Final Paper EJ

8/6/2019 Final Paper EJ

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/final-paper-ej 1/27

Ksenia Mokrushina

Environmental Justice Aspects of Nuclear Waste Disposal

. Introduction

This paper is inspired by the recent tragic events in Japan, where an earthquake and

tsunami caused serious damages to a spent nuclear fuel storage facility resulting in massive

release of radiation into the atmosphere. This paper also reflects my personal pain associated

with living next to a nuclear reactor and spent nuclear material storage in the closed city of Sarov

in Russia, where the Federal Nuclear Center is situated and where both my parents have worked

as senior researchers for over 25 years.

The paper examines technical, legal, procedural and organizational difficulties

associated with nuclear waste disposal leading to environmental injustices across nations, spaces

and generations. It analyses the shortcomings of policy and planning methods currently used in

nuclear waste disposal field, which contribute to the environmental injustice associated with

nuclear waste disposal. The paper attempts to identify the roots of the EJ problems arising from

nuclear waste disposal, buried in the piles of technical reports, cost-benefit analyses, risk

assessment statements and international negotiation protocols. Special attention is paid to

international movements of nuclear waste resulting in cross-national injustices. A case study on

waste disposal practices in the former Soviet Union and present-day Russia is analyzed as an

example of disproportionate environmental burden placed on Russian people by the Russian

government pursing its “strategic” security, military defense and economic benefit goals, as well

as by a number of European countries, which prefer to ship its nuclear waste for reprocessing

and temporary storage to Russia, rather than deal with it within their own national borders.

1



The main findings of this paper include the following: i) severe intergenerational

inequalities are caused by technological aspects, scientific complexities, as well as risk

assessment methods, cost-benefit analysis and other policy and planning methods associated with

nuclear waste disposal; ii) geographic, geological and climatic conditions, as well a number of

other safety and logistical considerations can cause spatial inequalities of temporary nuclear

waste storage; iii) spatial inequalities can fall disproportionately on ethnic minorities, as

evidenced from the Yucca Mountain case in the US and ‘Mayak’ nuclear facility disaster in the

Soviet Union; iv) in terms of cross-country environmental justice, ironically, it is economically

developed countries with impeccable democratic governance record and stable political systems

that are likely to bear disproportionate burden of environmental and public health risks

associated with permanent waste disposal; v) national legislation permitting nuclear fuel lease

and importation of nuclear wastes for enrichment, reprocessing and temporal storage also creates

cross-national misbalances in the nuclear waste disposal field; v) the interests of local

communities are usually disregarded by national governments looking for immediate economic

gains and pursuing national security and defense goals; vi) lack of public access to information

and decision making leads to grave injustices when it comes to nuclear waste disposal policies

and practices.

Before diving into the analysis of nuclear waste disposal practices as they relate to the

EJ debate, it is useful to understand its technological characteristics that are pertinent to our

discussion.

II. Technological Problems Associated with Nuclear Waste Disposal

According to the US National Research Council, the time frame in question when

2



dealing with radioactive waste ranges from 10,000 to billions of years. Radioactive waste

(RAW) creates long-lasting negative effects on human health and ecosystem due to its extremely

long half-life periods, during which the process of nuclear fission happens. It takes centuries for

RAW to settle to safe levels of radioactivity. For example, the period of half-life of uranium-238

is 4.47 billion years. While it is possible to safely store and manage the so-called low-level waste

produced as a result of medical and industrial activities, secure storage, disposal or

transformation into a non-toxic form of high-level waste from nuclear power plants and

transuranic military waste is unthinkable.

This being said, most experts agree that complete and permanent containment of

RAW can’t be achieved. Experts do admit that containers will be secure only for several

generations, but sooner or later container leakage and radionuclide migration will happen. Most

likely it will happen well before RAW loses enough radioactivity to cease being lethal for human

beings. MacLean and Brown maintain that “there is no such thing as zero risk. No matter how

cleverly one designs the system for waste storage and disposal, a non-zero probability remains

that some persons alive today or in the future will be harmed” (MacLean and Brown, 1983). An

earthquake might damage a deep underground final repository of high-level waste. A terrorist

attack might ruin an on-ground storage. Sea-based containers will eventually corrode. Major

accidents might happen at nuclear transmutation facilities, designed to convert high-level waste

into less hazardous ones. All kinds of repositories will cease to be monitored one day. So far, I

have only mentioned the biggest risks that do not materialize so often. When we come to think

about a whole array of more “trivial” risks, such as future temperature changes at the repository,

groundwater migration, Earth mantel shifts and so on, the task of complete and perpetual

separation of hazardous nuclear waste seems even more unconceivable.

