[A-List] Kazakhstan: radiating success

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Kazakhstan reveals solution to its nuclear waste crisis: import more

Central Asian state hopes to be Europe's nuclear dump

Paul Brown, environment correspondent in Kazakhstan
Thursday November 21, 2002
The Guardian

Kazakhstan, the largest central Asian republic, already scarred by uranium
mines and by having been the main Soviet nuclear testing ground, is planning
to become the world's first commercial importer of nuclear waste.

The national atomic company, Kazatomprom, hopes to start the imports within
a year. The aim is to make enough profit from the trade to allow it to deal
with Kazakhstan's own gigantic waste problem.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, Kazatomprom's
president, said the company was looking to the UK and other "crowded" EU
countries which had not solved their own waste problems to take advantage of
the open spaces of central Asia. He said the waste would be transported by
rail across Russia.

He believes a few hundred thousand barrels of extra nuclear waste can be
disposed of safely in a country with only 16 million inhabitants, but which
is the ninth largest in the world. The venture could earn the company
between £20bn and £30bnover 30 years, he calculates.

He plans to charge EU countries £3,000 to dispose of a barrel of waste,
making £2,400 a barrel profit for Kazakhstan.

A bill reversing Kazakhstan's policy of banning the import of nuclear waste
is before the country's parliament.

The Kazakhs plan to build a nuclear depository, but in the meantime will
store imported waste in old uranium mine workings where there is already
heavy radioactive contamination.

Mr Dzhakishev said importing waste from rich countries was the only way of
raising the more than £1bn required to begin dealing with his country's
nuclear legacy.

The company still mines uranium to make fuel for nuclear reactors in Russia
but there are more than a dozen disused mines and more than 233,000 tonnes
of radioactive waste to be made safe - as well as large quantities of
contaminated equipment.

Mr Dzhakishev said: "We get $10 for extracting a cubic metre of uranium. We
would get $100 to deposit the same amount of nuclear waste.

"If our depositories took 99% of domestic barrels and 1% from outside, the
extra radioactivity would hardly register but the profit would be enormous.
The question is, shall we do it or not? The answer is, we should."

The most controversial part of Kazatomprom's plan is to import intermediate
as well as low-level waste.

Intermediate-level waste contains plutonium which takes 200,000 years to
decay sufficiently to be safe and the UK and other EU countries have taken
the decision that it can only be buried in deep, stable rock formations.

The company says that "medium-level" waste, as Mr Dzhakishev calls it, is
safe in 1,000 years and does not contain plutonium. He intends to bury it in
trenches dug in a deep clay layer in the east of the country near the town
of Aktau, close to the Caspian sea and the border of Turkmenistan.

Mr Dzhakishev claimed that he had the encouragement of the International
Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for the plan.

Mark Guozdecky, from the IAEA, said the agency had been in talks with
Kazakhstan about importing nuclear waste.

"We do set standards for dealing with transboundary transport of waste but
they are advisory rather than compulsory. We would be willing to advise if
asked," he said.

Timur Zhantikin, chairman of the Kazakhstan atomic energy committee, the
country's nuclear regulatory body, has only 23 staff to oversee the safety
of the vast nuclear legacy in his country.

"We have a very large quantity of nuclear waste in this country and no funds
to deal with it," he said.

"On the other hand we do not yet have a depository or even an exact site for
one, and I have yet to see designs for one.

"Before import is allowed I have to issue a licence to make sure both the
transport and the proposed depository is safe. I do not have any information
which would allow me to do that," he said.

The provisional site for the dump is at the opposite end of the country from
the former Soviet nuclear test site of Semipalatinsk which was the scene of
468 nuclear tests - a third of them atmospheric.

This testing has left a strong anti-nuclear feeling in the country and there
is alarm at the idea of importing more waste before the country has dealt
with its own problem.

Dissent is a risky business in Kazakhstan where the president, Nursultan
Nazarbaev, behaves more like an old-style Communist dictator than a
democrat. Opposition journalists are attacked and newspaper offices catch
fire but some environmental groups are still prepared to speak out.

Sergei Kuratov, chairman of the environmental pressure group Green
Salvation, said: "In a country rich in oil it is crazy to suggest that we
cannot afford to deal with our own nuclear waste and want to import yet
more.

"This is a country building a new capital city in the north called Astana
and spending one hundred times more on a grandiose foreign ministry than the
entire budget for dealing with nuclear waste.

"The same is repeated again and again. It is just another money-making
venture."

Vadim Nee, a lawyer for another environmental group, the Eurasia Partnership
said: "The World Bank is worried about corruption in Kazakhstan.

"In our current situation there is no guarantee of public safety, no system
for compensation, no confidence in the ability of customs to deal with these
cargoes.

"Everyone has a human right to a safe environment - but apparently not
here."