeace Russia Energy Campaigner.
Furthermore, according to information of Russian Federal Service for Nuclear and Radiation Safety Supervision, storage of containers with waste uranium hexafluoride at industrial sites of the plants in Sverdlovsk-44, Tomsk-7, Krasnoyarsk-45, Angarsk does not meet modern safety requirements.
This is why TESI, Greenpeace Russia and Ecodefense are concerned about import and storage of WUHF in the territory of the Tomsk region. “We really need to know whether there is a system to protect the population in case of an accident with depressurization of containers for WUHF transportation through the city of Tomsk”, says Tatiana Oreshkina, TESI representative.
“As these plants are financed from the Russian budget, the imported radioactive waste will be utilized at the expense of Russian tax-payers. For exporting countries don't actually pay for storage and disposal of their waste in the territory of the Russian Federation”, says Vladimir Slivyak, co-Chair of Ecodefense.
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