3



Temporary nuclear waste disposal causes no less trouble. RAW is usually temporarily

stored in power plants storage pools until a permanent storage site is found and prepared. The

spent fuel rods are supposed to stay in these pools for only about 6 months, but, because

permanent storage sites are so hard to find, they often stay there for years. The capacity to store

spent nuclear fuel at numerous existing power plants was exhausted long time ago. Many power

plants have had to enlarge their pools to make room for more rods. As pools fill and rods are

placed too close together, the remaining nuclear fuel could go critical, starting a nuclear chain

reaction. Thus, the rods must be monitored and it is very important that the pools do not become

too crowded. The problems associated with temporary RAW disposal became apparent during

the nuclear catastrophe in Japan. Overheating, water level drop and subsequent fires in

Fukushima nuclear waste storage pond caused direct release of radiation into the atmosphere and

significantly contributed to the scale of negative environmental consequences of the tragedy.

Finally, the problem is not merely one of finding an adequate medium and site for

burying wastes. It is the sheer bulk of wastes resulting from over 50 years of accumulation that

has created a huge logistics problem.

I believe these salient technological characteristics of RAW disposal problem are

central to our discussion of EJ. Long half-lives of radioactive materials are at the root of

intergenerational environmental inequalities, whereas logistical difficulties associated with

permanent and temporary RAW disposal are much too often dealt with at the expense of public

health and environmental integrity and can result in spatial and cross-national environmental

inequalities.

III. Intergenerational Inequalities

4



In her book, Shrader-Frechette mentions a nuclear proponent Alvin Weinberg, who

described the problem of radioactive wastes as a “Faustian bargain” (Shrader-Frechette, 2002).

He says: “In return for the present benefits of atomic energy, we in this generation must export

the risks of nuclear waste to future generations”. More than half a century ago, the humanity

made the choice of harnessing and benefiting from nuclear power, thus imposing environmental

injustice on all subsequent future generations by accumulating the hazardous stock of nuclear

waste. While the effects on one generation might be small, the cumulative effects over many

generations are substantial. As a consequence, health and safety risks associated with nuclear

waste disposal are placed disproportionately on future generations. We also leave them a higher

physical volume of nuclear waste, which, coupled with higher probability of disaster, can

potentially cause larger negative environmental and health impacts.

It therefore appears that present generations use future generations as means to

achieve their short-term aims of greater economic well-being, depriving unborn persons of equal

opportunities for life and bodily security. The question is whether we can justify the

disproportionate burden of nuclear risks we are putting on our descendants.

Shrader-Frechette argues that there are no valid moral and ethical grounds for treating

persons belonging to different generations differently (Shrader-Frechette, 2002). Therefore, by

disposing of nuclear waste the way we do, we violate the principle of prima facie political equity.

Moreover, she believes that present generations have duties to members of future generations. To

support her point of view, she refers to John Rawls’s idea of the legacy we ought to leave for

future generations on egalitarian grounds. He believes that “we must preserve the gains and

maintain intact the institutions of our generation and to pass to our posterity an increased amount

of the capital and improved technology we received from our ancestors to make up for resource

5



depletion”. Shrader-Frechette also makes a reference to Daniel Callahan’s argument for a social

contract among all generations. According to Callahan, the contract arises when one party

chooses to accept a moral obligation before another one, in very much the same way as parents

accept a moral obligation to take care of their children without asking anything in return.

Likewise, in Callahan’s view, present generations have duties to their successors.

Opposing views include Derek Parfit’s conviction that the choices made by present

generations create different future generations. Whatever our duties are to our posterity, we can’t

satisfy their needs and wants because we can’t predict the consequences of our actions, what

kind of influence intervening generations will exercise on subsequent generations, and thus, what

kind of individuals future generations will be. He claims the choices we make today will not

make future generations worse off. Rather, they will create different generations. So, for Parfit,

duties to future generations is a question of identity, rather than equality. In response to this

view, Shrader-Frechette makes a reference to Joel Feinberg’s argument that despite our

ignorance about the needs of future generations, we know for sure that they will value such basic

human needs as health and security and thus we have to attend to them.

Future generations suffer not only from distributive environmental injustice, but also

from participatory one. It is impossible to consult them prior to making a decision to create a

nuclear waste storage. If there was such a possibility, it is unlikely that they would agree. Why

would they if so many people say “no” to nuclear repositories today?

IV. Inequalities Related to Risk Perception

6



The use of nuclear power resulting in massive amounts of RAW heavily

disadvantages those groups of population that consider the risks of constructing and operating

nuclear power plants and disposing of nuclear waste too great to manage. Conversely, it puts in a

more favorable position those who think that economic benefits of nuclear power outweigh the

risks. By the same token, those who consider potential environmental risks associated with

nuclear power use and waste disposal greater than immediate environmental gains in the form of

reduced CO2 emissions, find themselves in a weaker position than those who praise the

“cleanliness” of nuclear power. In this debate, utility and efficiency arguments and their disciples

seem to be somehow superior to environmental and health concerns and their defenders.

This being the case, people who are not willing to accept the risk of living next to a

nuclear waste disposal site, find themselves in a disadvantaged position compared to those who

consider monetary compensation provided by the government an adequate remuneration of their

acceptance of risk.

