Ksenia Mokrushina

Environmental Justice Aspects of Nuclear Waste Disposal

I.

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.

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

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 cant 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.

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

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 Rawlss 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

depletion. Shrader-Frechette also makes a reference to Daniel Callahans 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 Callahans view, present generations have duties to their successors. Opposing views include Derek Parfits conviction that the choices made by present generations create different future generations. Whatever our duties are to our posterity, we cant satisfy their needs and wants because we cant 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 Feinbergs 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

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

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 governments 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

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 lowincome communities or communities of color because of little to no political power and financial means these communities enjoy. Yucca Mountain was chosen as the USs 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

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-

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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 Russias 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 worlds nuclear waste in one countrys 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 worlds 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

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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 IAEAs 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 governments 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 cant 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,

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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. 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 Agencys guidelines for calculating radiation dose. The Agencys 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 custom1. 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
1

Institutionalization of Environmental Injustice Associated with Nuclear Waste

I searched IAEAs 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.

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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 Russias 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. Injustice

Nuclear Waste Disposal Planning and Policy Methods Causing Environmental

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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 todays 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 doesnt 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

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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. Its 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 nations ecosystem and public health? Is ensuring a host communitys safety a sufficient reason for the government to abandon its national security and economic development plans based on nuclear power? The abovementioned Russian legislation on importation of nuclear wastes was justified on purely utilitarian grounds: 20,000 tons of imported spent nuclear fuel meant over $20 billion for Russias economy, at that time deeply troubled by the financial and political crises of the 90s. If Australia had accepted the proposal to build an international permanent nuclear waste repository, its projected total revenues over 40 years would have amounted to about US$ 100 billion, with payments to the government of about $50 billion before considering multiplier effects. This

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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 nations military or economic power. Is it environmentally and socially just? I wont 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 governments 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.

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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 governments 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 19491952 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

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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 villages 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

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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 countrys 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, dont know where the wastes from their facilities are shipped to and buried. If nuclear scientists dont 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

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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 governments 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

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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 doesnt have anything to do with nuclear and chemical safety and protection of population. Rather, the furtiveness is caused by the governments 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 governments negligence and reckless disregard of nuclear and chemical safety measures and public health precautions, as well as by its

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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

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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 Committees 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 Committees ruling was a result of the Russian governments manipulation (Agyeman and OgnevaHimmelberger 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 governments decision to put ratification of the 2001 legislation on hold and Rosatoms 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 peoples 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

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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.

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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 Russias 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

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11. 12.

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

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