TALLINN - The recent announcement by Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy that the country planned to equip a number of portswith facilities for the export and import of radioactive products, including one in Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland, sparked concern last week.
Russians environmental groups said that in addition to Ust-Luga, the Baltic Sea ports of Primorsk, St. Petersburg and Baltiysk would be involved in the handling of spent nuclear fuel.
The Ust-Luga port, which is currently under construction, is located about 50 kilometers from the Estonian-Russian border.
"Russia widely exports radioactive materials such as uranium, and in order to redistribute the flow of those materials from the port of St. Petersburg, we plan to make the port of Ust-Luga capable of processing radioactive cargo," said Nikolai Shingarev, a spokesman for the Russia's Mini-stry of Atomic Energy
According to a state program approved in 2001, Russia will accommodate about 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from Italy, South Korea, Taiwan and other potential sources until 2010. For holding and processing the spent fuel on its territory Russia is to receive $20 billion, of which roughly $7 billion could be spent on environmental protection projects.
Shingarev said the spent fuel could be brought into Russia by both sea and rail, but once in Russia it would have to be delivered to the processing facilities by trains.
Spent nuclear fuel is known as a potential source of energy as it can be processed and reused, unlike nuclear waste, which can only be stored in a secure location. After proper processing, some 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel can provide the energy equivalent of up to 470,000 tons of oil.
There is a total of about 250,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in the world today, and Russia currently holds 14,000 tons. However, after plutonium is extracted from the spent fuel, the remaining part becomes nuclear waste.
The market for storing spent nuclear fuel is enormous, and with few countries wanting to get involved, Russia has taken to developing the necessary facilities in recent year and thereby become a leader in storing uranium and plutonium.
Ural-based Mayak, the only Russian plant of its kind, processes up to 200 tons of spent nuclear fuel per year. According to Antiatom.ru, a news agency covering the nuclear power industry, the Mayak plant is only capable of processing the Soviet-type of spent nuclear fuel.
Russia has been bringing home spent nuclear fuel of Russian origin in accordance with previously signed agreements with countries such as Bulgaria, Iran, Libya and other states that used the country's help in building its nuclear power engineering sector.
Germany and the United States refused to consider serving as possible destinations for nuclear product processing and storage for political and technical reasons.
According to Ministry of Ato-mic Energy, there have been no serious accidents during the transporting of spent nuclear fuel neither after the collapse of the Soviet Union nor since the 1970s when such operations were carried out for the first time.
Nearly 2,000 transportations of spent nuclear fuel take place in Russia every year.
According to the plan by the Russian authorities, money received from the import of spent nuclear fuel from a certain foreign client would be spent on a concrete environment protection project specified before the deal.
Vladimir Chuprov, coordinator of the energy department of Greenpreace Russia, said that the construction of a special terminal in the port of Ust-Luga would serve as part of the nuclear import process.
Greenpeace experts see the program as posing major risks for the port areas as pollution may occur during the loading-unloading cycle or as a result of terrorist activity.
Jurg Samel, a spokesman for the Estonian Environment Ministry, said as far as environment risks outside the country, the ministry acted according to information provided by official sources.
"At the moment the ministry does not have any information regarding construction of a nuclear product terminal in the port of Ust-Luga. Russia had not informed us about its programs in this field and it was not obliged to," said Samel.
Oleg Bodrov, head of the Green World NGO who lives in Sosnovy Bor, a small town in Leningrad Oblast, which has one of Russia's nine nuclear power plants, said, "The political decision to store the spent nuclear fuel had already been approved by [former Prime Minister] Kasyanov's Cabinet, regardless of the protests from NGOs and local residents. It is not clear though when exactly the terminals will appear in the ports."
He said that although the ports would not serve as waste dumps, they would most probably need to have short-term nuclear fuel storage facilities for logistics reasons.
According to Bodrov, part of the money Russia receives from the spent nuclear fuel storage program will be spent on construction of a contemporary nuclear power plant in Sosnovy Bor.