Schmidt and Marratto (Schmidt and Marratto, 2008, p. 59) make a reference to a study by

Canadian Nuclear Association, which estimates that “with all the precautions in design,

construction and operation, the likelihood of an accident serious enough to release a significant

amount of radioactive material from a CANDU power station is estimated to be less than one in

a million per year. Even if such an event did occur, the chance of anyone being actually harmed

is quite small, so the risk is actually much lower”. How high is the probability of one in a million

in human terms as opposed to political ones? Is the one in a million chance of killing tens of

thousands people or causing a personal tragedy really low enough to justify building of yet

another nuclear power station? Finally, how high is the risk of an earthquake and a tsunami

hitting a nuclear power station at the same time? I guess, 40 years ago when the plans of building

7



the Fukushima reactors were discussed, such risks were estimated as negligible…

V. Inequalities Between the Bearers of Street and Scientific Knowledge

It is close to impossible for a layperson lacking specialized knowledge about nuclear

power, to make an informed judgment or formulate their position about accepting nuclear waste

dump or power plant in their locality. They are forced to rely on scientific facts, which tend to

understate risks that would otherwise be unacceptable for ordinary citizens. Alternatively, they

may choose to litigate or launch protest marches in the streets in the hope to be heard by the

government. In most cases, though, their protests and claims in court are dismissed as

“unscientific”. Shrader-Frechette laments the fact that citizens are often coerced or manipulated

into accepting a RAW disposal site in their locality. In the absence of funding an educational

effort on the part of the government, lay people often have to make decisions based on one-sided

information provided by nuclear industry. They are “seduced” by nuclear “advertising blitz”

launched by nuclear power station operators or compensation payments promised by the

government.

VI. Spatial Inequalities

Local communities’ confidence and acceptance is not by far the most important factor

in a government’s decision of locating a RAW disposal site. Lots of other factors are at play

when the location decision is being made: geographical, climatic and geological conditions; cost

efficiency considerations; coordination among various agencies; scientific reviews and expert

8



opinions; secrecy and security requirements; proximity to traditional nuclear waste transportation

routes; the interplay among various government levels; land ownership issues; relationship

between the government and private operators; corporate interests; etc. At the same time, it

would be absolutely wrong to say that nuclear waste storages are intentionally placed in low-

income communities or communities of color because of little to no political power and financial

means these communities enjoy. Yucca Mountain was chosen as the US’s deep geologic

repository site after over 20 years of scrupulous, exhaustive scientific, economic and technical

studies of 10 potential candidate locations. The mountain was selected because of a favorable

combination of its various attributes, including remoteness, aridity, geological stability,

proximity to Nevada Test Site, federal land ownership, etc. It is one of the few locations in the

world where containers storing radioactive materials can be isolated from the environment by

1,000 feet of dry rock below ground and the same distance above the water table.

Sadly, Yucca Mountain continues the history of the disproportionate citing of

uranium mining and nuclear waste facilities on Indian lands in the US. If environmental injustice

is happening here, I believe it is not intentional. Those unlucky communities that get to be

chosen as nuclear waste disposal targets, just happen to live in wrong place at a wrong time.

With nuclear civilian and military power systems being the most complex and dangerous in the

world and all the required safety measures and public scrutiny accompanying nuclear waste

disposal, it is hard to imagine a purposeful malicious attempt to disproportionately expose

minorities and the poor to the dangers of RAW.

Yet, certain communities do happen to live in geologically stable, remote and arid

areas all around the world and they will be faced with disproportionate risks associated with

permanent nuclear waste disposal. By the same token, communities living next to nuclear power

9



stations, where most of spent nuclear fuel is stored now, are also victims of environmental

injustice associated with RAW disposal.

VII. Cross-National Inequalities

Currently, there are about 50 countries that have spent nuclear fuel awaiting

reprocessing and permanent disposal in temporary storages. Not all of these countries are

adequately equipped or have scientific knowledge and technical capacity and expertise to deal

with the problem of nuclear waste disposal. Not all of these countries have sufficient financial

resources to take the proper measures on their own to assure adequate safety and security. Some

countries may not produce enough radioactive waste to make construction and operation of their

own repositories economically feasible. Unstable political situations and proximity to conflict

zones and terrorist clusters in some countries also prevent secure waste disposal. Finally,

unfavorable geological conditions and geographical location can make RAW disposal

particularly challenging.

Given these difficulties, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called for a

multinational basis for solving the nuclear waste disposal problem. More specifically, there have

been several proposals for regional and international repositories for disposal of high-level

nuclear wastes. A number of IAEA-sponsored reports concluded that regional and international

repositories are more economical and have significant non-proliferation and security advantages.

Further studies identified Australia, southern Africa, Argentina and western China as having the

most appropriate geological credentials for a deep geologic repository, with Australia being

favored on economic and political grounds. One of the EU-sponsored studies determined that “

in addition to its ideal geological characteristics, the host country should preferably be a first-

10



world, stable democracy, familiar with high-technology enterprises”. In response to this

proposal, Australian parliament immediately passed a bill to make it illegal to dispose of foreign

high-level waste in the state without specific parliamentary approval.

