Thus, U.S. environmental organizations are planning a major campaign to support their Russian counterparts if it appears that DOE may approve shipment of waste to Russia. Minatom has been unsuccessfully lobbying the Russian government and legislators since 1998 to amend the nation's law on environmental protection, which currently bans the import of radioactive waste. Recently, Minatom has begun lobbying regional legislative bodies, which have the right to initiate amendments of the federal legislation. At the time, Richardson sent word to Russia that the U.S. was not interested. Earlier that year, information leaked to the press that Minatom was holding preliminary talks with Germany and Switzerland regarding shipments of radioactive waste to Russia.
Russian environmentalists are uniformly opposed to the import of atomic waste.
Russia already suffers from widespread radioactive contamination as a result of nuclear weapons production, commercial reactor operation and the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The last thing our country needs is to become the dumping ground for the world's high-level nuclear waste. Events are planned for Chelyabinsk, Voronezh, Kaliningrad, and other cities across Russia. Much of the atomic fuel that produced the high-level waste is of U.S. origin, and contracts for shipments of fuel to other countries from the U.S. include provisions that the U.S. has final authority over the ultimate disposition of the fuel. These provisions are intended to help prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, as reprocessing of the fuel can produce weapons-grade elements.