News
Publish date: January 24, 2008
Translated by: Charles Digges
News
Germany’s MV Shouwenbank freighter put in to port Wednesday morning at six, carrying twice the amount of waste that was initially expected to arrive, activists from Bellona and Ecodefence say.
The load of uranium tails – which Russian legislation classifies as waste, but which the nuclear industry classifies as raw material for reprocessing – has been followed by protestors at both land and sea.
Offloading of the waste has so far been postponed for reasons that were not explained, though protestors report the delay is likely linked to their presence.
Bellona will continue to monitor the load as it passes through St. Petersburg by road to the Izotop facility in the Leningrad Region, and from there to storage most likely in Novouralsk, in the Ural Mountains, where Urenco’s tails have been shipped since 2003.
Photo: Rashid Alimov/Bellona
Other protests of the ongoing shipments were held over the summer and early this autumn in the cities of Tomsk, Yekatrinburg and Irkutsk.
Russia activists also turned to German prosecutors in November with the demand that Urenco stop its illegal shipments. The investigation is still ongoing.
Following Kazakhstan’s country-wide vote in favor of building a nuclear power plant earlier this month, Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom has begun a courtship of officialdom in Astana, the country’s capital, in apparent hopes of landing a contract to construct it.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Kazakhstan voted in a referendum last weekend on whether to build its first nuclear power plant, and an exit poll showed voters backed the idea promoted by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's cabinet in an effort to phase out coal plants.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.