IAEA also repeatedly discussed the possibility of locating international spent fuel

storage in Eastern Siberia, Russia. The advantages of building a repository in Russia were

Russia’s favorable legislation allowing importation of nuclear wastes from other countries for

reprocessing (more on this below), as well as its solid scientific and technological base and

expertise in this field. However, this idea was rejected due to the unenviable record of

environmental pollution in the former Soviet Union, its poor nuclear industry safety

performance, and the continuing lack of transparency and integrity of Russia's industrial and

financial systems. As of November 2010, no specific location for an international RAW

repository has still been agreed upon. Now, is it more environmentally just and ethical for each country using nuclear power

for either for peaceful or military purposes to take care of its own nuclear waste? Or is the

alternative of getting all the world’s nuclear waste in one country’s repository better from the EJ

point of view? Under this second scenario, the whole world will be cleaned of the nuclear waste

poison, with just one country carrying an enormous environmental burden and facing huge

environmental and public health and well-being risks. While there is no definitive answer to this

question, apparently, no one wants to carry the weight of the world’s RAW stock. According to

the World Nuclear Association, the disquiet regarding the international repository proposal

comes from two major sources. One is from countries with high-level waste facilities, where

concern is expressed that such a program will be launched without the endorsement of citizens.

The second is that such system will erode the will of national governments to deal responsibly

11



with their own wastes, and provide a 'cop-out', making a scapegoat out the host country.

Ironically, unlike in the case of international transfer of toxic wastes, it is

economically and technologically developed countries with strong environmental regulations in

place and democratic governments (and stable geology) that are likely to suffer from the

environmental injustice of international nuclear waste disposal concept. My fear is that if

international RAW repository is to be built eventually, it will be placed in a country with the

weakest opposition on the part of its citizens and a highly authoritative government in favor of

the repository construction idea. From this perspective, Russia is still a very likely candidate,

given that it meets all other IAEA’s requirements, such as transparent project management, use

of the best technologies, maintaining of the most stringent ecological and safety standards, etc.

As far as temporary nuclear disposal and reprocessing is concerned, Russia bears the

brunt of the cross-national environmental injustice associated with international nuclear waste

movements due to i) its legislation system permitting enrichment and reprocessing of RAW

generated in other countries on the Russian territory; ii) weak enforcement of the law leading to

foreign nuclear waste staying in Russia for permanent storage; iii) the Russian government’s

overt strategy to turn foreign RAW enrichment and reprocessing into budget income generating

enterprise at the expense of domestic ecosystem integrity and public health. At present, Russia

not only accepts foreign RAW for reprocessing, but also leases enriched nuclear fuel to countries

that either can’t afford developing domestic nuclear fuel cycle or are prevented from doing so for

security reasons by the international community. Unfortunately, Russian environmental and

nuclear and chemical safety regulation and monitoring rules are not enforced properly, which

results in nuclear contamination of the ecosystem of the Urals and Siberia, where many nuclear

facilities are situated. Thus, ironically, technological capacity, developed industrial base,

12



scientific and engineering expertise that Russia has accumulated in the field of nuclear power, all

become a huge disadvantage for its citizens and environment from the EJ point of view. I will

analyze it in greater detail in the case study below.

VIII. Institutionalization of Environmental Injustice Associated with Nuclear Waste

Disposal

Environmental injustice is institutionalized in international and national laws,

regulations and guidelines on nuclear waste disposal. For example, according Filomina C.

Steady, environmental injustice was established in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s

guidelines for calculating radiation dose. The Agency’s calculation methodology makes a

reference to ‘standard man’, who is ‘20-30 years of age, 70 kg weight, 170 cm in height,

Caucasian and is Western European or Northern American in habitat and custom’ 1. In this form

the guideline took no account of females, kids and non-Caucasian people. Moreover, it neglected

the fact that average young men of other races, including Asians and Africans weighted much

less than 70 kg, which means that radiation dose threshold should have been set lower for these

categories of the world population.

The uranium or neutrality criterion used in U.S. laws and regulations make future

generations more vulnerable to nuclear hazards than present generations. This criterion requires

that “nuclear operations of all types should be conducted so the overall hazards to future

generations are the same as those that would be presented by the original unmined ore bodies

utilized in those operations” (MacLean 1983). Thus, in theory, future generations are supposed to

be exposed to risks no higher than current generations living next to natural uranium deposits.

However, problems arise when this supposedly well-meaning equal-opportunity criterion is

1I searched IAEA’s website and could not find any mentioning of ‘Caucasian standard man’. I assume that the

concept of ‘standard man’ has since been generalized to all races.

13



applied in practice. One difficulty is that it is uncertain whether spent nuclear fuel will eventually

decay to the level of naturally occurring uranium. Secondly, by relying on nuclear power, current

generations are leaving a dramatically increased volume of RAW for future generations to deal

with. Finally, as mentioned before, the risk of RAW repositories being breached and waste

leaching out long before it decays to natural uranium levels is very high (Shrader-Frechette

2002).

