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- France has sent 33,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia for reprocessing since 2006. A mere 3,090 tonnes has returned. That’s less than 10%. The rest is dumped.
- The contracts for this arrangement were signed in violation of Russian law.
- Rostechnadzor – the federal agency that supervises nuclear production facilities – have acknowledged that the requirements for storing the waste are violated on a regular basis.
- Russia does not have the technology to process uranium hexafluoride (which makes up most of the waste). Nor does it have the funds to invest in conversion technology.
- The cost of disposing of 700 thousand tons of Russian uranium hexafluoride, stored at depots of the state owned Rosatom, may reach billions of euros. Under their contracts. Areva and other Western European companies will add about 130 thousand tons of dangerous materials to the existing stockpile.
- The overwhelming majority of Russians – 92% – are strongly against turning Russia into an international nuclear waste dump.
– from greenpeace.org