Cargo with more than 600 tons of nuclear waste was shipped from Germany to Russia, the environmental organization Ecodefense said.
12 cars with waste generated during the enrichment of uranium during the production of fuel for nuclear power plants were shipped by rail. According to environmentalists, some containers of waste were sent by truck to Amsterdam, where they will be loaded onto the ship Mikhail Dudin, which will arrive at the port of Ust-Luga near St. Petersburg in early July.
We are talking about depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUHF), which is formed as a result of uranium enrichment. Uranium hexafluoride is an extremely unpleasant thing. This is a strong poison, which in case of fire cannot even be put out with water - it reacts with H2O.
In Russia, waste should be delivered to the Ural Electrochemical Plant in Novouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region. Russian laws prohibit the import of nuclear waste from abroad for burial. At the same time, it is allowed to import nuclear materials for further enrichment with subsequent return to a foreign supplier.
In "Eco-protection" they say that, despite the fact that the waste is imported for further enrichment, most waste remains in the country forever. According to the estimates of an environmental public organization, over three thousand tons of nuclear waste have been delivered to Russia since the beginning of 2020. So, the last cargo with 600 tons of waste arrived from Germany on June 15. Due to the fact that the validity of the permit for the import into Russia of uranium waste through the ports of the Netherlands has been extended until 2023, environmentalists fear that the transportation of nuclear waste into the country will continue in the coming years.
The supply of uranium waste from Germany resumed in 2019 after a ten-year hiatus. In addition, French Orano received permission to use ports in the Netherlands to deliver waste to Russia. The environmental organization Greenpeace reported that in 2019-2022 Urenco plans to export 12 thousand tons of nuclear waste to Russia.
Since 1996, according to experts, about 100,000 tons of dump hexafluoride have been delivered to us only under contracts with Urenco. The contract with Urenco ended in 2009, with the French company Eurodif - in 2010.
Given all this, every sane person raises the question: why should nuclear scientists with the already existing one million tons of nuclear “shit”, which is already corroded, threatening environmental troubles, drag another 12,000 tons of banned uranium waste from Europe? Given the appetites of officials, the question is apparently naive, if not rhetorical.
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