Cross-nation environmental inequalities are institutionalized in national legislation

allowing importation of nuclear waste from other countries. For example, in 2001 Russia’s

lawmakers adopted a set of controversial bills that turned Russia into one of the world's leading

importers of spent nuclear fuel for storage (more on this in the case study below). The U.S.

federal government has recently received a Utah company's request to import large amounts of

low-level radioactive waste from Italy. If approved, this request could pave the way towards the

US adopting legislation permitting nuclear waste imports from other countries, and thus is

fiercely opposed by environmentalists, general public and congressmen.

Gaps in national legislation can also lead to cross-national inequalities. For instance,

Russian communities find themselves in a much less privileged position in comparison with

people in other countries due to the fact that the Russian government refuses to ratify the 1998

Aarhus convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making, and

Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. As I will show in subsequent sections, this

disadvantage is of critical importance when it comes to nuclear waste disposal in Russia.

IX. Nuclear Waste Disposal Planning and Policy Methods Causing Environmental

Injustice

14



Traditional policy evaluation methods, such as cost-benefit and risk assessment

analyses, seem to create a host of environmental justice problems. I would argue orthodox policy

assessment instruments are not appropriate at all when it comes to decisions concerning RAW

disposal.

First of all, using traditional discounting methods in cost-benefit analysis greatly

disadvantage future generation. They make future losses look negligible today. In this

connection, Shrader-Frechette says: “[…] discounting makes future catastrophes morally trivial.

At a discount rate of 5 percent, one death next year counts for more than a billion deaths in five

hundred years”. It is irresponsible discounting of future losses that enables today’s generations

make compelling utilitarian arguments on the benefits of nuclear power.

Furthermore, practical policy studies only consider up to several decades as far as

effective planning is concerned. 100-year forecast horizon already seems irrelevant for present

day generation and therefore unworthy of taking precautionary measures. Humanity just doesn’t

know how to deal with planning challenges like nuclear waste disposal or, say, climate change,

impacts of which are taking place on radically different time-scales. While we can presumably

calculate the costs and benefits accruing from using nuclear power over three or four generations

(still, the precision of this relatively short term calculation is highly questionable), it is not

possible to take into account risks which will be borne by “somewhere 17 and 8,000 generations

of human beings into the far distant future” (Schmidt and Marratto 2008).

Finally, conventional risk assessment and management methods used in public policy and

planning do not adequately reflect and mitigate risks associated with RAW storage. “Acceptable

level of risk” is a political term, meaning that the government will accept this or that nuclear

waste policy, rather than citizens. A number of questions remain unanswered with regards to risk

15



management in the public policy realm, all of them being highly relevant to nuclear waste

management. What is an appropriate level of ‘socially acceptable’ risk? Should it guide public

policy decisions? Under what circumstances and for which purposes can governments impose

greater risks on the society as a whole and on certain communities? How should individual and

community risk acceptability be accounted for? I would argue that there is no such thing as

objective socially acceptable risk. It’s always a highly judgmental evaluation reflecting personal,

communal and societal beliefs, values and ethics.

X. National and Government Interests vs. Community Interests

In my view, the most controversial aspect of environmental injustice associated with

nuclear waste disposal is the clash between national security and economic interests represented

and defended by national governments and the interests of a community destined to host a

nuclear waste repository. This conflict has repeatedly surfaced in my paper already. Are

economic benefits of importing nuclear wastes for processing and storing, as well the advantages

nuclear power use, worth risking the integrity of a nation’s ecosystem and public health? Is

ensuring a host community’s safety a sufficient reason for the government to abandon its

national security and economic development plans based on nuclear power? The above-

mentioned Russian legislation on importation of nuclear wastes was justified on purely utilitarian

grounds: 20,000 tons of imported spent nuclear fuel meant over $20 billion for Russia’s

economy, at that time deeply troubled by the financial and political crises of the 90s. If Australia

had accepted the proposal to build an international permanent nuclear waste repository, its

projected total revenues over 40 years would have amounted to about US$ 100 billion, with

payments to the government of about $50 billion before considering multiplier effects. This

16



would have added about one percent to the Australian GNP and resulted in an increase in

employment of about 6000 people (World Nuclear Association 2007). Unfortunately, these

stellar potential benefits were not weighted against long-term risks and costs to future

generations in Russia and Australia.

Historic evidence has shown multiple times that national security, military and economic

development interests promoted by governments around the world trump the interests of a

community forced to handle the impacts of nuclear waste generated as a result of a nation’s

military or economic power. Is it environmentally and socially just?

I won’t attempt to answer this question in this paper. Each country should decide for

itself. But if the decision is made to use nuclear power for military, national security and power

generation purposes and, as a consequence, to generate and store RAW at the expense of host

communities’ safety, livelihood and health, at least it should be done in a fully transparent way

while making sure that all safety precautions are in place. This way, at least procedural

environmental justice will be ensured by giving communities a choice of protesting, demanding

compensation, requiring accountability on government’s part, introducing community-based

monitoring systems, or, as a matter of last resort, abandoning the locality altogether.

The following case study on RAW disposal in Russia illustrate the wanton,

unaccountable and unjustifiable nuclear waste disposal practices that the present Russian and

former Soviet government has been exercising in violation of all environmental and social justice

principles.

