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I think Labrador would be a closer, better place, if
Ontario will not accept a repository.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 11:13 AM
Subject: Fwd: Russia votes to accept foreign nuclear
waste
Russia votes to accept foreign nuclear
waste
MOSCOW, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The Russian parliament on
Thursday passed
a bill to accept foreign nuclear waste for storage and
reprocessing,
bringing angry condemnation from environmentalists.
The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 320-30 with
eight abstentions in favour of the bill, which advocates say could
earn $21 billion for cash-strapped Russia.
International
conservation group Greenpeace said the bill meant
Russia would become the
world's nuclear dumping ground and that the
potential danger was too high
a price to pay.
"This vote means the bill only needs the President's
signature. The
country can now be turned into the world's nuclear waste
dump,"
Greenpeace nuclear expert Tobias Muenchmeyer told Reuters by
telephone from Germany.
"Many nations intend to send nuclear fuel
to Russia. Some openly
state it, for others it is too politically
sensitive."
Muenchmeyer said Greenpeace had made public in March a
Ministry of
Atomic Energy white paper saying Russia could make $21 billion
from
storing and reprocessing foreign nuclear waste.
It said many
European and Asian countries wanted to export waste to
Russia, including
Switzerland, Germany, China and Japan.
Alexander Kotenkov, the
Kremlin's representative in the Duma, said
profits on imports would allow
Russia to invest in its own crumbling
waste-storage infrastructure.
"If an ecological catastrophe does happen...it will happen because of
the poor storage of our fuel," Kotenkov said in televised comments.
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