Surviving on Nuclear Waste: Kazakhstan, Russia and Other Nuclear Waste ..

[struggle4progress]

Surviving on Nuclear Waste: Kazakhstan, Russia and Other Nuclear Waste Importers

<snip> The collapse of the Warsaw Pact left many countries in the former Soviet block with an ageing and prohibitively expensive to maintain nuclear arsenal. Dismantling the war heads - often with American and European Union Euratom funding - yielded mounds of lethal radioactive materials.

Abandoned nuclear test sites - such as the USSR's central facility in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan - contain thousands of tons of radioactive leftovers. Add to this the network of decrepit, Chernobyl-like, reactors strewn throughout the region and their refuse and the gargantuan dimensions of the threat emerge.

Take, again, Kazakhstan. According to Mukhtar Dzakishev, then president of Kazatomprom, the country's national nuclear agency, the country is immersed in 230,000 tons of waste. It would cost more than $1 billion to clean. The country should earn this amount in a single year of imports of nuclear litter.

The going rate in Europe is c. $3-5000 per 200-liter barrel, only a fifth of which is spent on its burial in old mines or specially constructed depositories. This translates to a profit of $80-140 per cubic meter of uranium buried - compared to less than $10 per cubic meter of uranium extracted. The countries of east Europe have entered the fray with relish. In 2001, president Putin rushed through the Duma a much-debated law that allows for the importation and disposal of nuclear waste. <snip>

http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=729&cid=4&sid=41

[jpak]

1. Kazakhstan is also seeking international aid

to decommission its BN-350 fast breeder reactor...

It was shut down after a series of serious sodium fires...