XI. Nuclear Waste Disposal in Russia

The history of nuclear waste disposal in Russia and Soviet Union has been gruesome.

17



The obscenity of nuclear waste disposal practices of the Soviet times has unfortunately lived

through the collapse of the communist regime and continues to cause public health and

deterioration, irreversible environmental degradation, as well public outrage and protests on the

part of both international and Russian environmentalists and scientific community. Even under

the pressure of public opposition, the Russian government’s responsibility and accountability on

RAW disposal measures have not improved over time either.

In the Soviet Union times, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Chelyabinsk (the infamous

‘Mayak’) nuclear weapons production facilities were discharging liquid RAW in the nearby

Tom’, Yenisey and Techa Rivers for decades. Most of the pollution was due to routine practices

of releasing nuclear reactor cooling waters directly into the river (Yablokov 1992, p.4). In 1949-

1952 RAW of several million Curies was released from ‘Mayak’ into the Techa. Thousands

miles away, in the Artic Ocean, a large number of fish deaths were recorded and traces of

radioactivity were detected (Bridges and Bridges 1995). Over 28 thousand people in 40 towns

and villages along the river were exposed to radiation doses considered dangerous for human

health (Bobrov 1999, p.37). The contaminated region was mostly occupied by the Muslim Tatar

and Bashkir people, both representing ethnic minorities in Russia, as well as descendants of

people of various nationalities repressed and exiled under Stalin. “Mayak” itself was constructed

by the Communists using predominantly Bashkir workers and taking advantage of submissive

nature of the Bashkir community (Agyeman and Ogneva-Himmelberger 2009).

Parts of the river were fenced off and some 7,000 people were evacuated from

villages along the Techa, as over 60% of Metlino village population complained of what was

later identified as symptoms of leukemia (Bobrov 1999, p.37 and Bridges and Bridges 1995).

Radiation doses they were exposed to exceeded maximum permissible level by 34 times (Bobrov

18



1999, p. 38). Agyeman and Ogneva-Himmelberger assert that while many Russians were

resettled, most of Tatar and Bashkir people were left at Muslumovo village, another

contaminated site nearby. They report that as many as 4,000 of the village’s original 4,500

inhabitants – mostly Tatar – remained in Muslumovo. At present, Muslumovo is one of the very

few existing villages along the banks of the Techa River. Both Tatar and Bashkir people still live

in this region and continue to harvest contaminated berries and mushrooms for their livelihoods

(Agyeman and Ogneva-Himmelberger 2009).

As usual, the Soviet government found a truly ingenious solution to the Mayak

problem: it dumped the waste from the factory into the nearby Lake Karachai. In 1967, due to a

severe drought, the water level in the lake dropped and mud on its banks dried out and became

powdery. This heavily contaminated material was dispersed by the winds over an area of over

2000 sq.km. The estimates of affected people range from several hundred to almost half a

million (Bridges and Bridges 1995). At ‘Mayak’ site, soil and groundwater contamination is

estimated down to a depth of 100m. Today, it threatens the reservoir supplying drinking water to

the city of Chelyabinsk, a home for over 1 mln people, which a vivid proof of intergenerational

environmental inequalities involved in nuclear waste disposal.

Accidents were no less damaging in terms of their ecological and public health

effects, then routine disposal practices. In 1957, due to an explosion of a liquid radioactive waste

storage tank at the same notorious ‘Mayak’ nuclear facility, an area equal to the size of New

Jersey was polluted with plutonium and strontium. The resulting radioactive cloud covered a

much wider area, which is now called the East Ural Radioactive Trace, the EURT. It is not

widely known that the total amount of radiation produced by this catastrophe was twice the

Chernobyl accident nuclear contamination. This accident was kept secret from the outside world

19



for military safety reasons and 10,700 people were silently evacuated.

One of the biggest problems of RAW disposal in Russia is that there is very little

publicly accessible information on the geography, amounts and impacts of domestic and

international nuclear waste disposed of within the country’s boundaries. This reminds us of the

critical urgency of the adoption of the 1998 Aarhus Convention by the Russian government. For

example, there is no official statistical information on the amount of RAW in Russian temporary

repositories, while Russian ENGOs believe that the country is home to hundreds of millions tons

of the deadly wastes. Vast amounts of RAW are associated with military industrial complex,

wherein all safety reports and documents are classified. Much of nuclear waste disposal that

happened during the Soviet regime and the troubled 90-s was not properly monitored and

documented. Finally, nuclear power sector is considered to be of “strategic importance” to the

State, which seriously limits access to statistical and analytical data on even non-military nuclear

waste. Therefore, the public remains in the dark on how much RAW they are exposed to; where

disposal sites are located; whether nuclear waste was disposed of properly or not; what the

environmental and health effects and risks are. My parents, who are both nuclear scientists living

in the closed city of Sarov, where the Russian Federal Nuclear Research Center is located, don’t

know where the wastes from their facilities are shipped to and buried. If nuclear scientists don’t

know, how are lay persons supposed to know?

