Russian Regulators Warn Nuclear Safety Undercut by Economic Crisis

Ongoing job cuts at nuclear facilities include the personnel directly responsible for safety control, states the report by Rostekhnadzor, which is responsible for licensing and safety at Russia's 31 operating nuclear power plants and the eight more under construction.

Activists with Ecodefense are calling on the Russian government to quickly adopt a plan to insure public safety and nuclear security.

"Ecodefense urges Russian government to quickly develop and adopt a plan to avoid possible accidents at nuclear facilities resulting from safety staff cuts and the general economic decline. The prevention of nuclear proliferation must be part of this plan," said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman for Ecodefense, a Russian nuclear watchdog group established in 1989.

"Otherwise, Russia may return to the dark days of the 1990s when unemployed nuclear scientists and technical specialists were offering services to anyone who able to pay. At the same time there was a developing market for illegal nuclear materials across the country," said Slivyak.

In western Russia's Tver Oblast, Kalinin-3 is the country's newest nuclear unit and went into trial operation in December 2004. Kalinin-4 is under construction for service in 2011. (Photo courtesy Energoatom)

Rostekhnadzor reports that there have been "job cuts at facilities responsible for nuclear-fuel cycle of personnel responsible for safety control and maintenance."

The report also criticizes nuclear facilities management for "not paying enough attention to ensuring nuclear safety."

In a criticism of itself, Rostekhnadzor reports that it doesn't have enough safety inspectors to do its own job properly.

"It is possible that further cut jobs in Russia may bring back the nuclear proliferation problems related to illegal trade of radioactive materials," Slivyak cautioned. "These radioactive materials can be used for building a dirty bomb."

The deteriorating social and economic situation in Russia is likely to result in significant drop of nuclear safety level at many nuclear facilities. Some nuclear facilities have already seen jobs cut because of reduced national income due to declining oil prices and the global recession.

Russia is in deep economic trouble with the myriad of unsolved problems in nuclear power industry.

One problem with both public health and economic implications is the growing amounts of radioactive waste of various types, including uranium tailings and spent nuclear fuel stored throughout the country.

The Rostekhnadzor report warns that there is "significant risk" of the containers breaking open and leaking the uranium tailings inside - radioactive and highly toxic waste resulting from uranium enrichment.

In Rostov, southern Russia, the Volgodonsk-1 reactor went into operation in 2001. (Photo courtesy Rosenergoatom)

These wastes are stored near several large cities like Ekaterinburg, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, the location of the so-called International Uranium Enrichment Center established by Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation.

According to independent estimates, there are over 700.000 tons of uranium tailings stored across Russia in very poor condition with high risk of radioactive and toxic leakages to the environment.

All across the country, the amount of radioactive waste is growing; it is kept in inadequate storage mostly built decades ago in the beginning of nuclear industry history.

These containers do not meet current safety standards for long-term storage, according to the regulators in their report.

In the case of spent fuel, Rostekhnadzor states there are "unresolved issues" such as large amounts of spent nuclear fuel in reactor pools and limited free space at several nuclear power plants - mostly Leningrad's and Kursk's with RBMK reactors, the same type of reactor as the one that caught fire and exploded at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986 in the world's worst nuclear accident.

Ecodefense is concerned that the socio-economic decline may worsen existing problems and lead to new radioactive contamination in many places across Russia, saying, "The government must start to work now in order to avoid new nuclear accidents in the future."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.