326 kgs of uranium from Germany to Russia

It could have come from Rossendorf, near Dresden, where communist East Germany ran an experimental reactor and where the agency says “the uranium fuel was left on the reactor’s service platforms, awaiting its further fate. Its fate has now been decided.”

But another strong possibility is that it came as spent uranium from Germany’s only enrichment factory at Gronau, near the city of Münster and the Dutch border.

Accompanied by the protests of nuclear opponents, spent uranium is regularly railed from Gronau to the Dutch port of Rotterdam and shipped from there to Russia, where opposition to the intakes is growing.

“The nuclear materials regarded as ‘radioactive wastes’ are actually a valuable fuel with which atomic power stations can be operated,” wrote Tatjana Sinizyna in the RIA Novosti report which I saw in German at  http://www.russland.ru/schlagzeilen/morenews.php?iditem=32819.

“The Germans must surely have been happy about the possibility of ridding themselves of quite a large amount of ‘radioactive rubbish’,” said the article.

It continued: “Precisely these words are used for ‘radioactive wastes’ by Russians who don’t like the idea of their country becoming a radioactive ‘rubbish tip’.”

But in reality, what the uninitiated called “radioactive wastes” were “valuable assets” and “nuclear specialists are happy to see this wealth being brought back into the country”, says the report.

“Russia is one of the few countries with a complete nuclear cycle. And uranium materials can always be used here.

“For example, the cargo from Germany has been made available to the Russian research and production association ‘Lutsh’ in Novosibirsk.

“It will be turned into fuel elements which will drive nuclear reactors.”

RIA Novosti mentions another “very important” aspect of the recent consignment from Germany, an “international programme for the ‘collection of nuclear stones’”.

When the world stopped being bipolar, nuclear materials were spread through 60 countries. “Up to then the USSR had been able to build 20 reactors in 17 states. The USA built one reactor in each of 43 states.

“Each of them was filled with uranium of various levels of enrichment which was capable of being used for military purposes.

“Not just in Russia but also in the USA one was sure that all nuclear materials had to return home and be put under the control and responsibility of the relevant states.

“Political reality and the terror threat allowed no other option. In 1996 the Americans began taking highly enriched uranium from reactors built in their projects abroad. In return, the countries operating research reactors were offered low-enriched fuel that can’t be used militarily.”

Nuclear scientists say a crude fission nuclear weapon is estimated to require 15-20 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium, containing more than 90 percent uranium 235.

“Russia also saw the need for nuclear materials to be brought back, but at the time the state lacked the funds for implementing so expensive a programme.

“Then the Americans launched their initiative ‘global reduction of the threat’, offering money and suggesting a joint plan of action. The cost of the project, excluding the costs of reactor conversion, is estimated at almost 450 million US dollars.

“This significant sum has been transferred to accounts of the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO), which has directed this work since 2004 and in the process enters agreements with the relevant Russian enterprises in the system of the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy.

“Up to the end of 2006, in two and a half years of implementation of the project, 433 kilograms of uranium in various degrees of enrichment have been taken out of circulation.”

The RIA Novosti report also cites another “uranium operation successfully carried out” in 2006, the removal of a dangerous nuclear cargo from Tashkent.

“Russian, American and Uzbek experts had prepared for it for five years. At the end of May, under cover of darkness, about a tonne of fuel elements with 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium were transported with a special trailer from the research reactor of the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan.

“Security regulations required that all these materials be vitrified before being loaded into containers.

“Russian experts are presently organising the transportation of uranium fuel away from Latvia, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan and Serbia.

“The Americans want all ‘nuclear stones’ collected by 2010, the Russians regard 2012 as a more realistic target. In any event, the process is moving constantly closer to its goal.”