The informational vacuum surrounding nuclear waste in Russia becomes apparent in

times of disaster. For example, in the summer of 2010 Russia experienced massive wildfires due

to anomalously intense and long summer heat and drought. The fires got so close to Sarov and its

nuclear facilities and waste storage sites, that over 3,000 people, four helicopters, four airplanes

and 30 fire trucks had to be involved to put them out before they spread beyond the point of the

20



second largest nuclear catastrophe in the history of Russia. Two long weeks the whole world was

watching the emergency situation unfold in the heart of Russia nuclear defense industry,

uninformed about the real likelihood and potential consequences of disaster. The citizens had to

bear with the government’s claims that there are “no technologically and scientifically feasible”

risks involved in the situation. Nuclear scientists like my parents knew that information on the

gravity of the hazard would never be disclosed for political and “national security” reasons.

Importation of foreign nuclear waste is also performed behind a shroud of secrecy. In

the 90s, when all kinds of RAW imports, be they for reprocessing or temporary storage purposes,

were prohibited altogether, a number of Russian companies were consistently violating this

regulation, taking advantage of the political chaos happening in the country under President

Yeltsin. The notorious regulation passed by the Russian Duma in 2001 has never been

promulgated into law due to safety concerns, absence of the necessary technologies and strong

public outcry against it. In 2006, Rosatom, the Russian federal agency responsible for nuclear

energy, announced it would not proceed with taking any foreign-origin used fuel for storage.

According to the official statistical provided by the Agency, Russia has not imported a single ton

of foreign spent nuclear fuel for permanent disposal since then. However, Russia does import

RAW for reprocessing or enrichment and sends it back to the country of it origin afterwards. For

example, Russia regularly imports depleted uranium-based RAW from Germany, France and

other Western European countries for reprocessing. However, Greenpeace Russia claims that

only 10-30% of reprocessed material actually goes back to Europe. The rest, they claim, is buried

in Russia. According to “Green Movement”, a Russian ENGO, Russia imported over 100,000

tons of depleted uranium-based waste from Germany, France and Holland in 2001-2009.

While German and French environmental NGOs are protesting against and publishing

21



numerous articles on irresponsible RAW disposal practices used by EDF and Urenco, major

European power generation companies, the Russian government keeps denying these allegations.

At the same time, it refuses to disclose any information on the routes, timing, destination and

amount of the hazardous nuclear waste freight crossing Russian borders, explaining the secrecy

by the need to prevent terrorist attacks and any other malicious use of the dangerous freight.

Greenpeace once decided to track one of the trains carrying RAW into Russia and eventually

found it on the outskirts St.Petersburg with no guard escorts protecting it. They report: “The train

was standing next to a crowded train station. The level of radiation in the area was about 2,000

microroentgen per hour, the maximum allowable dose being 12-15 microroentgen”. In 2009 one

of the French ENGOs released a video showing depleted nuclear waste sitting in uncovered rusty

containers outside a chemical plant just outside the city of Tomsk – a home to over 500 thousand

Russians. Not surprisingly, the municipal government of Tomsk did not admit the existence of

this outdoor storage.

Greenpeace is convinced that Russia is involved in clandestine international nuclear

waste trading schemes and all the secrecy around it doesn’t have anything to do with nuclear and

chemical safety and protection of population. Rather, the furtiveness is caused by the

government’s fear of public backlash and damage to its international reputation. While Russian

nuclear waste imports legislation technically does not allow any waste to be left and stored in

Russia, both temporarily and permanently, not a single company has been legally persecuted yet

either in Russia or Europe.

Thus, cross-national environmental injustice associated with international movement

of hazardous nuclear wastes is exacerbated by the Russian government’s negligence and reckless

disregard of nuclear and chemical safety measures and public health precautions, as well as by its

22



failure to enforce environmental regulations and existing legislation on handling foreign nuclear

waste. 'Valuable nuclear raw material' that Rosatom secretly trades as a conventional commodity

(the price of one ton of higly dangerous RAW is as low as the price of a ton of corn – and that is

called valuable?!) is a source of easy profit and budget inflow and another leverage in Russia's

political relationship with the Europe. Yet, it has also become a symbol of Russia's pervasive

environmental degradation and rapid decline of public health. Just like the Soviet Union was

sacrificing the health and livelihood of the Soviet people for decades in the name of military

power and domination over the West, the Russian government keeps doing it in exchange for

immediate economic gain.

Thus, in Russia we are witnessing: i) intergenerational environmental inequalities

associated with RAW disposal, which were set in motion by the Soviet Union government

decades ago; ii) disproportional RAW burden falling on Russian people living next to

'strategically important' nuclear facilities primarily in the Urals and Siberia, which illustrate

spatial inequalities; iii) examples of disproportionate negative environmental impacts associated

with nuclear waste affecting ethnic minorities of Russia; iv) environmental injustice caused by

the lack of public access to information and policy making on RAW disposal; v) cross-national

environmental injustices associated with Russia importing spent nuclear fuel from other

countries for reprocessing and illegal storage; vi) environmental burden purposefully placed on

Russian people by the Russian government pursuing unjustifiable economic gains.

