Radioactivity Waste

Baltic Newsletter July 20 2012, #119

This thesis has become one of the topics of discussion during the recent (June 29) meeting of Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, with representatives of civil society in St. Petersburg. Oleg Bodrov, leader of Green World, noted that the import into Russia of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from Europe is in accordance with the Russian-American agreement on nuclear non-proliferation.

Preliminary materials of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for a site for the disposal of radioactive waste have arrived at the administration of Sosnovy Bor, Leningrad Region http://www.mayak.sbor.net/node/15822.
According to these documents on the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland, 40 km west of the boundary of St. Petersburg, up to 250 000 cubic meters of radioactive waste (RW) will be buried.
It is about 100 km from Finland and 50 km from Estonia.

International NGO Decommision Network apeal to European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to stop support of the transportation of the spent nuclear fuel to Mayak reprocessing facility (Ural region. Russia). May 20 2011 Oleg Bodrov presented a position paper about this problem to EBRD representative. The presentation of the Position Paper and a documentary Wasteland was during the EBRD Anual meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The RA Research Reactor is located at the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences near Belgrade, Serbia. The reactor is a 6.5MWt, tank-type, heavy water moderated and cooled research reactor of Russian design which commenced operation in 1959. After being temporarily shutdown in 1984 for refurbishment, a final shutdown decision was made in 2002. At present, operations are underway to safely remove and repatriate the spent fuel to the Russian Federation (RF), as well as to improve radioactive waste management and plan for decommissioning. As a major activity within the Vinča Institute Nuclear Decommissioning (VIND) Program, the repatriation of over 8,000 fuel elements containing 2.5 tons of uranium metal will significantly reduce nuclear proliferation and environmental safety risks confronting the current facility. Poor water quality in the spent fuel storage basins and degraded fuel integrity significantly challenge efforts to repackage and transport the spent fuel. This paper will focus in the activities related to spent fuel repackaging and shipment, report on progress, detail significant challenges, and provide an overview of the fully integrated project.

December 6, 2010 German Government stopped the transportation to Russia the German spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from research reactor. But the new portion of the nuclear waste from Europe on the way to Russia.
This flow of nuclear death is growing!
At present SNF from research reactors from Poland and Latvia are being moved for reprocessing at the Mayak site in Chelyabinsk Oblast Russia.

We, the representatives of the public organizations, appeal to you to support our protest against the 1000 spent nuclear rods to be transferred to Russia from the Centre of Nuclear Research in Rossendorf (Germany).
We consider this threat to the security of people and nature the Baltic region as well as all areas along the transportation route of these dangerous goods, and in particular, for residents and nature of the ultimate destination - the Chelyabinsk region, which is already the most radiation contaminated region of the world.

To the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry A. Medvedev,
German Counsellor, Angela Merkel,
US President Barak Obama,
Secretary General of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano
We, the representatives of the public organizations, appeal to you in the International Day of Radioactive Waste, September 29, 2010.
We protest against the 1000 nuclear waste rods transfer to Russia from the Centre of Nuclear Research in Rossendorf (Germany).

Baltic Newsletter # 108

On 1 February, at 02:12 at night the Russian vessel Kapitan Kuroptev docked at the 40th slip of the port of St. Petersburg, delivering from France 650 tons of nuclear waste. After the transfer of the containers to the railway platforms, the dangerous freight was transported through St. Petersburg toward Siberia, to the closed city of Seversk near Tomsk.

The article in Finnish right wing newspaper Uusi Suomi, March 29, 2009 about Russian radioactive waste import from Germany. Oleg Bodrov - NGO Green World chairman declared "the state declares the area secret and thus the people in the city and the local government at left outside the decision making."

About 30 members of St. Petersburg’s ecological organizations protested on Thursday the transportation of nuclear waste from other countries to Russia.
“No to the Import of Nuclear Waste!” read the slogan held by a group of ecologists in front of Avtovo metro station — the area of the city through which trains transporting nuclear waste from Europe usually pass.