XII. Afterword

Nuclear waste disposal problem has become one of the drivers behind nascent

environmental and social justice movements in Russia supported by Greenpeace Russia and

23



leading oppositional political parties “Yabloko” and “A Different Russia”. Over 100

environmental organizations gathered together in 2009 to hold a forum on the importation of

foreign nuclear waste in Russia and signed a petition to the Federal Public Prosecution Office of

Russia asking to initiate a criminal investigation of the illegal importation practices. In 2001,

when the controversial RAW importation legislation was passed, a number of environmental

organizations in Russia initiated a plebiscite asking Russian people to vote on the ruling. Despite

the fact that millions of Russians endorsed the initiative, the results of the referendum were

annulled by the Central Voting Committee’s verdict stating that “only three-quarters of the

signatures were valid, causing the campaign to fall just short of two million signatures required”

(Agyeman and Ogneva-Himmelberger 2009). Environmentalists charged that the Committee’s

ruling was a result of the Russian government’s manipulation (Agyeman and Ogneva-

Himmelberger 2009). This resulted in hundreds of demonstrations and pickets around Russia in

2001-2006 with thousands of people hitting the streets in violent opposition to the legislation.

This massive public outcry contributed to the government’s decision to put ratification of the

2001 legislation on hold and Rosatom’s official announcement in 2006 that no nuclear waste will

be imported in Russia for burial. But most importantly, anti-RAW public campaigns resulted in

unprecedented rise of Russian people’s awareness about the nuclear waste disposal problem.

According to Bellona, a Scandinavian ENGO, in 2007, 95% of Russian people were against

importation of nuclear waste in Russia, with the share reaching 100% in the regions intended for

hosting foreign RAWs. In 2005-2007 seven to ten million Russian families were informed about

the problem in detail. Now it is hard to believe that before 2001 Russian people were virtually

unaware about the nuclear waste imports problem.

Finally, activist movements in France and Germany mentioned earlier resulted in the

24



announcement by the German Minister for Environment Roetgen that Germany will not be

sending its spent nuclear fuel to the infamous “Mayak” facility in the Russian Urals. Inspired by

this decision, in 2010, a consortium of 137 Russian and German ENGOs led by Russian

“EcoProtection” group petitioned Putin and Merkel to stop importation of RAW in Russia from

Germany.

These achievements look more than just promising. As the history of EJ struggles

around the world has shown, social movements are potent in resisting malicious environmental

practices exercised by governments and corporations. Hopefully, a movement against

importation of RAW in Russia for reprocessing and burial will break the tradition of public

disempowerment, political passiveness and low level of civil engagement in Russia.

25



References

1. Steady F.C. 2009. Environmental Justice in the New Millenium: Global Perspectives on

Race, Ethnicity, and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan.

2. Shrader-Frechette K. 2002. Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming

Democracy. Oxford University Press.

3. Agyeman J., Ogneva-Himmelberger Y. 2009. Environmental Justice and Sustainability

in the Former Soviet Union. The MIT Press. Cambridge, London.

4. MacLean D., Brown P.G. 1983. Energy and the Future. Rowman and Littlefield. Totowa,

New Jersey.

5. National Research Council (1995). Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards.

Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. cited in in "The Status of Nuclear Waste

Disposal". The American Physical Society. January 2006.

6. RIA News Russia, http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100803/160058605.html

7. Bridges O., Bridges 1995 J.W. Radioactive Waste Problems in Russia: Journal of

Radiological Protection Vol. 15, No.3, pp.223-234

8. Yablokov A 1992 Notes of the environmental situation in Russia Environmental Policy

Review 16 (2) 1-7

9. Bobrov A.L. 1999 “Ecological and Economic Sustainability of Russia’s Regions”

Nauka, Moscow

10. Oracle Education Foundation ThinkQuest. Nuclear Waste Storage.

http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.ht

ml

26

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Research_Council

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2006/january/article1.html



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Physical_Society


http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100803/160058605.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.html





http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100803/160058605.html



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Research_Council



11. Wikipedia. Radioactive Waste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

12. World Nuclear Association. International Nuclear Waste Disposal Concepts.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04ap2.html

13. Nuclear Energy Institute. Yucca Mountain-Facts and Myths: Opponents Distort

or Ignore Research.

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/nuclearwastedisposal/factsheet/yu

cca-mountainmyths-and-facts-opponents-distort-or-ignore-research/?page=1

14. Svoboda News Radio. Russia continues to import nuclear waste.

http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/395144.html

15. Greenpeace Russia. Nuclear Waste Disposal News.

http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/ru/1304563/

16. Bellona. The Campaign against Importation of Uranium Tailings in Russia.

http://www.bellona.ru/Casefiles/campaign_tailings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste


http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/nuclearwastedisposal/factsheet/yucca-mountainmyths-and-facts-opponents-distort-or-ignore-research/?page=1





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste







Documents

Final Paper EJ